Once you have found a few potential clients, reach out to them and send them a writing sample or proposal. If they are interested in working with you, they will likely provide you with more information about the project and what they are looking for. Once you have completed the project, be sure to ask for feedback so that you can improve your writing in the future.

How to create a portfolio that will impress potential clients

When creating a portfolio to impress potential clients, there are a few key things to keep in mind. First, make sure that your portfolio is well-organized and easy to navigate. Your potential clients should be able to quickly find the information they are looking for.

Secondly, make sure that your portfolio is visually appealing. Choose high-quality images and design elements that will catch the eye. And lastly, make sure to showcase your best work. Choose your strongest projects and highlight them in your portfolio.

If you follow these tips, you can create a portfolio that will impress any potential client.

How to charge more for your services (and why you should)

In order to charge more for your services, you need to be able to justify the increased price. Here are a few reasons why you should charge more:

1. You are providing a higher quality service. If you are able to deliver a higher quality service, then you should be able to charge more for it. This is because the customer is getting more value for their money.
2. You are offering a unique service. If you are the only person who offers a certain service, then you can charge more for it. This is because there is a limited supply, and customers will be willing to pay more for it.
3. You have more experience than your competitors. If you have more experience than your competitors, then you should be able to charge more for your services. This is because customers will see you as being more qualified and trustworthy.
4. You are offering a package deal. If you are able to offer a package deal, then you should be able to charge more for it. This is because the customer is getting more than one service for their money.
5. You are providing a premium service. If you are offering a premium service, then you should be able to charge more for it. This is because the customer is getting a higher level of service.

If you are able to justify charging more for your services, then you should do so. This is because you will be able to make more money, and provide a better service to your customers.

The Top 10 Mistakes Freelance Writers Make

1. Not charging enough for their services
2. Not having a clear, concise pricing structure
3. Accepting too many projects at once
4. Not setting boundaries with clients
5. Not keeping track of their expenses
6. Not taking the time to market themselves
7. Not diversifying their client base
8. Relying too heavily on one income stream
9. Not being organized
10. Not taking care of their health and wellbeing

If you’re a freelance writer, avoid making these mistakes in order to be successful!

1. Not charging enough for their services- If you don’t charge enough for your services, you’ll end up working more hours for less pay. Be sure to charge what you’re worth and don’t be afraid to negotiate prices with clients.

2. Not having a clear, concise pricing structure- Having a clear and concise pricing structure is essential for any freelance writer. Make sure you know how much you’re going to charge per project and per hour, so there are no surprises down the line.

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• Mistake #1: Entrepreneurs often think that a personal brand is only about show business stars, athletes, politicians and tabloid heroes.
• Mistake #2: People think the brand is what you say about yourself, what your favorite channel broadcasts, how you are colorfully portrayed by the media.
• Mistake #3: Many people think you need personal promotion to pad your ego, get thousands of likes to your breakfast post and tell the rest of us, “Look, I’m cool, but you’re not.”

What do we think about that?

A personal brand is not what you say about yourself. It’s what and how others think of you.

You need to form and promote a personal brand in order to form a strong connection between yourself, your business, and your activities. If you go deeper into philosophy and good messages, it’s more about mission, values, goals and a beautiful future (on Mars!). But back to the more pragmatic and beneficial aspects.

The post Personal brand: what it is, who needs it and why appeared first on Aesop.

Goals and strategy for personal promotion

Set clear and measurable goals that will clearly show that your personal brand is working, that you’re moving in the right direction.

Bad goals:

• I will be popular in small circles;
• I will be recognized at conferences;
• I’ll have a lot of followers on Instagram.

Normal goals:

• Increase my Facebook followers to 2,500 and my Instagram followers to 20,000;
• Get at least 10 referrals per month for a consultation or product through personal channels: social media, blogging, speaking engagements.

When you have clear goals, you need to make a clear and step-by-step strategy on how to reach these goals. You can use MindMap, a regular notebook, a task manager.

Nerd: Break down your goals into sections with clear indicators to keep track of whether you are doing everything right.

Communication and messaging.

You need a clear and understandable message in your communications: what and how you want to get across to your audience, what to share, what to accomplish, how to connect with your own goals.

Decide on these points:

• What you will be communicating about and what values you will be broadcasting – for example, about your company, the inner kitchen and how the corporate culture helps you stand out with an emphasis on the “company is about people” value.
• How personal your communication will be – will you cover certain aspects about family, hobbies, weaknesses.
• What channels will you use to communicate with the world and showcase your personal brand – write to the media, blog, speak at conferences, publish blog posts, arrange themed meetings, etc. It’s better to choose 3-5 channels rather than spreading yourself out over 5-10.

Planning

Without a comprehensive system, a content plan, and clear deadlines, the whole personal brand story can be over in 1-2 months.

Form a big plan for all the work you do to promote your personal brand: when and where to speak, where and what to write, what media to knock on, what to record a video about and when.
Create a unified content plan for your social media and blog posts, and try to maintain a balance between the directions and messages.
To keep a balance in your publications (business, personal, social, interesting, etc.), think about the headings/themes of your content.

Packaging

You’re about to start actively promoting your brand, but this is not a case where the first, second and tenth pancake can be a cakewalk. You need a bright and right start here, because the wrong impression and image will be hard to fix.

