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One of the amazing things with Twitter, Facebook and Google+ slowly gaining maturity is the power coming through it to build my personal brand. What I found most crucial when doing so is that I don’t waste all of my day doing this.

The best part here is that this can become very powerful for many aspects of your life. If you develop a fairly large and engaged Twitter following these are only a few of the great aspects you can leverage:

• Amplify your voice for distributing your knowledge and content
• Find new jobs and projects by interacting with like-minds in your field
• Get feedback on ideas and projects from your followers
• Have quality conversations with people interested in the same fields

Here are tips to build your personal brand on Twitter on the side, without wasting hours each day on it. In fact, I believe these things can be done within 30 minutes of effort each day.

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A freelance blogger is a jack-of-all-trades. This person has writing, design and coding skills, all used to create inspiring content. Besides, blogging requires a lot of responsibility, perseverance and diligence dealing with web media on a daily basis.

There are plenty of tools that facilitate blogging and allow freelancers to demonstrate outstanding results in all spheres: design, writing and web performance. Here is a round-up of top apps that will help freelance bloggers be more efficient, as well as create with greater effectiveness. These tools will improve how you work with the blogs you own and your clients as well.

Thinglink

Thinglink

Thinglink is a web app that makes images interactive and helps engage blog readers. As you slide your mouse over an image, Thinglink shows pop-up messages with additional information – image source, wiki, videos or related web pages. Thus, a blogger supplies images with useful hints and also boosts audience interest in blog images.

Besides, your readers can share or embed favorite images with your custom pop-ups. Thinglink works with the main blog platforms like WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, etc. All you need to do is install a plug-in or deploy a little code before the body tag and start tagging your photos. Continue Reading

As the unemployment rate in many industrialized countries continues to languish in double digits – or close to it – government policy makers are devising all sorts of programs that will put people back to work. Most, if not all of them, focus on the creation of jobs.

Now, since this is FreelanceSwitch, the j-word is something that provokes a rather strong reaction. Many of us have not had the happiest of experiences with conventional employment. And we’re not going back to the job world unless it kidnaps us. Which is unlikely to happen.

But when it comes to the world’s economic recovery, we’re anything but a sideshow. If anything, we’re a major part of the solution. To the point, we’re building a new economy.

This article takes you on a tour of three of this freelance economy’s major features. Continue Reading

Freelancers wear many hats. In fact, you might find yourself acting more like a janitor than a CEO most of the time.

In some ways, this variety can be fun … but it can also be draining and impact our freelance health. The result is that many freelancers drown in their many duties and burn the candle at both ends. In the struggle to make business work, we run ourselves down and our physical health often suffers.

The great paradox of all of this is that when your energy and physical health suffer, your work does as well. In other words: the more you work, the worse you work.

With that in mind, here are 5 easy ways to stay on top of your game, keep your energy levels high, and remain productive and healthy as a freelancer. Continue Reading

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Every other week we roundup some of the highest quality articles and resources that benefit freelancers. Today is a special edition of Linkswitch for Blog Action Day 2011. We’re taking some time out to consider this year’s topic, which is food.

Lack of access to food in some countries causes devastating famines; however, it’s the opposite end of the pendulum that many freelancer’s need to be wary of. Stress eating can devastate your health and lead to all kinds of problems. Yes these problems can negatively impact your mental energy, stamina, and the success of your freelance projects.

It’s important to learn to eat well, create long lasting healthy eating habits, while enjoying every bite. It’s also helpful to keep your budget in mind when planning your meals. The better we plan our grocery shopping, cooking, and eating habits, the more we can keep us hungry freelancers moving, without falling off balance. Let’s take a look at some helpful articles and resources that will improve your food consumption habits.

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View engaging conference lectures, interesting how to discussions, and high quality freelance advice via video here on FreelanceSwitch.

This week we look at Freelancers: How to Find Your Best Prospects by Ed Gandia. In this video he shows us how to find high quality prospects through triggering events.

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In this issue of Ask FreelanceSwitch, we look at freelancing as a programmer. Ask FreelanceSwitch is a regular column here that allows us to help beginners get a grip on freelancing. If you have a question about freelancing that you want answered, send an email to askfreelanceswitch@gmail.com.

Question 1

I have some knowledge in HTML, PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, CSS. Can I start my career in freelance programming? If yes, how can I start that?

Becoming a freelance programmer can wind up meaning a lot of things. The languages you described in your question are those that you need for web development — not the sort of languages necessary to program a web app or a piece of software that actually gets installed on someone’s computer. That’s perfectly fine, provided that web development is the path that you really want to pursue.

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Earlier this year, I wrote an article about presenting at Ignite. To recap, Ignite is an event that happens in more than 100 cities worldwide on a regular basis. Participants get up on stage in front of an audience and speak for five minutes on a topic they’re passionate about.

At Ignite, you speak to the accompaniment of a 20-slide Powerpoint that you create beforehand. But you don’t have control over the slides – one of Ignite organizers runs the projector.

Well, after doing a couple of Ignite presentations, the above no longer seemed daunting. I was looking for a bigger challenge.

I found it in the form of a chance encounter at 2^nd Saturdays Downtown, a monthly event here in Tucson, Arizona. A local group called Odyssey Storytelling brings its Story Cart to big happenings, and curious people are invited to stop and tell a tale.

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Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, chances are you’ve heard of it. You keep seeing articles about SEO, have probably even read a few of those articles, and it sure looks like everyone else is doing it.

But why should you care about SEO? Easy: SEO can bring you business.

Better yet, SEO actually makes new clients come to you, instead of you having to do a bunch of sales and marketing. And although we all have to do sales from time to time, chances are that cold-calling, follow-up, and sales calls are your least favorite things to do.

But wait, there’s more. Since SEO can bring you business, it essentially brings you money. That’s right, cash. And everyone cares about cash. I know I do. In fact, some simple SEO helped me gain $80k in sales, and it can for you too.

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Freelancers new to flying solo can be overwhelmed by the mass of marketing opportunities on the web. And while social media is a great way to promote your business, it can be enormously time consuming.

Like any marketing activity, it takes time to build up your brand, but there is no need for promotional work to distract you from your core business. With careful planning, some quality writing and a time limit on your efforts, you can soon have a strong reputation across a large network of potential clients and promoters.

Setting up an online brand can be done quickly by following these simple steps. Continue Reading

Most freelancers need to create a website at some point in their career. A website is an important aspect of any business and is something that many freelancers spend quite a lot of time working on. Unfortunately, not all of us are expert web designers. Some of us may know code really well; others may not. Today, our friends from BaseKit have come to the rescue and are giving away a free 1-Year Business Plan ($240 value) to 3 lucky readers of this website.

BaseKit is a website builder. It allows you to create professional websites from within your browser in just a few clicks. You don’t need any technical skills and there are loads of templates and widgets to get you started. Simply choose how you want your site to look, add your content and publish.

Update: Congratulations to Abraham Diez, Julia Voncannon, and Seth Hall! You have all won a free business account from BaseKit! Thanks everyone for your participation!

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