Do you sign up for stuff online?

November 8, 2008 · Filed Under emarketing · Comments 

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The online world gives you an amazing opportunity to learn, and even more opportunity to get bombarded with all kinds if rubbish.

Giving out your email address whether for actually buying something, or signing up for a newsletter or mini-course is something that requires some thought. Many people are using different email addresses for different online functions. One for shopping, one for general sign ups and one as a throwaway address for getting one time access for something.

I have 2 questions for you.

Firstly, what do you sign up for online (and why??). The golden rule is that if you give someone your email address (this is usually what is given when you sign up for a newsletter / course / access to a white paper), you expect value / information / benefit in return. You also expect respect. You don’t want to be bombarded with rubbish, and there is that mutual understanding that if you do start getting irrelevant, uninteresting and useless communication, you are one click away from saying, goodbye and unsubscribing, or even worse, clicking that spam button.

Personally, I sign up for content that is going to increase my online marketing knowledge or provide me with access to something I am interested in. So, what about you?? What do you do?

The second question is around the sign up mechanism. This is something that has recently cropped up with client, and also got me thinking with this site here >> please have a look. I really like the way he has done this (you won’t know what I’m talking about unless you have a look!). It’s different, captures your attention and engages. I’ve tried to do this here on one of my sites, and used something called a hover box. This can be very irritating to some people but has been shown to give some excellent increases in sign up rates.

I’m interested to know whether innovative sign up mechanisms work for you or you prefer something fairly simple and not too pushy? I would be very grateful for some feedback here as I will be be able to use it in the near future. So, if you are reading this post, reading this blog, and usually don’t comment. STOP. Please take a couple of minutes and make your first comment now! Thanks! :-)

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite PicLens

Tags: , , ,

Starting Freelancing - learnings and challenges

May 2, 2008 · Filed Under Business · Comments 

As most of you know, I started freelancing late last year as a Marketing Consultant, and also started my own photography business. It’s been 6 months now, which seem to have gone by in an instant, and I have learnt a huge amount. Learning can be fun, but you tend to learn the biggest and most important things the hard way.

Going from the corporate world to the freelance world has some huge benefits as I am sure you can imagine, but it does present many new, and different challenges. I’ve been thinking about this post for a while, and I hope I can pass on some of my top tips and also the things to watch out for, as well as the challenges.

Top Tips

  1. Have a very, very clear idea what you are going to do and what you are going to offer your clients. For me, with theappleofmyi, I help all sizes of businesses with their marketing to improve their results, focusing specifically with online marketing, customer engagement and leveraging their web-presence.
  2. Have a good name for your company and make sure you own the domain - it needs to be easily typed and also memorable.
  3. Own your own name online, for example, www.jonnymoss.com
  4. Embrace social media, so people can find you easily, and you can tell people about what you do. For example, my Linkedin profile here.
  5. Spend some money on getting a good brand identity - believe me, there is no excuse to look shoddy and unprofessional. Make sure your identity is consistent across all your materials.
  6. Get a website up immediately telling the world what you do - I need a right good slap for this one, as mine is still in development (my fault to be honest), but not far off. However, I have had this blog running for over 2 years which has provided somewhere for people to read about me and what I do.
  7. Use your friends - word of mouth is the BEST form of advertising - people trust the opinions of friends and this form of advertising is free!
  8. Always have your business cards handy, and make sure they are of good quality. Don’t be caught out without one (I did, and it was not pretty).
  9. Plan your expenses and make sure you have some money in reserve to cover the vital bills and mortgage. I would really watch out with spending on things that you don’t need.
  10. Make sure you are using a Mac - you will save time and money in the long run!
  11. Make sure you backup any client work - burn DVDs of client’s work, store it online and if you want to be really careful, dump files to an external hard drive and give it to a friend to look after - you can get it back and add files when you want.
  12. Use every means possible to get people to check out your website - url car stickers, Google ads, blogging, sending out press releases, and get a decent e newsletter set up, where you can give tips and help.
  13. Above all, underpromise and over deliver.

Challenges

  1. Making sure you meet your client’s expectations - be very, very clear what you are going to do for them.
  2. Make sure you get clients to sign off on stages of work - you will then both be on the same page and have no reason for confusion.
  3. Keeping to deadlines - get things in writing, when things are going to be done, even when working with people you know well
  4. Working at home - you will likely be working from home and a HUGE challenge is being able to focus on your work, and not on all the small household chores which always need doing. I am hoping to have a garden office at some point, but this is a long way off!
  5. Finding new clients - make sure you have lots of ideas to get your name in front of people who may be in need of your services. I have a wealth of ideas ready to go, but I need my website up and running first!
  6. Keeping track of all the info and communication you get from clients and also possible new clients. If you want something simple, that works, try 37 Signals’ online offerings, Highrise, for contact management and also Basecamp (project management). They are superb, great value and the feedback I have had for Basecamp from clients, has been really good. They love having everything to do with the project online, in one place and available at all times.

I hope this post will be of use to anyone who is starting out on their own. The rewards are huge, but there are also many new challenges to overcome. I am sure I have left off quite a few things I had planned to write about, so I will be writing some more posts in the future - there is still a lot for me to learn!

Tags: , , , , , ,