17 Pillar Articles to Help You Master Creative Briefs
Credit: Yuri Arcurs on Photodune
Creatives need a detailed brief. Without it we are feeling in the dark, with little clue of our destination.
We need targeted information from our clients to deliver high quality finished work that meets the client’s expectations. We want to deliver polished work and we need the right information to do that.
As freelancers, it’s up to us to direct our clients on how to deliver an informed and detailed brief. Often this means putting together a questionnaire that clients fill out. This could be a website form, PDF, or text document, whichever you and your client are comfortable using. Ultimately, you need to collect the information needed for the project brief.
Only experienced clients will be familiar with compiling creative briefs and most clients will need some hand holding through the process. Whether you use a formal questionnaire, or ask questions over the phone, will depend on you and your clients. However, don’t discount the need to collect this project brief information, it’s how every one of your projects should get started.
Linkswitch #71, Email Newsletters, Pen and Paper, Benefits Of Meditation
Strengthen Client Relationships with an Email Newsletter
There are countless posts online which explain why all freelancers should have a website. In short, it’s one of the most effective ways to showcase who you are and what you can do. Of course, if you want to position yourself as an expert, you should seriously consider a blog too. Producing this kind of content is good not only for your reputation, but also for search-engine rankings.
The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Leadership Edition
One area I’ve been reading about quite a bit lately is leadership. How does a person who is a bit on the introverted side and is scared of leading a social group actually leap across that chasm and lead a community organization?
(More) Useful Web Usability Testing Tools
Usability and User Experience (UX) are two extremely important factors for developing a site or app that really stands out from the competition. With the increasing competition in sites and apps, there are also an ever increasing number of tools to help you make your site or app more usable, and to help you ensure you provide a great experience for your users.
Linkswitch #70, Personal Branding, Motivational Quotes, Coffee Shops
How to Pick the Right Colors for Your (Personal) Brand
As a freelancer, your business image isn’t just a reflection of your work, it’s a statement of your personal identity. With every project you complete, a portion of your personal design beliefs, creative insights and unique identity is woven into the results. These ties should be reflected in the freelance identity portrayed to your clients.
35 Great Inspirations & Apps for Your Facebook Page
Facebook pages are a great way to foster user engagement and promote a brand. Over time, Facebook has added a lot of features to make business pages more functional and feature rich. Lot of brands are building cool and extremely interactive business pages on top of the world’s largest social network. One has to see at least a few of these designs to get a good idea how powerful Facebook pages can be.
Better Image Management With WordPress
With the advent of sophisticated and user-friendly content management systems like WordPress, textual content has become increasingly easier to manage. The architecture of these systems aims to deliver a well-formed code foundation; this means that if you are a good writer, then your content will be just as awesome as the structure and quality of the code that runs it.
Linkswitch #69, Bookmarklets, Time Management, Brand Ambassadors
The secret power of bookmarklets
Bookmarklets are special links that users can add to their browser’s favorites. These special links include code (i.e. not just a target URL), and they trigger various kinds of useful functionality, allowing you to modify and extend any web page.
15 Photoshop Tutorials for Designing Advertisements
The design of an advertisement can have a huge impact on the level of success of the ad campaign. Being able to design attractive and effective advertisements will lead to better results for you and your clients. In this post we’ll showcase 15 tutorials that will lead you through the process of designing an ad in Photoshop. Most of the tutorials are for designing poster/flyer type ads.
5 Time Management Tips for Freelancers
Do you find that you’re constantly up against the clock? Is managing your work / life balance an ongoing battle? Freelancers frequently find the main barrier to developing and growing their client base is their own time. William Penn, businessman and philosopher said “Time is what we want most, but what we use worst,” few of us would argue with this sentiment.
Linkswitch #68, Brave New World, Mobile Branding, Web Designer Happiness
Online Writing: A Brave New World
Throughout my career, I’ve had three freelancing phases interspersed between staff positions. The first time, I edited with a red pencil on hard copy, jotted queries on sticky (Post-it) notes attached to the margins, typed out my style sheets and invoices on a typewriter, and mailed them along with the manuscript via the U.S. Postal Service or delivery truck.
How to Deal with Organizational Change
As a professional writer, I value the input of editors whom I trust. When I get a good editor who knows my work, I usually do my best to keep him or her happy. I try to build a great professional relationship with my editors, and I do my best to make it lasting.
Linkswitch #67, Boost Business, Boost Your Happiness, Simplify Sign-Ups
Boost Business with 4 Old School Marketing Tactics
Everyone’s focused on the digital world these days, and rightfully so. There’s always a new technology rolling out and its exciting to be amazed at what our favorite gadgets can do. But when it comes to customer service and getting clients, you’ve got to integrate the old with the new. Why? Not all clients are using things like social media. And even those that do may appreciate–and respond better to–”old school” techniques. Here are four big ones you may not be leveraging.
How to Avoid Freelancing Burnout
Work burnout is a physical, mental and psychological state of exhaustion. The name says a lot about what it feels like. When you’re burnt out, you feel like a lamp running out of fuel and, thus, burn out. When you’re burnt out, you don’t have the energy to keep going.
