Social media, social media, social media. It is everywhere and becoming more and more integrated into our lives, the websites we visit, and how we conduct business. For some freelancers, including students, the use of social media can even assist in landing jobs or help them when they are stuck. So what are some of the common things you should know and learn about using social media as a student freelancer?
Most engineers have a profound dislike for the subjective, and I was no exception. In school, presentations often felt like a popularity contest no matter how unbiased the professors claimed to be. In the freelance world though, every meeting with a client is a mini-presentation and your audience is even more influenced by his/her emotions. To get the best contracts at the best rates, we have take a deep breath and embrace the subjective.
The following post is a guest post by Amanda Hackwith, author of "Freelance Confidential." See the end of the post for author and book details John Lasseter, director and chief creative officer at Pixar, summed it up beautifully: “In any creative industry, quality is the sole business plan that prevails in the long run.” The quality of your current and former work is what will turn new and returning clients into a reliable stream of work and success. Portfolios are vital for student freelancers—if clients are skeptical about working with you for any reason, you have to quickly and easily impress them with your collection of work.
Being a student freelancer provides a great amount of flexibility and freedom, which are some major pulling points for those starting their freelancing careers. However, being a student and being a freelancer brings about some serious security issues that no student freelancer should forget. Without scaring away any student freelancer, this article is meant to be one of awareness and one to help you protect you as you are dealing with clients.
Yes, you heard that right. Indeed, there are lessons about freelancing that can be learned from today’s rap and hip hop music. Even if you don’t listen to it all the time, or even some of the time, that doesn’t mean that the music doesn’t have something in it for you as you start your freelancing endeavors as a student.
This isn’t like every other meeting. So this isn’t like every other article. Student freelancers inherently have special issues they face when they meet with a client that maybe other freelancers don’t run into as much or at all. There is no doubt about it: you have to be on your A game. And not just any old A game, you’re A+ game (pun intended). But with that, there are certain do’s and don’ts that are absolutely critical when you meet with your client for the very first time, including working through the issue of being a student.
If you have read any books, articles, etc. that talk about starting your freelance career, then you have noticed that they almost always say you need to find a niche and not be a jack-of-all-trades freelancer. That is great and all for a starting freelancer who is moving away from the cubicle world, but what about students that don’t quite know what they are best at, what the demand for certain services is, and don’t have enough experience to know? The truth is student freelancers should stay as broad as possible when they start out, then work on narrowing down their services based on their experience.
Not only am I a graphic design student, I am also a business student. And as you can imagine, I have to read a lot about business. Over the last semester, one phrase kept cropping up time and time again: sustainable competitive advantage. Sounds like it is important. The more I seen that phrase appear, the more my understanding of it began to solidify. So with anything I read, I always try to relate it to freelancing to see what can be learned. This time, I think something very valuable can be learned from that phrase.
As a starting freelancer, you probably want to have everything you have ever done in your portfolio to show to clients. Even though you may think this will benefit you in that it will help you gain clients in just about anything you have been able to do, this just isn’t the case. I am going to explain why you should focus your portfolio toward work that you want to get as a freelancer, not work you have already done, and provide a few tips that will help you shape up your portfolio.
One trend I see when it comes to student freelancers is the lack of “realness” to their freelancing. I can’t seem to put my finger on the reason either. Maybe it is because they don’t consider their freelancing a real business. Maybe it is because they aren’t at a real office doing the work. Or maybe they don’t consider themselves real freelancers. Whatever the reason(s) may be, not getting “real” when it comes to your freelancing can cause you some severe growing pains.
