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Extra Help: How To Hire and Manage Freelancers

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Freelancers can be one of the most helpful assets for a company that wants to create awesome online content, or needs a good logo design, but doesn’t have the funds to hire a full-time employee.

Using freelancers is both cost efficient, and rewarding, for both parties involved.

Having done freelance work for multiple publications, websites, and companies in the past, and also having experience managing freelancer for FGmarket, I know a little about what freelancers want out of your company. I also know what you, as a business owner, should do in order to hire the best freelance work you can get.

Identify Your Need

The first thing to do when hiring freelance work is to identify your need for a freelancer. Do you need someone to write for your blog? Design a logo? Write copy for your website redesign? Write a press release for the local newspaper? Identifying why you need a freelancer in the first place can help you avoid complications in the future. You never know when you’re going to need a little extra help, and figuring that out beforehand, instead of right when the need arises, saves you a whole lot of stress.

Assign The Right Things To The Right People

In the same way you don’t hire a full-time employee with no design experience to a graphic design position, you can’t hire freelancers to do work that they have no prior experience doing. Figure out what your freelancers strengths are before giving them an important task. Have them send in writing/design samples, and then test the waters for a bit with them, by giving them smaller assignments.

Make Everything Clear and Understandable

Always make sure when you give an assignment to a freelancer that they know EXACTLY what you need them to do, and what you expect out of them. This makes it so there are no questions and second thoughts from the freelancer about how to complete an assignment.

Keep Expectations The Same

Your expectations for hired work shouldn’t change just because you’re working with a freelancer instead of a full-time worker. You can’t cut freelancers any slack, otherwise they might do less than you expect of them. If work is continuously turned in late to you, don’t let it keep happening. Let them know that if this pattern continues, you’ll be forced to find other help.

Check In Regularly

Just because you’ve made everything about the assignment clear, and you expect them to do the work in a timely and efficient manner doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check in on them. In my own experience, I’ll assign something maybe a month or two out, and confirm with the freelancer that they can complete the assignment for me. Then, I’ll check in a week before it’s due to make sure everything is going okay and that they don’t have any questions for me. You don’t want to check on them so often that they become annoyed with you and accuse you of micromanaging their work, but you also don’t want to not check in on them, which can lead to an assignment being turned in that’s not at all what you expected.

Care About Them Too

Freelancers just want to be loved! Seriously, I love when, as a freelancer, I am treated with respect, like I’m a real employee of their company. I also love getting feedback on my work, whether it’s good or bad. Good feedback is always encouraging to hear, but getting feedback that critiques my work is also awesome, because it lets me know that I have things I could do better, and that my client cares about me submitting only the best work.

Freelancing is a great way for your company to branch out, find new help, and get new ideas from lots of different sources. Experiment with freelancing and see how it can help you out!

Using Slack In The Office

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Slack is an online office messaging app that has been called the future of communication between employees in the work space. It has even been touted by publications like The New York Times, Bloomberg, and The Verge as the messaging app that will eventually kill off email.

So, if you’re looking for a better way to communicate with your employees, co-workers, or employers, check out these facts on Slack!

Communication Across Multiple People

Slack is a San Francisco startup that launched in August 2013. Since that time, it has amassed a total of more than 1 million active monthly users, with a company value of more than $2 billion.

It’s safe to say that Slack will continue to grow in popularity, and make its way to every company, whether a small company of less than 50 employees or a huge corporation of thousands of workers.

Slack’s main purpose is to simplify and optimize communication between employees. Rather than having countless meetings, sending countless emails, and having countless miscommunications, Slack aims to be an app that always keeps you connected with your company.

When you sign up for Slack, you’ll be able to add as many employees to the app as you want to the software. Once they’re signed up, employees can chat about projects; share files, images and documents; leave comments and suggestions on other’s projects; and even chat with each other on non-work related topics, allowing co-workers to build relationships faster, and have better communication between each other.

Channels

The main way Slack accomplishes this great connectivity is through its channels. Channels are message groups that can be divided into numerous topics, including a general company channel for announcements, specific channels for projects that teams are working on, and even a random channel for fun, stress-free communication.

