Have you heard about the trend of standing room only meetings? Instead of having a team sit around a conference table, they’re made to stand up for short meetings instead.

The trend is becoming prevalent in tech companies, and is meant to eliminate long, boring meetings where no one pays attention. Some companies have even instituted a penalty for being late to a meeting—either through sheer humiliation or a small fee.

If someone is rambling on for too long, an employee may hold up a rubber rat indicating it is time to move on. Companies make exceptions to their no-sitting rules if a worker is sick, injured or pregnant—but usually not for workers outside the office telecommuting on Skype. —wsj.com

The trend is fueled by an approach to software development called “Agile”, which calls for compressing development projects into short pieces. It also includes daily stand-up meetings where everyone can update everyone else with what they are currently working on and any obstacles that stand in their way.

I think it’s brilliant! I immediately started wondering how I could incorporate this way of thinking into my freelance life. I took a look at the Agile Manifesto and sought to translate it into something freelancers could use. Here’s my attempt: Continue Reading

Valentine’s Day is probably not a holiday that brings your fellow freelancers to mind.

You may have made a point to recognize your clients during the December holiday season, so why not make February the time to applaud your fellow independents?

Spreading good karma always pays off in some manner, whether it be a new contact, lead, or networking opportunity. Here are some ways to get started. Continue Reading

Reporters at The Washington Post are now actively engaging their readers by posting comments in streams on the paper’s news stories online, something they’ve never done in the past. The paper switched to a new website platform called Echo, which has helped them grow their online community. Reader comments at the paper have shot up 142% since March, 2011.

This is new territory for many journalists. Never before have they been urged to take part in the conversations the public is having online about their stories. This type of involvement helps reporters fend off rumors, speculation, and flame wars, according to this article published on the Nieman Journalism Lab website. It also allows reporters to share more information, as well as prove that they, too, are real people.

For freelancers, this new trend at one of America’s largest newspapers just goes to show how important it is to engage with your community.

Show You Care

I try to comment on the blog posts I write for FreelanceSwitch—especially the posts that have gotten a lot of action from the readers. I really do appreciate the time people take to share their thoughts and opinions on my blog posts. Comments help me gauge a posts’ success and help me decide what to write about in the future. The best way for me to show the readers that I am paying attention, is to tell them so. Continue Reading

Chris Brogan is the author of the new book, Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything.

As a Google+ skeptic (heck, I’m skeptical of all new social media) I was interested to learn more, so I sat down and watched this video where Michael Stelzner of Socialmediaexaminer.com interviewed Brogan about how Google+ can help small businesses.

As a freelancer, you are running a small business—a very small business that probably includes just you. And you should think of yourself as a small business when it comes to representing yourself both online and in the real world. If you are thinking about creating a page on Google+, you might want to watch the video for yourself (or check out Chris Brogan’s book)—here are some snippets and take-aways from Brogan’s interview:

“Most small businesses are approaching [Google+] thinking, ‘I just figured out Facebook, why are you doing this to me?’ First off, no one is doing this to you. Sorry, technology is always adapting, you have to adapt with it. We all don’t still have car phones, we have mobile phones, it’s the same thing.” —Chris Brogan

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Did you happen to see the Google logo on the search engine’s homepage yesterday? If not, here’s what it looked like:

Did you try to look something up on Wikipedia only to see a black screen? You can thank SOPA for both of those blackouts.

SOPA, which stands for Stop Online Piracy Act, is an anti-piracy bill that is working its way through congress. It was introduced into the House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, and, if made into a law, would allow U.S. law enforcement, as well as intellectual property holders, to sue foreign websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Think about how the Chinese government can order blocks on websites…that could be the right of the U.S. government if SOPA passes. Continue Reading

The magazine I run is holding a contest, and we’ve been working hard with our PR consultant on creating the best press releases possible to advertise our event. It’s not as easy as one might think to craft a good press release—even if you are a professional writer. I found this blog post on 5 Tips on Writing a Good Press Release really helpful—and I thought I’d share it with you.

Do Your Research Before You Pitch

I get press releases all the time that make me wonder if the person who sent it to me had even picked up a copy of the magazine I work for. We are a regional publication that has strict guidelines on what we publish. And we publish the same columns and categories each month. National news or news outside of our coverage area does not interest me, or our readers.

Yet I constantly get emails and phone calls from PR people pushing their agenda on me, the editor of a publication that would never consider publishing their news. They are not only wasting my time, they are wasting their time. And, if they are charging their clients, they are wasting their client’s money.

