Oh well, all in good time…

What I did come to do was share some good news.  Contrary to how it might look I have actually been really very busy of late. One thing that’s been going on that I’m really very proud of is our business venture Absolute You.  Set up to provide flexible business support to basically anyone who needs it, Absolute You is a really lovely little business model that’s already working beautifully. If you’ve got five minutes to pop over and have a quick look I’d be very grateful.

In other news my desk is still in a terrible state, but there is a system in place now you know *cough*…

I sat watching TV last night, I honestly couldn’t tell you what I was watching such was the depth of its nothingness. But it was during the adverts that my attention was piqued.  The new Skoda ad aired and I was drawn back into my fantasy world of sketches and story boards.  I have absolutely no connection to Skoda, or to Fallon the creative brains behind this campaign, but this is one of those moments when you see something brilliant and have to record it in some way.

Watch the video for yourself – it’s at the top left here on Fallon’s home page (give the page a second to populate), and it’s here somewhere on the Skoda site – obviously I’m sure you can find it on Youtube if you feel so inclined.  Watch it and tell me that Skoda hasn’t absolutely cracked it now…..

Lots of very good folk were kind enough to fill in my Social Media survey and the last month has just not allowed me the time to look at that in any great detail.  I’m planning on rectifying that very soon. I’ve also been out and about meeting people and communicating using a radical new medium known as speech – it’s great, so immediate and gratifying.  I’ve been looking at things in a slightly more circular fashion and I’ve got some new projects that I’m really excited about and looking forward to sharing very soon.

I’ve decided to take the plunge and in December will be moving this blog to a self hosted URL – if you see me weeping around that time, you’ll know that I’m beset with IT issues and it’ll probably be best to steer well clear.

The best news is that my new (home) office is finally finished. My desk is back to being the same old state it used to be, but some things never change, and I’m actively seeking new opportunities to save me from having to tidy it.  Time to put the kettle on I think, bring your own biscuits…

So, I thought, if I really want to get a snapshot of social media in practice that is current and unbiased, why not create my own survey?

So I did….

It’s short – 10 questions, and quick – should take you no longer than a couple of minutes.  I’ll be compiling the results and publishing them here very soon, but in the meantime I need LOTS of people to fill it in.

Will you be one of them please?

Click here to take survey

Thanks – you’re a gem

If you’re trying to make new contacts the chances are that they’ll look you up on LinkedIn first.  Google searches typically throw up LinkedIn profiles amongst the top hits and you need to ensure that you’re not unwittingly damaging your reputation by your absence.  It could be that as you use it more extensively you realise that you are indirectly linked to potential clients, making it an invaluable networking tool.

The parameters of LinkedIn are changing. Once upon a time it was like a secret members club, whispered conversations about invites and retaining exclusivity kept it in the preserve of the top level professionals.  Like all social media platforms the need to include and be included has widened its reach, and rightly so.

As an individual LinkedIn represents your private space but it’s worth remembering that the nature of your interactions there will have an impact and reflect on your employers – if you’ve got a personal twitter feed linked, is everything you’re posting appropriate? Consider being more discerning about which tweets you publish there.

As a business it’s worth paying some attention to how your employees are using LinkedIn.  Senior stakeholders should definitely be giving some focus to strengthening your brand impact through LinkedIn and capitalising on it as a PR and communications platform.

For many LinkedIn forms the professional hub of their social media activity with spokes connecting to twitter, their blogs, and any groups and forums they connect to and, naturally, it is possible to spend an inordinate of time ‘getting lost’ there.  However for the average user, once your profile is set up some light weekly maintenance is all that’s needed to keep your profile up-to-date and ensure that you are appearing regularly in the published updates.

Like your website and any other public platform that you use, LinkedIn is akin to your shop window.  You have no control over who walks by but you can do the best you can to make them stop and take note.  Once your profile is complete you need only spend a little time every week housekeeping to maximise the potential of LinkedIn.

If you’re new to LinkedIn it can seem like a mammoth task. It can be, depending on how much time you have and how far you want to drive into it, but the basics are easy:

Start with your profile and consider a few key points.  What will draw people in? How can you best summarise yourself – remember that people have a short attention span, be concise.  Add some personality but don’t go overboard on the quirky.  When you’ve done, read it back aloud – does it describe you accurately? Don’t assume that everyone will understand from a job title what that job involves – we’re living in a world filled with the most ridiculous titles – describe what you do… and don’t lie!