Anyone can create a channel, give it a purpose, and add co-workers onto that channel. Some channels share messages and files between all employees using Slack, others only share messages with the people that have been added to those channels. So you don’t have to worry about muddling up communication in the general channel.

If you’re not looking to create an entire channel to communicate with a co-worker, Slack’s got you covered there as well. They have a direct message option, similar to Google Hangouts or Facebook Messenger, that allows instant messaging between two employees who don’t need to share a message with the entire channel.

There are even private groups to discuss projects and other business without speaking with an entire channel.

Extensive Search Capabilities

What happens when you need to look up a conversation you had with a co-worker three months ago about the new marketing plan you’re supposed to launch this month? If we’re talking about searching to find an email from three months ago where you discussed the plan, you’ree going to have a difficult time getting there (especially if you delete your emails as often as I do).

That’s where Slack’s brilliant search function comes in. Simply search for a certain keyword or name of a project, and Slack will scour its archives to show results for every time that word was used in a channel, or in one of your DMs and private groups.

You’ll never have to worry about trying to recall what was talked about in that meeting all those months ago; you’ll have instant access to it with a simple keyword search.

Sharing Files

When you share files in Slack, they appear directly in your channel stream. For example, if I need to share a blog graphic I’ve created for a new blog post (let’s say this post), all I need to do is find the channel where the blog post is being discussed and upload the file. My co-workers will instantly get a notification that I’ve uploaded a new file, and they can add comments underneath the graphic to offer suggestions if it needs editing.

Besides file sharing, you can also create text snippets — to share certain paragraphs of an important document — or you can create a long post inside of Slack, perfect for creating company wide announcements.

App Integration

What better way to get efficient and optimize work than by integrating all those other apps you use on a daily basis?

Slack offers integration for a lot of the most popular tools and software that companies use every day, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Twitter, and IFTTT.

By integrating these apps, there’s no need to ever have to exit Slack. Plus, they have a great mobile app that allows users to communicate with their team, even when they’re not at the office (don’t worry, that doesn’t mean you HAVE to use it during your vacation or on the weekends. You can mute notifications when you’d rather not be bothered).

If you’re worried about adding another expense to your company budget, don’t be! Slack is completely free to use for as many people as you want to add (although, they do offer a paid version for much larger companies looking for more features).

Slack is on its way to killing email for good, and, for some people, that’s an answered prayer they’ve been wanting for quite some time.

Using Infographics To Your Advantage

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Using Infographics To Your Advantage

Infographics are a great way to involve your customers in the information you’re trying to present. Why? Because instead of just telling people info about your company, or a long string of boring data, you’re giving them a visual representation of the facts they need to know.

Because, let’s face it, reading info can be boring, overwhelming, and time consuming. Wouldn’t it be better if there was a way to conceptualize this data in a fun graphic?

There are a lot of ways to use infographics, so check out these tips on this handy tool!

Data

One of the most common uses of infographics is to take data from your company — whether it be sales numbers, profits, or anything that has to do with numbers — and transform it into an easily understandable graphic.

It’s sometimes hard for others to understand the big picture with the numbers you’re presenting to them, especially if they’re not mathematically-minded (raises hand). So, take all that data you’ve entered into a spreadsheet, and get your graphics team to turn it into a fun graphic. It’ll make your company look more modern, and will help out your audience a ton.

Education

Infographics aren’t just for big data; they can also be used to educate and inform. For a lot of people, learning happens in different ways than just reading info in an article. There are those that learn best through visualization. In fact, there are three main ways people learn: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

In this way, infographics can be used to educate your customers about new products, what your brand is about, or goals you look to accomplish through your company.

They can also be used to educate your employees. For example, if some of your employees are visual learners rather than auditory, then explaining rules vocally will do absolutely no good. These employees need to see the information, and infographics are a great way to do that.

Brand Awareness

If you’re trying to get customers interested in your product through a marketing campaign, but don’t have the money to shell out on paid advertisements, then infographics are your best friend.

Rather than spending a ton of money paying advertising companies to promote your brand, why not just do it yourself?

Social media is a wonderful way to do this, but you have to be cautious about what you promote. Facebook is more strict than other sites, like Twitter and Instagram, so make sure your read through their terms of use before promoting your product.