Make sure you do research on the magazines, newspapers, TV stations, whoever you are pitching your press release to before you pick up the phone and call. There is no reason to pitch the opening of a new Los Angeles-based restaurant to a home improvement magazine who caters to people living in Boston, Massachusetts. Continue Reading

I’m a writer. I like words. I also hate words. What people say in daily conversation rarely makes sense on paper. Using acronyms and emoticons are infuriating—especially to an editor.

Here’s an example: I teach undergraduate journalism courses at a couple of universities in the area. I once had a student hand write me a note and used a colon and parentheses to create a smiley face at the end of her letter. How did shorthand typing evolve into writing?

Another pet peeve of mine is when I get emails (usually from college students looking for an internship) using strange shorthand and emoticons. Talk about unprofessional!

I recently wrote a post listing words that should be banned in 2012. I’ve found en even better list on PR Daily by Arik Hanson on 28 shorthand words to eliminate from our lexicon forever. I had to share—and add my own two cents of course!

“29 terms we obvi need to totes elims from our lexi forevs.”

Did you understand that? Don’t worry, you’re not alone.

I know we’re turning into a texting culture full of shortened and unintelligible words. But we’re destroying our language. At some point, we need to draw a line in the sand. Today’s the day. —PR Daily

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I’m fairly new to the whole LinkedIn thing. I’m on it, but I haven’t really been using it to my advantage. I get updates from my Alma Mater’s LinkedIn page each week, but I usually throw that email right in the trash. Is LinkedIn just another social network I have to pay attention to? I decided to take a closer look.

Recently I have been logging in more to my LinkedIn page. Some of the most interesting articles I write about for this blog I have found through LinkedIn. And this article, about connecting on LinkedIn, I found…wait for it…on Linkedin.com! Here are some tips from that article to consider before connecting on LinkedIn…

Connect Wisely

Like any new thing I try, I like to follow the rules—or at least try to figure out what they are. Seems the rules for connecting on LinkedIn are a lot like the rules for connecting on Facebook—only connect with people you actually know. Many people who use LinkedIn to broaden their professional network are connecting to people they have never talked to. Why? Continue Reading

I really like the 60-Second Solutions videos on Entrepreneur.com. I thought that the recent video by communications coach Carmine Gallo on creating a 60 second strategy to tell your story was especially useful.

Sometimes it’s hard to explain to people what it is you really do. Many people hear the word ‘freelancer’ and don’t quite understand what it means, other than you probably work from home in your pajamas.

Gallo suggests you come up with one sentence answers to the following four questions to keep your “What I Do” story to 60 seconds.

What do you do?

Are you a graphic designer? A freelancer writer or photographer? Do you have a niche or topic (like small business, agriculture, health) that you concentrate on? Turn this into one sentence. Example: I am a freelance blogger and I write about small business financing for several online magazines. Continue Reading

Note: A few times a month we revisit some of our reader’s favorite posts from throughout the history of FreelanceSwitch. This article by Martha was first published April 12th, 2009, yet is just as relevant and full of useful information today.

A few years ago, articles of this sort were all about building one’s mailing list.

And we in the design field knew the drill quite well. We’d create a list of likely prospects, design something cool to send out, and then wait for the phone to ring. Sometimes it rang, sometimes it didn’t.

A-a-a-ah, the olden days.

Back then, those spinning business card files bearing the Rolodex brand were like gold. If you are of a certain age, you may remember that strict “Don’t Take the Rolodex with You” policy if you decided to leave Company X.

While you were at Company X, the cards in your Rolodex spent a great deal of time on your desk, waiting for you to give them a spin. Occasionally, they had to be spun into a mailing list, and you may be curious as to how that would happen.

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Is it just me or does it seem like everyone is rolling out new technology this time of year? Facebook has its Timeline, Twitter has a new interface, YouTube has bought a company to help license music, and LinkedIn has partnered with Cvlynk to simplify and accelerate profile sharing.

And we can’t forget Google+ Pages for businesses—one of the more talked about changes for one of the world’s most talked about businesses.

When Google+ was originally launched, it didn’t offer business pages, and people were hesitant to join. What could Google+ do that their Facebook business page couldn’t?

John Haydon, founder of Inbound Zombie, a social media strategy firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, offers these differences in his story for The Huffington Post.

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Credit: Primastock on Photodune

Telling a client that he is, in fact, wrong can be the hardest thing you ever have to do in your freelance career. It’s not something that we generally consider to be a healthy step: it can lose you a client pretty quickly if not handled properly.

Even if a client accepts that he is incorrect about something, it may still be harder to work with him in the long run.

Here are a few options for telling a client that he’s wrong, with a little more grace.

• “X has been updated recently.” Especially when working with anything the least bit technical, I’ve found that clients lock on to concepts that may have been possible with past technology but aren’t handled the same way now. A good turn of phrase is to point to a recent update, rather than trying to tell a client he’s wrong.

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