Here’s an example (it’s mine). I’m not saying it’s the best bio ever, but it explains the basics about what I do, includes recommendations and links and is enough for people to decide whether to find out more:

http://uk.linkedin.com/in/battleplan

In summary:

• Complete your profile – get it up to 100%
• Put up a profile pic – essential!
• Check that the details are accurate
• Make sure your information is up-to-date and spellchecked.  You may not be a spelling pedant but MANY people are…
• LinkedIn sends out weekly updates – by regularly updating your status, responding to requests to connect, posting blogs, you’ll appear on it – it’s all excellent exposure
• Revise your profile on a regular basis, change the odd word, play around with it – keep it fresh – again this will appear on the weekly updates.
• Recommendations are brilliant but be discerning. Seek out the ones that will have the most impact and make sure they’re authentic
• At least once a week go in and accept or reject new invites – don’t leave it months then do loads at once. This kind of behaviour makes it obvious that you’re rarely there.
• Many people choose to make their connections private – you can do this in settings/privacy settings/connections browse
• Look through the groups and forums – check out those that your contacts use – if you have the time it’s an excellent way of gaining information and getting yourself known
• If you use twitter,you can link it to your LinkedIn profile and using the #in hashtag you can update your status on LinkedIn automatically.
• It’s not advisable to link every tweet, but it’s an easy way to keep your status ‘live’.
• If you have a blog, you can publish this to your LinkedIn profile.  However, be cautious – if you rarely publish any posts consider what message this is sending out.
• Keep at it!

These types of pitches seem to be par for the course working in creative services, but they have never sat easily with me.  Years ago I was negotiating a PR contract with a potential client.  They were happy with our credentials, impressed with our client list and confident that we were the right company for them,  then they asked if we’d work for free for a month before signing contracts – just to prove ourselves.

We said no. Apart from anything else, a month is nowhere near long enough to prove yourself as a PR incumbent, and offering discounts and incentives wasn’t our style.  That attitude has stayed with me.  If someone wants your expertise, knowledge and creativity, is it too much to expect that they should pay for it?  In a business environment I cannot afford to spend hour upon hour dedicating time to pitching for business, especially when the suspicion is always there that someone will take what you’ve done and turn it over to the cheapest option to make a mess of.

Anyone working in creative services will know that it takes a fair amount of time to put together pitches like this – and most of us simply can’t afford to spend time working on something without knowing that there’s a purchase order number with our name on it somewhere.  I’d go further to say that I don’t think they benefit anyone and in fact devalue your core offering.

Digressing for a moment, I’m in the midst of building a new home office.  It’s been quite a long process, but we’re nearly there now.  We’ve done some work ourselves and project managed the rest, sourcing craftsmen to do specific jobs.  My criteria for instructing someone goes a bit like this:-

1. Do they come recommended?
2. If not, can they offer testimonials?
3. Do I feel comfortable having this person in my home environment?
4. Do they seem keen to do the job?
5. What is their availability?
6. How much are they going to charge me?

Honestly if someone steps through my door and I don’t like them, I’m not going to give them the work – intuition is there for a reason and I like to work with people I like.

All of this can be transferred to the creative environment. If you’re looking for a designer or a marketeer or a copywriter, or anything, you’re bound to ask around first, to find out who’s out there and who’s rated by your peers.  Then you do a bit of snooping, you check them out and find out what you can about them, see if anyone’s had any bad experiences.  After that you might have a chat and set up a meeting – not unlike a tentative first date, where you gauge whether there’s any mutual attraction.

Trust and communication are at the core of every creative partnership.  A transparent relationship is essential, especially in PR.  You need to be honest about your ambitions and have the confidence to express them, knowing that your partner will support you and do everything they can to help you get there.

So why are speculative pitches counter-productive? Well, because you’re cutting out the whole courtship dance.  You don’t know each other.  As a service provider you have no idea of what the client really needs, no insight into their business, or their vision.  As a client you’re not seeing the creative at their best – you’re seeing a sanitised version. Frankly you’d be better off asking them to bring their portfolio and talking through what they’ve done before, listening to them describe the relationships they have with existing clients, what they think works for them, and why. To expect them to attempt to design or strategise for your business without insight is largely a complete waste of time.

So why do it at all? There’s an argument that it makes a prospective client feel good – getting something for nothing.  Creatives argue that leaving something tangible behind means that you’re more likely to get a call back.  I don’t buy any of it. We all know that there’s no such thing as a free lunch – somehow the mortgage still has to be paid, so if you’re speculating now, you’ll be cutting back later in the month – that means other clients will feel the pinch.

If you’re good at what you do, you’ll put more value on your skills by holding back – put the time that you would spend speculatively pitching into improving your collateral.  Make sure that your website, your blog, your social media presence and any printed collateral you have is top notch.  Work on your own marketing and improve your profile that way.  Have confidence in yourself and deliver value to your existing clients – they are the here and now, don’t take them for granted!