But there’s no rule that says you can’t get customers interested in your product through a visually appealing infographic. Just make sure you promote it as an educational graphic, rather than an advertisement.

Don’t be afraid to use infographics to your advantage! They can be great tools to add, and are simple and fun to make!

If you’re looking for more on how infographics can help, check out this infographic made by CustomerMagnetism.com.

What is an Infographic?

Created by Customer Magnetism.

IFTTT Makes Handling Everyday Tasks Easier Than Ever

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IFTTT

Juggling all the various aspects of a business can be a daunting, and sometimes frustrating, task to take on. And it becomes even more complicated when you try to juggle all the different social accounts, apps, and tech that make up our rapidly evolving world. Wouldn’t it be so much simpler if there was an easy to use tool that connects all of the technology you use on a daily basis in one, cohesive package?

IFTTT (short for If This, Then That) is a web-based service that connects with other web-based services all of the Internet — such as your email, calendar, and social accounts — to make completing tasks simpler, and more efficient.

These tasks, or “recipes,” are created by selecting one service, such as your Gmail, and connecting it to another, such as your digital calendar. You can then run these recipes in the background of your phone or computer, and they will trigger when certain conditions in the recipe are met.

For example, a recipe that I’m quite fond of connects my Instagram and Twitter accounts. Whenever I post a picture on Instagram, the recipe will trigger, and then post my Instagram photo onto Twitter as an attachment. This bypasses the frustration of the default picture sharing option from Instagram to Twitter, where only a link to your Instagram picture is tweeted instead of the actual picture.

This is just one of hundreds of great ways to use IFTTT, and more are added every day. IFTTT even allows you to create your own recipes in their “Do” section, allowing even more options for optimizing efficiency.

Here are a few more examples of how you can use IFTTT to help your business.

  • If Square, Then Google Drive Recipe: This recipe allows you to connect your Square account to your Google Drive account. Whenever you make a transaction through Square, the details of that transaction — such as the item inventory number, price, etc. — will be automatically added to a spreadsheet in your Google Drive account for easy viewing later.

  • If Square, Then Email Recipe: With this recipe, any refund that you give to a customer will be emailed to your selected email account, so you can keep tabs of what refunds you’ve had to give. In a variation of this recipe, you can also have the refund info sent as a notification to your smartphone.

  • If New York Times, Then Email Recipe: If you like viewing the New York Times Business Section, you can use this recipe to easily grab the daily most read articles from that section automatically sent to your email in a convenient digest. This recipe can also be used for other sections of the New York Times.

  • Mute My Phone Recipe: This one is handy for avoiding any embarrassing ringing or notification sounds when at the office. It works by connecting your phone’s GPS and volume controls to recognize when you arrive at the office. It then mutes your phone, based on the location that you set as your workplace, until you leave that location.

  • If Google Calendar, Then Mute Phone Recipe: This is kind of a variation on the Mute My Phone Recipe, but instead of location, it works with your Google Calendar. You can add a meeting time to your Google Calendar, and when that time occurs, your phone will automatically mute itself to avoid interruptions during an important meeting.

  • If Instagram, Then Facebook Page Album Recipe: This recipe is useful for avoiding have to post a single photo over and over across multiple accounts. When you post a picture on Instagram, this recipe will add it to a special album on your Facebook Page.

  • If Twitter, Then Twitter List Recipe: If you need to keep up with a certain hashtag that your business uses, or want to find who’s using a hashtag collected in one location, this recipe allows you to do just that. First, you select a hashtag to track. Then, the recipe will collect the people who use that hashtag into a convenient list on Twitter.

  • If YouTube, Then Facebook Page Recipe: Another fun and useful recipe, this one uploads your YouTube videos from your channel to your Facebook Page. It saves time, plus makes it easier for you to get content out across all platforms.

And if you need ideas on recipes that can be used to help your business, IFTTT has a section of ever-growing recipe collections that you can browse. There are even collections specifically for small businesses and work!

IFTTT is very much in the infancy of its lifetime, but with more and more apps and features being added every day, it’s quickly shaping up to be a must-have web service for businesses across the country!

