Facebook is an integral part of my small business. See, I own a niche wedding publication and use Facebook to interact with my readers and fans. It’s important to me to have engagement not only on my website, but on my Facebook page, too. I use Facebook to publicize events, tease readers about blog posts, and share information to wedding professionals as well as brides planning a wedding.

I really liked this blog post on DanZarella.com about data he collected on more than 1.3 million posts published on the top 10,000 most-liked Facebook pages on how to get more likes, comments, and shares. He analyzed the posts and here’s what he came up with: Continue Reading

I’ve written a couple of blog posts this week about plagiarism. It’s a serious offense for writers—freelance or on staff—and has ruined many a journalist’s career.

You’d think these journalists would learn from the mistakes of others. But apparently not, as Hearst recently fired one of their award-winning reporters for making stuff up.

Paresh Jha was a reporter for the New Canaan News in Connecticut. He’s been fired for fabricating sources and quotes in at least 25 stories over the past two years.

“We have found 25 stories written by Paresh Jha over the last year and a half that contain quotes from nonexistent sources,” David McCumber, editorial director of the Hearst Connecticut Media Group, said Friday. The problem was discovered when unusually spelled names were fact-checked by the editing staff. “When confronted, Jha admitted that he had fabricated the names and the quotes,” McCumber said.—NewCanaanNewsOnline.com

The stories that were discovered to have fabricated information have been taken off the weekly newspaper’s website.

In May, Jha won two awards at the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists Awards—a first place and a third place award in the community non-daily category.

Jha isn’t the first, and won’t be the last, journalist who resorts to making stuff up. One of my favorite stories about fabricating sources is the one of Stephen Glass, who worked for the Washington D.C. based-The New Republic. This was such a crazy story that they turned it into a movie—Shattered Glass—which came out in 2003.

I first watched this movie in graduate school. I was taking a media ethics course from none other than the guy who outed Stephen Glass. My professor, Adam Penenberg, was working for Forbes at the time and had been scooped on a story by Glass. “Hack Heaven,” written by glass, was the exact thing Penenberg covered for Forbes, and when Penenberg looked into the story, he realized the entire story had been fabricated by Glass. The unraveling of the tale is appalling, and makes for a good movie. Continue Reading

I recently wrote about content theft, how my FreelanceSwitch blog posts ended up on another person’s blog without proper credit. Scratch that—there was no credit! My blog post was published and another author was taking credit for it. He claims it was unintentional, but it was against the law — frustrating.

I learned some valuable lessons when this happened, and I thought I would share them with you and how you can handle plagiarism if it happens to you (and I hope it doesn’t).

Lesson 1: The power of social media

A friend of mine alerted me to the fact that someone was publishing my FreelanceSwitch blog posts on his business blog. When I checked it out, I sent the link to the editor of FreelanceSwitch, Sean Hodge, to handle. I wasn’t sure what was appropriate, and I didn’t want to get in the middle of it.

Instead of emailing this man, named Kevin, myself I posted a link to two of my blog posts on my Facebook page, calling him out on it. I figured my friends would be on my side, but some of them actually went on to Kevin’s site and left messages that what he was doing was wrong.

Three hours after my Facebook status update, all of my FreelanceSwitch blog posts (and other blog posts from various FreelanceSwitch authors and other blogs) were taken off his site. He even wrote a post trying to apologize. How’s that for service? Continue Reading

If you know me, you know I love a good study. And I found the findings in the 2012 Oriella PR Network Global Digital Journalism Study to be fascinating.

Titled The Influence Game: How News is Sourced and Managed Today, the study shows the deepening penetration of digital and social media into all areas of newsgathering and production.

The study was conducted in April and May of this year and surveyed 613 journalists who work for a variety of different media outlets (from broadcast to blogs) in the following countries: Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Vietnam, the U.K., and the U.S. On average, 38 journalists were surveyed in each country.

The Findings

The global economy is affecting newsrooms

The study found that journalists in Asia, Brazil, and Russia had a sunnier outlook on their news organization than those living in Western Europe and North America.