Get all your outfits together, find the best prom photo, and you can conquer the world. Joke. Let’s go in order:

Check the relevance and adequacy of all the information about you online – old profile on Social, random registration in the Japanese beer-loving community, etc.
Clean up/correct anything that might say negatively about your image, the vibrant brand you already so clearly represent.
Do a quality, studio photo shoot that fits the image, the value, the image, the style.

Note: a professional photo shoot is not always about a strict, business suit and pencil skirt. If you’re organizing youth events or teaching young children how to oil paint, chances are you’ll be presented differently by people. Try to be as natural and smiling as possible – it’s appealing.

Put in all social networks, messengers, mail 1 photo. Use exactly this successful portrait during publications in the media, at friends in blogs. So your avatar will start to be recognized, read, easily highlighted in the news feed.
Design all additional elements of your external image and communications (email signatures, business cards, etc.).

Implement

The most interesting part. Many people start with this stage, then something goes wrong, and it turns out you should have done some good prep work. But you’re already prepared, so you can move on to action.

Types of activity

Departing from the strategy, understand what areas and types of activity are priority, effective, available. One specialist for a personal brand is better suited to live performances, another – live broadcasts (because the geography is wider), a third – the articles in the media and personal blog.

Content, good and different

You prepare a high-quality, author’s content, which helps to achieve the goals, hits the target audience and suits the format of the site. Media articles, blog posts, live broadcasts, videos. We’ll deal with all this in the next section, but get ready now – you need content, you can’t do without communication.

The post Promoting your personal brand: a step-by-step algorithm appeared first on Aesop.

• Nuance #1: not everywhere is your target audience.
• Nuance #2: not all types of content work the same everywhere.
• Nuance #3: creating content is long, expensive and challenging.

That’s why you need to choose the most promising ones that are close to you, your audience, your goal. It is better to first use 2-3 main channels and experiment gradually with others. Below we show what types of content you can use to promote your personal brand.
Content types for personal brand promotion – infographic

What platforms to choose to promote your personal brand

Everything rests on the specifics of your sphere and audience. We will only give some recommendations that you need to consider when choosing.

Social networks and messengers

The obvious leader for video is YouTube, but live streaming works great on Facebook and Instagram as well.
Instagram is about visual content, quality photos and videos. If your business, activities are dense with visuals or you produce colorful goods (clothing, accessories, handmade), Instagram is a great fit.
LinkedIn is considered a strictly professional, working social network, more popular abroad. If you need to “get your hooks into” new markets, start being active there.
Messengers are trending right now, especially author channels in Telegram.
In terms of visual content, very few people use Pinterest, which can be a source of additional visits to a personal website.

Websites, blogs.

You can start a blog on an already promoted site or within a service: Medium, Zen, etc.
A personal, unique site is the best option, but it must be updated. For example, business card site + personal blog, event announcements.
Blogs of colleagues, partners and corporate blogs in your subject – you can publish in them. The main thing is to keep your name and photo in the material. So you do not spend time and money on the promotion of your resource, and you get ready-made audience.

MEDIA

You can publish in the media not only after the Nobel Prize or Oscar – it’s enough to knock with an interesting proposal on the topic in which the publication works.
It is better to first build up a loyal audience in social networks, a personal blog, so that you too will be of interest to the media in terms of traffic, so that you yourself can bring users to the publication’s website.
You can use services and social networks to communicate between experts and journalists. They work on a simple principle. A journalist writes an article on the topic and makes an inquiry. Various experts share their opinions/processes. The journalist selects pieces of valuable information and publishes them in the article and signs them “Commentary by Masha Freud, subject matter expert from the company XXX”.

Ideally, you could have a bundle like this:

• A personal website with a blog.
• 2-3 major social media accounts.
• Periodic publications in the media and on specialized sites.
• Live speeches at conferences, forums or own events.

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Personal branding is the image that emerges about you in the professional community. And behind this image can be anything: belonging to a certain company, having skills and abilities, strong personal qualities. Firstly, a personal brand consists of reputation, this is the basis. Secondly, it is important coverage. That is, it is important that you are talked about well and often. According to statistics, the most willing to invest in building a personal brand are employees in the financial sector (86%), science and pharmaceuticals (84%), business services (82%) and retail (81%).

In the U.S. business context, the term personal brand has been actively used in a practical sense for a long time, and more specifically since 1997, when the concept was first used by journalist Tom Peters for his Fast Company article. Since then, the U.S. business market has actively “supplied” personal brands – Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Donald and Ivanka Trump, Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson – any successful professional in his field, who competently managed to develop and sell his image.

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Some tips for creating a personal brand:

Create quality content. Don’t let your reputation be unsubstantiated.
Make sure Google and Facebook know you from the right perspective. It’s about reputation: It needs to be crystal clear.
Don’t forget about self-development – invest in education, upgrade your skills, broaden your horizons, make new friends. Even sports or a fascinating hobby will help your creative thinking, and therefore – set you apart from other professionals.
Understand your value. No matter what your job, no matter what responsibilities you have at the moment, your personal brand should already be built today so that when you reach your most cherished goals, you won’t have to work to change it.

And one more piece of advice from the professionals. Don’t put off building your personal brand for later. Putting maximum effort into it is worth it, starting from the most basic positions, whether it’s a secretary or an assistant to the department. Remember: personal brand is your face, your reputation. Thinking about being the head of a department or a company at the beginning of your career is almost the same as dreaming. But without far-reaching plans and without a strong personal brand, it is impossible to become an in-demand professional. This means that you need to start today!

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