Onward and upward

I am proud to unveil my new company logo for Movick Marketing!

The fabulous artist behind this vibrant logo and color palette is Jenny Ness Decker of JennyNess Designs. (Explore Jenny's beautiful work online at http://jennyness.wordpress.com/design-portfolio/.) Jenny is about to launch her own freelance business (stay tuned for an announcement and link to her new website). As part of our barter arrangement, I am helping her polish up her resume, web content, and marketing strategy.

This is part of a multistep process toward growing and marketing my freelance writing business to a new audience.

Step 1: create a blog (done)
Step 2: post resume and portfolio online (done)
Step 3: design/print business cards (almost done)
Step 4: create a website (next up, this month!)
Step 5: launch/announce new web presence (by end of May)
Step 6: go viral... create business profile on Facebook and join LinkedIn (by mid-June)

Progress!

To tweet or not to tweet

That seems to be the question in the freelance community right now. To become a regular user of the ubiquitous Twitter, announcing my actions in short little quips to a legion of followers (yes, a legion), I think I should have something interesting to say.

If Twitter is to be used as a marketing tool, there should be obvious value for me and my audience. At the moment, all I'm hearing about Twitter seems to be just a bunch of noise.

I do update my status on Facebook regularly, but I try to say something either funny or interesting about what I'm doing. And at least I know my audience on FB--people I've personally approved to see my profile and read my updates. Twitter opens up that audience to just about anyone online.

I don't think I'm ready for the world to know everything I do, right when I do it. That just doesn't seem like a smart move. Yet.

Decision time

My barter arrangement--logo design/color palette for web marketing writing--is in full swing, now that I've received the first draft of logo designs. There are many more to choose from than I was expecting, and the different styles and colors are tantalizing. I want to choose wisely, so I will take my time and maybe even poll (anonymously of course) some fellow freelancers to get some other opinions on what speaks to my audience. Stay tuned... The winning logo will appear on this blog!

Vanity press to the max

Saw this article, "6 Ways to Publish Your Own Book," and thought maybe one of these sites could prove useful:

http://mashable.com/2009/03/01/publish-book/

Keeping clients honest

Here's a dilemma: what does one do with the client who can't keep track of its own deadlines?

In the past, when I've attempted to cover my behind by pointing out that the client hasn't provided the necessary materials in order for me to meet the original deadline, this information has been met with a revised timeline and occasionally a thank-you-for-pointing-that-out email. My most recent experience with this kind of communication was met with a terse I'm-too-busy-to-worry-about-deadlines response, implying that I was nuts to care about such a trivial thing as a project deadline.

That kind of tap dance really gets my dander up. When you give me a deadline, and I agree to it, until you tell me otherwise, I will stick to the original plan. My professionalism prevents me from letting deadlines slide, even if the client is the one doing the sliding.

Is it too much to ask for the client to just send a quick we're-moving-the-deadline email, with details to follow? For some clients, apparently it is.

(P.S. The obvious question here is why do I care more about my clients' deadlines than they do?)

Building on the momentum

Taking a weekend off from real life by going somewhere else can inject a jolt of energy into the creative process. I visited a college friend for two days, setting my own life's details aside and immersing myself in hers. Listening to her tell stories, meeting the characters in her life, watching the world go by through her car windows, I found some great material for a short story, maybe a novella. (It would only be loosely based on actual people, of course...)

The momentum wave I was riding before the weekend took a little break while I was on my short vacation. But I was constantly thinking about how to apply life's observations to this creative endeavor called writing, and how that might apply to networking to promote my business. That doesn't sound very relaxing, does it? And yet, I came home refreshed and ready to get to work this morning, full of ideas and momentum.

Lesson learned: getting out of town can recharge the batteries.

The importance of self-marketing

Saw this today and found it incredibly relevant (and added a photo to this blog after reading about the importance of personal brand management):

Top Small Business Marketing Trends for 2009

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