This year the study found that 12% of respondents globally believed their publication would go belly up, down from 21% last year. Check out how individual countries and regions fared when asked the question of falling (or growing) revenues:

Falling Revenues:

• Europe: 43%
• Brazil, Russia, China, North America: 21%
• Spain: 67%

On a more upbeat note, journalists in Russia, Brazil, and China seem to be doing great. Advertising revenue, audience, and editorial staffing is all up in these countries. According to this study, the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India, and China will experience double-digit growth in ad spending during 2012. France will see a scant 2% and the U.K. will see 3.4%. Continue Reading

I had a crazy thing happen to me that I want to share because it is an important lesson to anyone who works hard to create great content for their blog or website.

Someone who reads my blog posts on FreelanceSwitch contacted me today about something she thought was fishy. She had seen a blog post about making the switch from full-time work to freelance that looked suspiciously familiar to one I had written for FreelanceSwitch a couple of weeks ago.

When I saw the blog post I was appalled. It wasn’t similar—it was EXACTLY the same! The only difference between in the content are the links inserted into the copy. Even the same stock photo that was purchased for the post appeared in this new blog.

There was no mention that I was the author and no mention that the post was originally published on FreelanceSwitch. In fact, the ONLY thing that was given any credit was that stock photo. At the end of the article was an “About the Author” section, including a byline and a bio—but it wasn’t mine. It was attributed to someone else – Kevin. Continue Reading

There are roughly 1.6 million freelances who live and work in the United Kingdom—that’s about 1 in every 20 workers.

A study by Kingston University and PCG, the UK’s largest professional association representing freelancers, found that of that 1.6 million, roughly 265,000 freelancers work in the arts, literary, and media roles; 161,000 in management; 110,000 in teaching and education; and about 93,000 in IT/telecommunications.

“More and more skilled and talented individuals are opting for freelancing as a work-lifestyle choice, or because of economic circumstances. Freelancers are offering industry and commerce a flexible talent stream when and where it is needed.”—John Brazier, managing director of PCG for FreelanceUK

To help celebrate the UK’s 1.6 million freelancers, who contribute £82 billion to the GDP, a new project is currently underway called 7 Days in June. A series of seven films are being filmed in Media City UK and around Salford University from June 23 to the 29. Each of the films will highlight a different aspect of freelancing and the team of freelancers will be required to research, write, and produce all in just seven days. Continue Reading

I recently wrote a blog post about how New Orleans will be the first large U.S. city to not have a daily newspaper, as the owners of The Times-Picayune reported that they will be going to a three-times-a-week publication schedule this fall.

A new company will take over the publication of the newspaper as well as its website, www.nola.com. That company, the Nola Media Group, will focus on producing larger newspapers on the three publication days (Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday) while ramping up their website with stories published daily. It’s a bold move, but something I believe other newspapers will adopt over time.

The move has many upset, as you can imagine. Recently the publisher announced that the paper will cut 201 jobs—32% of its workforce. Almost half of the editorial team is being canned.

In addition, all the newspapers’ other employees will be required to take new jobs at the newly created Nola Media Group — in some cases with different responsibilities, less pay or fewer benefits. Some columnists are being asked to contribute on a freelance basis. —MediaPost.com

This is not an uncommon procedure, but it sucks. I worked for a newspaper that was going through similar cuts and people were taking the offered buyout left and right. Who wants to work more for less money? Continue Reading

Does money equal happiness? A new study by CareerBuilder, an online job search site, finds that equation isn’t necessarily always true.

“While compensation is definitely important, workers don’t necessarily equate success with hefty incomes,” said Rosemary Haefner, Vice President of Human Resources for CareerBuilder. “Often you’ll see intangibles such as the ability to make a difference, a sense of accomplishment and work/life balance eclipses the size of a paycheck in what matters most to workers.” —CareerBuilder

The study was conducted by Harris Interactive and included more than 5,700 American employees across a variety of industries. Here are some of the figures that were found:

• 75% of respondents do not feel that they need to earn six figures to be successful.
• 28% of respondents said that they would feel successful earning between $50k and $70k.
• 23% of respondents said that they would feel successful earning less thank $50k.
• 1 in 10 respondents said they need to make $150,000 or more to feel successful.
• Men were twice as likely as women to say they would need to earn six figures to be successful.