Marketing Tip of the Week: Proper Phone Etiquette

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Whether you’re a brand new startup just beginning to get your feet wet in the business world, or an established company with years of experience behind you, good phone etiquette can be one of the most important skills to have in order to connect with your customers. The way you or your employee speaks to customers on the phone can either make or break your business, so check out this week’s marketing tip on five ways to excel in proper phone protocol.

5minutemarketingtipoftheweek

Be Friendly In Your Greeting

Great phone conversations are all about the words you choose and the tone of voice in which your present those words, so what better way to start a conversation off right than with a friendly and informative greeting. Here’s a great formula for the perfect phone greeting: “Good morning/afternoon/evening, this is company name, I’m your name, how may I help you today?” A good greeting starts the conversation off right, and lets your customer know you’re there to serve their needs.

Speak Clearly

No one likes to speak to a mumbler one the phone. Constantly asking “What was that? Can you repeat that please, but slower?” is an instant turnoff for any customer seeking fast and easy help for a problem they have. Try to enunciate your words, and speak slow enough for anyone to understand, but not too slow, or else you’ll end up sounding like Droopy the Dog.

Listen, With No Distractions

Attentiveness to your customers’ needs is a must in a situation where their voice is the only thing you have to pay attention to. In our current world, with smartphones, emails, and Facebook taking up all of our free time, it’s important to put down the distractions and pay close attention to the most important element of your business: the customer. The customer can tell when you’re not paying attention to them.

Try To Be As Helpful As Possible

Let’s face it, your customers are going to ask questions, and sometimes, they’re going to be hard questions. That’s why they called you in the first place. So the best strategy is to try to answer whatever problems they may have with a sincere attitude. And even if you can’t immediately answer their inquiry, let them know that you are going to try to meet whatever needs they have, or at least find someone who can help them.

End It On A High Note

No, I’m not talking about opera here. I mean end the conversation the same way you began it: with a friendly goodbye and a thank you. Customers will love to hear you say, “Thanks so much for calling us. It was a pleasure serving you. Have a good day!” instead of “Okay, bye.” Remember, these are the last words the customer will hear, so make them count. It’s all about a positive attitude.

Marketing Tip of the Week: Don’t Forget To Look Up

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Unless the name of your business is Wal-Mart, there are probably other companies in your market with higher annual sales. And that’s a good thing! After all, when it comes to marketing techniques and strategies, there’s nothing better than using one that’s already proven itself successful!

Learn From the Leaders

Those businesses that lead the way in your industry are there because they’ve already perfected the marketing techniques required to make money and pique the interest of customers. That makes them perfect models for you. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. You should be able to make a few small tweaks and simply adapt their plan to your own business.

Never be afraid to learn all you can from the leaders.

Identifying Your Models

But what makes a particular businesses marketing model viable for your business? The key is to look for similarities, not just in products you carry but also in markets you’re targeting.

For example: Wal-Mart is a large company that sells a variety of items. You are probably a bit more specific in the products that you carry, so their general marketing plan may not be the best model for your business. Even so, they have departments that most likely coincide with your own business, and seeing how they choose to use signage and marketing materials for those departments can be applied to your model.

You’re going to have to do more than a simple copy and paste, but using your industry leaders as marketing models is always a great idea!

Marketing Tip of the Week: Keep It Positive

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When creating marketing content, you want to leave your customer with a good impression of you and your business. After all, a customer who respects the business is a customer ready to buy from that business.

You may believe achieving that result will take some special writing wizadry, but in actuality it’s a simple effect to achieve. Just maintain a positive tone!

The Power of Positive

Customers tend to be more receptive to positive content. Successful content marketers will tell you that negative images, even if directed at the competition, can still cause an association in the customer’s mind with your business. Conversely, positive images also form an association with your business.

That’s why a funny .gif or video is never remiss on your Facebook page or blog. It may not be talking about your company, but the positive feelings it generates will still be associated with your business.

But what about your writing? How do you write content that shows all the ways your business is better than the one down the street without making an explicit comparison?