If you’re looking for a creative partner, consider why you’d even ask them to pitch on a speculative basis.  What are you gaining? Perhaps what you need is a professional to guide you through the entire process, or just some more time spent investigating what’s out there. Consider your own business and how important it is to get things right for your clients.  Creatives feel the same way, there’s nothing more frustrating than completing a job and feeling that you could have done better if you’d known more – give them the opportunity to do the best for you!

In my defence, it’s the UK summer holidays, that time of year when British children get to spend 6 long weeks terrorising their parents.  Today I’ve caught up with emails, made a couple of appointments, shuffled through my to-do list, built a chair, watched 2 DVDs, broken up 3 fights and failed to persuade my 5yo to get dressed (it’s now 16.55).

As far as actually getting work done, I’m very organised.  I have a quoting and invoicing system that works, job bags for every project and a huge pad on which I scribble my ‘notes to self’. Being a home worker means that I often have to juggle tasks, I can’t just leave the house at 8am, work all day and return with a clear head for 6.30.  I’m pretty much always thinking, and applying those thoughts whenever I get the chance.  For my clients this is generally good news – as most of what I do relies on a healthy does of creative thinking, the more evolutionary time that goes into it, the better, and you’d be surprised at the ideas I come up with on the school run.

The school holidays are tough though, after a day hiding from entertaining my children, the idea of sitting down to work is not as tempting as the whole ‘slob out on the sofa and watch whatever nonsense Sky has gifted me this evening’ thing.  I’m tired, my brain is cluttered and my productivity suffers.  The first week off is generally a write-off anyway, so that was expected.  By now I should have shrugged off the change in routine and have settled back into making it work.

However this year we decided to build me a new office. This involved converting part of our garage – If memory serves, we did the basic stud walls and shell back in July.  The plan was for it all to be finished for the end of July and yet here we are in August and I still have a shell…

Yesterday heralded much excitement as the new external door was supposed to go in.  This was to be followed by plastering, plumbing, a new floor and finally, lights and a bit more carpentry.

The door was cracked – it had to go back, apparently they hadn’t checked it before leaving the warehouse.  I won’t name and shame (yet). I’m a benevolent type and I’m giving them a second chance – but there’s only so much that a poor home worker can take.

In the meantime, I’ll be here pretty much all night for the next few weeks – do pop in and say hello, I’ll keep the tea flowing…

Back then you were expected to spend the last few minutes of every day clearing your desk.  Brownie points were awarded to those who managed to maintain a clear desk throughout the day, working systematically and being in a constant state of ‘presentable to visitors’.

My office was fronted with glass, and I was situated near the back door – every passer-by looked in as they entered and exited the building, and my highly visible desk was (relatively) uncluttered. I knew where things were, I had a three-tiered tray full of my ‘to-do’, ‘in-progress’ and ‘to-be-filed’ work and my top drawer would have delighted the stationery gluttons, with its neat rows of staplers, staple removers, rulers, highlighters and a multitude of other ‘essentials’.

The clear desk policy was intended to have other benefits. There were studies that apparently concluded that a clear desk reduces stress and improves productivity.  In a team environment it also means that other people can find things on your desk relatively easily, should you be stricken with World Cup fever or some other transmissible disease.

In a freelancer’s life, there is no obvious need to think of your co-workers – the only people who visit my office in its current state are the dog and three children when they slip passed the obstacle course that is my attempt at keeping them out.  I once, in a fit of generosity, taped a large rectangle of paper to one corner of my desk, naming it ‘Children’s Corner’ – it is now a graffitied wasteland, strewn with hairbrushes and pencils and crayons and other random objects which may, or may not have originated at a large fast food giant beginning with M.

This week, my cluttered desk and I reached an impasse. My ‘in progress’ pile (usually kept just adjacent to my left elbow) toppled meeting the debris accumulated to the south of my keyboard and completely occluding the screen of my mac.  To my right were assorted piles, including a ‘to be filed’ and a rather random ‘household – to do’ which may or may  not contain an unpaid VAT bill – I’m too scared to look.  I was left with a 10cm * 7cm clear space in front of me and realised it was time to tidy.

Today I greet you from a clear desk – or as clear as it gets in this office.  I have an expanse of space where my arms can rest naturally before meeting the keyboard.  My to-do list is in clear view and my in progress pile has been reshuffled and addressed.  There are still a few random objects here and there but nothing I’m unhappy with.  I’m beginning an experiment – every day for a week I will spend 10 minutes tidying, filing, making my lists for the next day and I will note any change in my stress or productivity.  So far today – so good, for one thing I’ve written this blog for the first time in a month and my to-do list is 70% complete.