Success, to me, is a combination of money and personal satisfaction—as I’m sure it is with many other freelancers. Of course I feel like I am doing a good job when I am bringing in money. It means I can help provide for my family, pay bills, take a vacation, and all that other good stuff that comes along with being paid. But success to me is more than money. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be a freelancer and run my own business.

Here are some other ways I measure success: Continue Reading

As a freelancer, your success depends on how well you can sell. Don’t like to sell or don’t know how? Too bad. Time to put away the excuses and buckle down. The future of your freelance business depends on it.

The first thing you need to do is change your attitude about sales. Dispel any notion from your brain about sleazy used car salesmen right now. There is a great blog post on Inc.com about this very topic that I’d like to pull some wisdom from. Author Geoffrey James singles out three beliefs people who hate to sell hold close to them and they are:

Selling is Manipulative

People who hate to sell believe that sales people are trying their hardest to sell them something that the customer doesn’t really want.

Selling is Annoying

Who isn’t annoyed by unwanted sales calls at dinnertime? Some sales people simply won’t take no for an answer. People who hate to sell believe they are bothering their potential customers.

Selling is Boring

Very rarely do you pick up the phone to call someone about pitching a project and they say yes right away. Selling takes time and you need to stay on top of it. The rewards are not immediate, and can sometimes seem like they take forever.

If you believe these three things to be true, of course you hate selling! But these three things do not have to be true. What you need to do is to change your attitude and find out how you can find success. Here are some tips I’ve learned from some very successful sales people: Continue Reading

I have a friend who has a very stressful job: she’s a hospice nurse. Summer helps people end their life in the most humane way possible. She’s amazing. Her blog, QueenBloggy.com, chronicles her life in Colorado.

Summer recently had a really bad week at work. She lost two patients who were in their 40s. This passage from a recent blog post really hit home with me:

This week has been brutal. Up every night until the wee hours charting, reliving days that were wrought with sadness and a multitude of tasks. But the most frustrating part of all of this is that in the last four days I allowed absolutely NO time for self care. Skipping breakfast, lunches, not exercising, eating crap as I drove in the car from patient to patient house. My granola bar and diet coke filled body is not pleased with me right now, nor am I. I do not feel good when I don’t allow time to care for myself, and I can say quite sincerely that if this job were ALWAYS like that, then I would be looking for a new job this instant. But it’s not. —QueenBloggy

How often does this happen to you?  You get so wrapped up with the tasks of the day/week/month that you completely forget to take care of yourself? I’ve had those granola-bar-and-diet-coke weeks, and they’re horrible. And sometimes they cannot be avoided. Continue Reading

Creating a business plan for your freelance business might sound like the most boring task in the world, but just because you’re not keen on creating one doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.

If you are a passionate, creative person, creating a business plan might be just the thing you need to be sure you dot your I’s and cross your T’s.

Contrary to some entrepreneurial thinking, planning need not dampen drive or hamper creativity or passion. Indeed, planning can be an illuminating and inspiring part of the business-building process, as research leads to new ideas and, occasionally, that elusive Eureka moment! —FreelanceUK

A plan is just that—a plan. No one can foresee the future and you never know what unpredictability lies around the corner. But if you have something in writing that charts where you want your freelance business to be in the future, you have a road map. If you change your mind, that’s okay. Your business plan will help you recognize the change and help prompt you to think carefully about it.

You may think you know what your goals are…but do you really? Where do you want your freelance business to be next year? In three years? In five years? If you can answer these questions off the top of your head—good for you! You’re already ahead of the game. If not, it’s time to start thinking.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when working on your business plan: Continue Reading

You can’t just be a writer or a photographer for a living anymore—you have to have some sort of working knowledge of many different skills, like blogging, crafting a press release, social media marketing, long-form writing, Photoshop. Every little bit helps. Especially when you are a freelancer.

I’ve written all sorts of things for clients—from keyword infused web copy to 3,000 word feature stories. I’ve shot and edited video, shot and edited photos, and more. I call myself a writer/editor, but the world might call me a multimedia journalist.

As a freelancer, your client might be looking for one specific thing—like a press release—and hire you to craft those for them. If you have a good working relationship, you can show this client your other skills, which could turn into other work. But what if you aren’t a freelancer? What if you have no background in writing at all but are a smart, capable person? The Atlantic Media Company might be looking for you. Continue Reading