Keep The Focus On What You Do Well

Write about all the things that you do well. For example: a local florist knows that big online flower stores require customers choose from a set of preselected floral arrangements. But rather than call out the impersonal nature of such a selection, she can comment on how her services allow for personalized customization.

By showing that she can make arrangements which speak directly to the customer’s need or the intended recipient’s tastes, she has effectively set herself apart from the online store without appearing to say anything negative about them in the process.

Staying positive isn’t hard. It just takes a little thought organization. Just remember that for everything negative you want to convey about your competition, it can better be said by focusing on something positive about yourself!

Marketing Tip of the Week: Keep Your Audience On The Hook

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Valuable content marketing isn’t just about getting a customer to view one article or social media post. Single views might be great for whatever you’re promoting at that moment, but to build a successful business, you’ll need to keep those viewers coming back for more!

Setting The Hook

The secret to repeat views is setting the hook. That means never giving all the information in one post. The customer must always be left wanting more so they’ll return to get even more information. This can be accomplished most easily by placing a sentence or paragraph advertising your next post at the bottom of each new one. It may require some thinking ahead as you have to plan each article in advance, but it’s sure to keep your viewers thirsty for more!

For social media, teasers are definitely the way to go. Give your viewers a small tidbit of information, and then include a link that takes them to a larger post with even more information. If you place a teaser at the bottom of that piece, you can keep them coming back again and again!

Reeling Them In

Once you’ve given your viewers a reason to come back, you need to continue feeding them quality information. Hooks are great, but if you aren’t giving them value for their time, customers will find somewhere else to go for the knowledge they need. As a business owner, you are a specialist. Present your advice from that angle, and you’re sure to build even more repeat business!

Building and keeping an audience isn’t as hard as it sounds. It merely involves providing quality information and presenting it so that your viewer always has a reason to come back!

Have any tips of your own? Leave them in the comments below, and don’t forget to come back next week for another great marketing tip!

Marketing Tip of the Week: Beating those Post-Holiday Blues

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Small businesses normally carry the chorus of the post-holiday blues. Sure big box stores may sing a verse or two as their sales dip, but they have high-paid marketers whose sole job is to make that dip as slight as possible. But how do small businesses ease their own blues burden?

It’s Okay To Borrow

All great blues singers borrow what works from the greats who’ve gone before, and you can do the same. First, you need to look at the big boys who have a business model similar to your own. What are they doing to keep sales going during the seasonal dip? Are they running a sale to get rid of excess holiday material? Are they focusing on the after-Christmas shoppers, advertising deals for the super thrifty? Maybe they are targeting customers who’ve received an early tax return.

Whatever their method, feel free to borrow from it heavily!

Personalize Your Story

So you’ve found a great tune from a successful business you can emulate. That’s great, but you don’t want to follow it note for note. First you’ll need to personalize the lyrics, and add a few notes of your own to truly make their tune your tune.

It doesn’t require an entire revamp, nor should you try to do one. They’ve done the legwork for you, just riff off their idea and change what’s necessary to make it fit your business.

Don’t settle for the blues this January. Use your resources and let the good times roll!

Marketing Tip of the Week: Inject Some Humanity

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If there’s one universal truth, it’s that customers prefer to do business with people over nameless, faceless brands. Not that having a brand is bad. It’s actually quite beneficial, but the secret is in having a brand that evokes a personality. So what’s the best way to humanize your brand? Through your marketing, of course!

Involve Your Team

You probably don’t run your store alone, so why should you be the only one featured in your marketing? Do you have an employee or two that likes to write? Give them a go at a blog post to change up the voice a bit. Also, post photos of you and your team online so customers have faces to go with the brand name.

Even better would be to put up some candid shots of your team working behind the scenes. Let customers see the work they (and you) do so they can garner a greater respect for the effort you and your team put in!

Lighten Up

Not every post you make has to be filled with importance and gravitas. Feel free to lighten the mood now and again with the odd joke. You don’t want every post to be a laugh riot, but just like a first date, tossing in one now and again will help to break the ice.

And don’t be afraid to ask questions of your own. Use your customer engagement to get info you might not be able to find any other way.

Your online profile needs to be as personable and interesting as your in-store personality. Don’t drown your customers in branding, show them that there are people behind the curtain!