Maybe there’s something in this clear desk notion?  Now I just need someone to walk past the window and check it out…

But I was stopped in my tracks – literally.

The problems began earlier in the week.  I needed train tickets for a meeting and thought I’d be all organised and pre-book them so all I had to do on the day was turn up on time, collect and go.  I’d seen the TV ads for trainline.com, tempting me with their promises of ‘saving an average of 43%’ and in my capacity as frugal business owner I thought I’d do exactly that.

What I didn’t do is look anywhere else for a price comparison – let’s call that mistake No1.  Mistake No2 was booking whilst in the middle of making a million other tiny mental calculations, including such important decisions as “What to wear”, “Where’s my grey cardy?” and “Seriously, was that 2 day glimmer of sunshine the British Summer?”.

I wanted a return ticket to London, leaving after 9 to ensure I fell into the off-peak category. As my meeting was late morning I thought I’d plump for the 9.47 giving me time to mess around on twitter get myself organised and leave the house looking relatively professional. I skipped through the ordering process, ticking boxes, assuming I was doing the right thing, congratulating myself for multi-tasking so successfully. I even added in a travelcard right at the end, mentally high-fiving myself for thinking of everything.  Going through the payment process I ignored the fleeting thought that it was a bit on the pricey side; “noooo, this is a cheap tickets website; of course I’m getting a great deal.” My email confirmation arrived and I printed and filed it on my desktop ready for later in the week.

That’s where the husband found it.  That’s when the husband told me I’d been ‘done over’ and, seeing as it was a journey he used to do 2-3 times a week, I half-believed him.  I was travelling north that day so I checked at the station.  Imagine the horror when I realised that the price from the station was nearly half what I’d been charged. So I did what every Social Media addict would do in this situation, I tweeted my disgust.

What followed was an almost immediate reply from trainline.com on twitter, who turned out to be a very nice Welsh man called David.  Over the course of that day we had a progressive conversation, until I got a bit spooked, thought he might just be a random train enthusiastic, and called customer services instead.

That would be mistake no3 in this tale.  Trainline.com use offshore customer services and this conversation was obviously scripted, lacking in any more than perfunctory compassion and hugely frustrating on my part.  It was confirmed to me on this call that in order to cancel my two tickets, I would be charged £10 per ticket… Twenty quid to cancel a ticket that cost £45?!? You’re kidding me, right? Sadly, no….

At this point I gave up, retreated back to twitter and vented some more.  David popped up again, keen to resolve the matter and, despite my misgivings, I took a leap of faith and allowed him to do exactly that.  I got the resolution I wanted, I also received excellent service from someone intelligent and articulate and rather than losing my business entirely, trainline.com has confirmed itself as my ticket provider of choice.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the true power of social media.  It’s not about broadcasting how great you and your company is. It’s about looking for opportunities, lurking and ensuring that the right interactions take place.  This kind of result takes time and investment, needs people who understand communications, who have the skills and expertise to deal with irate women who can’t multi-task quite as well as they thought they could, and who are dedicated enough to keep working to a satisfactory resolution – that might just possibly deviate from a script. A verified account would help, although it’s not something easily available yet – it would have saved me the call centre experience though.

And the less said about offshore call centres, the better….

I’m interested because I feel like I’m failing my ‘professional’ ID.  The responses I got told me that, on the whole, we all prefer to meet the whole person, rather than a slice of a person.  So, for a little while I redirected my blog link to my personal Twitter ID.

Then I hesitated.  I remembered the fact that I am prolific on my personal ID, as opposed to occasional on my professional.  I remembered that the people I like to tweet with wouldn’t necessarily want to read about the professional me, or be interested in the tweets I normally reserve for that account.  I remembered that I often have a glass of wine on a Friday night, partake in the Twitter equivalent of a pub quiz and tweet random nonsense for a couple of hours.

And I thought “What would that do for my professional image?”.

So, for the time being I’ve redirected my blog link back to my professional ID, but I’m still not happy.

Part of what I do is advise on Social Media use and for me the main element is to be authentic.  Twitter is not an obvious sales tool, but used well it is a great way to build relationships and it’s something that I’ve done very successfully (and without agenda) on my personal ID. To attempt to do the same with my professional will take an investment of time and energy and, frankly, I’ve got work to do.

What’s your take? Are you authentic? Do you use multiple IDs successfully or are you more ‘what you see is what you get’?