Linkswitch #66, Crafting Headlines, Saying No, Start a Conversation
Ultimate guide to crafting extraordinary headlines
No amount of effort put into a pixel-perfect design, with eye-pleasing typography, and heart-warming content can ever offset the importance of an incredible headline. Without it, your efforts will go unnoticed. Yet some of the ugliest websites can get all of the attention and recognition that yours deserved. A shame, isn’t it? But it is probably because you forgot to work on the most important part of any piece of online content: the headline (or title).
How to Take a Vacation Without the Internet
Even though we can work from anywhere and can dictate our own schedules, it’s not often that we allow ourselves to take non-working holidays, especially ones where we’ll be completely off the grid with no phone or internet access at all. I never thought about this issue until about eight months ago when I got engaged. In another month, we’re going on a Caribbean cruise for our honeymoon, and I have no idea if I’ll even have a phone, much less internet access. But then again, do I really want to?
Linkswitch #65, Prioritizing Tasks, Personal Life, Employee to Freelancer
5 Ideas for Choosing Your Home Office Equipment Setup
Now that you’ve made the decision to become a fulltime, stay-at-home freelancer, it’s time to start thinking of ways to outfit your home office. There are a few things to consider when choosing home office equipment – form and function being part of it, but personality is important, too. The equipment in your home office needs to fit a set of criteria; such as: be supportive, ergonomic, useful, durable, affordable and yes downright cool. Let’s look at a few ideas to consider as you setup your home office.
Artists unite for Japan Flags
Since March 11, the tragedy in Japan has impacted the entire world in many ways and unfortunately continues to do so. But can we make a difference? We certainly can! As artists and designers, we can support the people of Japan and their struggle with our art. French Agency Creasenso did exactly that by gathering 11 talented illustrators to create some amazing designs for sale, in order to support the Red Cross in its efforts to aid refugees. They will donate 100% of all profits to this worthy cause.
Linkswitch #64, Networking Tips, Using a Collection Agency, Make a Difference
Networking Tips for Freelancers
The idea of working at home is a dream for a lot of people and for good reason. Let’s face it: Who doesn’t like the idea of staying indoors in a nice warm house on a cold snowy winter day when everyone else is scraping ice off their windows so they can make a long slow commute during rush hour?
Beautiful Disney Portraits by Annie Leibovitz
Annie Leibovitz is a celebrity photographer born in Waterbury, Connecticut. There isn’t just one photograph that made Annie such a popular photographer. She started her career working as a staff photographer for the Rolling Stones (magazine). She was soon on tour with The Rolling Stones as their band photographer. Before long she was photographing celebrities and band members all over the world, and has been ever since.
Using “Preventive Medicine” Against Bad Clients
Bad clients have been an issue in everyone’s career at some point. Managing difficult client relationships when they occur or avoiding bad projects in the first place are two of the most important skills in managing any freelance business. Many articles offer great advice on how to handle such situations and how to stay as far away as possible from these troublemakers. But the problem still exists: bad clients are always lurking out there, keeping you on guard and plaguing others in the industry who weren’t lucky (or cautious) enough to avoid them.
Linkswitch #63, Creating Engaging Content, Website Redesign, Four-Day Workweek
How to Create Content That Engages Prospects and Customers
When Rick Short, director of marketing communications for Indium Corporation, began thinking about his social media strategy, he started with keyword research. He identified 73 of the most important keywords his prospective customers would search for. Then he created 73 different blogs that focused on each keyword and assigned a dozen employees to write those blogs.
25 Amazing Photographs Taken in the Rain
Although rain can make photography difficult, there are some amazing photos that have been captured in the rain. In this post we’ll showcase 25 photos that fit into this category. If you see something you like, click on the image or the credit link to be led to the source. Many of those pages will have a larger version of the image to be displayed, and you can also browse through more work by the photographer.
10 Tips for Staying Productive During Vacation Time
Credit: elenathewise on Photodune
Working from home, everyday is a vacation. Wrong! It’s equally important for freelancers working from home to take a vacation. You need a break as much as if you where working full-time on a factory floor, building houses, managing the cash register at your local mini-mart or working in an office.
We freelancers do have the ability to take a vacation when we feel the need for it, but guess what – often it’s an unpaid vacation with a lot of work when you get back from it. But there are ways to stay productive during vacation time, while fleeing the workload you have waiting at home.
Recently I took a vacation for 7 days, when I got back I felt more energized, and a new sense of purpose. How did I do it? Well, throughout my years in freelancing and management work – I’ve collected a few tips and tricks I always run with while on vacation. For those of you taking a spring break vacation, I’ve written down 10 quick tips for a productive vacation for all of you to make use of.
Linkswitch #62, Home Office, Facebook Branding, Project Management
Creating an Awesome Home Office Plan
Good home office plans can influence how successful you are while working from home. This means having the resources to get the job done, minimizing distractions and being comfortable.
Designing For The Future Web
Designing for the future Web. That’s a big subject. Where do we start when we’re talking about something that isn’t here yet? In this article, we’ll look at what the future Web might look like and how we can adapt our current skills to this new environment, as well as how to create fluid websites that are built around a consistent core and that adapt to the limitations and features of the device on which they are viewed. We’ll also look at how our conceptual approach to designing websites should evolve: designing from the simplest design upwards, and not from the richest website down.
