Wednesday, 27 April 2016

The Key to Successful Freelance Career is Client Retention

Whether you are a newcomer or working since quite a time, to keep growing as a freelancer you ought to get optimum work. Otherwise, consequences don’t need an introduction. Give a thought: why some freelancers are regular and prosperous and many despite a good start, with good skills, fails to get work and income from clients. Surely, they are making mistakes somewhere in freelance client management. Some of the most overlooked mistakes are: work delivery below expectations or sounding too low for clients. There on service platforms present are thousands of opportunistic freelancers to seize work from clients, if you fail. If you aren’t getting enough work or the previous clients aren’t coming back to you, then you need to revamp your whole way of approaching and handling clients. Surely, you can improve yourself if in need of a consistent freelance career.


Successful Freelance Career
These tips will help you.

Sound Polite and Cheerful: -

Heavy-handed personalities get reflected through communications: be it through emails, phone calls or personal meet-ups. Clients don’t prefer doling out their work to harsh people. They sound less on credibility and clients feel uncomfortable communicating to them. At times, clients do make some special requests, so you must take this as an opportunity to serve them with a smile. If you go complaining about the same, it will cast a negative image about you. On the other hand, in the guise of special requests be sure to find out whether a client is trying to exploit you. If so, speak to him/her clearly. Next, always keep your work documented; send a list of work that you took and done for them fortnightly or weekly, whichever suits you best. And never keep your clients undervalued – they will never come back.

Prefer Quality and on-time: -

Delivering quality is the foremost condition to keep your clients happy and receive work from them another time. And second to quality is to deliver on time. Keeping both aspects in mind will keep you in spotlight; consequently, you will get a regular flow of work. They will definitely consider your profile before the next round of work to be outsourced. Quality and on-time delivery is a basic key to freelance project management.

Give some Discount/freebies: 

Clients’ testimonials prove your nerve, reviews and ratings posted by others about your work influence the decision of many, who wanted to hire you. Thus, with your regular clients always sound generous and give them some work done without any charges. Let them think that you are bighearted too. This way they will pass good feedback's about you, which in turn will get you more work and prosperity.

Celebrate with them: -


Whenever you complete a project, let your client feel that you are happy about it and planning to celebrate it. Send a message or collage of events/pictures or congratulate them too. Show them how connected you are with their success?

Retaining clients is an art – those who know and follow - never run out of work. Freelancing is not as fixed as regular jobs, so taking care of clients yields fruitful results, it’s not a sycophancy.

Friday, 22 April 2016

What it takes to become a World-class Freelance Graphic Designer?

An ad-copy without images is likely to create a lesser influence on the audiences than with images. Therefore, companies across the world hire graphic designer experts to create designing work for a sundry needs such as logo creation, poster, web or mobile app pages, etc. Content with images - be it offline or online - looks amazingly appropriate and enticing to an extent that it makes people inquisitive about that ad-copy or story. Clearly, visual effects create interest among readers or users. When this happens branding goes up and a company’s business shoots up.

Well, there is no dearth of freelance graphic designers, especially when there are many service marketplaces, which act as platform for both designers and buyers seeking their services. It is true that designers enhance the reach of communication by adding images in the content to convey business messages. But still, companies don’t hire designers blindly. Other than behavior, they do also look for core competencies like software knowledge, tool handling, understanding of types of images, etc.

Become a World-class Freelance Graphic Designer
So, need a few smart tips that can transform your profile from simple to world-class, and will make you one of the most demanding freelance graphic designers.

Know-How of Software -
Designers draw or create images with the help of software that are used in this industry. For instance, some work on adobe illustrator to work with vector images, while many still use Photoshop to deal with raster images. Also, keep an eye on their updates, if you aren’t chasing them for revision soon you will feel yourself being left behind. So, be a good student of it for a matter of your career. Lack of software knowledge in your profile will never fetch you work, one prominent reason is that all freelance service portals find graphic designers experts in abundance from across the world. Thus, the competition not only becomes tough but stiff as well.

Enhance your Creativity -
People who categorically mark creativity as an inborn talent that does not require any updates or practice – well can remain moron all their life. The claim is utterly wrong. Creativity blossoms on revision and regular updates, otherwise it sinks. For a seamless designing expertise creativity is must, otherwise growth slows down. A designer having less creativity is less imaginative; as a result, he/she repeats the same designing pattern for every project. This way their market value comes down and eventually they fade out. So, being a designer you must look up to activities that can enhance your creativity part.

Work like a Pro -
Professionalism bundles skills, knowledge and behavior in one set. Other than networking and knowledge, freelance graphic designers looking forward for making a promising income need to take professionalism seriously. Any conduct that hurts a client can hurt your career graph. Hence, submitting assignment on time, meeting clients on phone or video calling, understanding their specifications properly is more than important. Clients prefer professionalism first, more than skills and knowledge. 

A freelance graphic designer’s career can be as rewarding as a full time career; all you need is a perfect mix of skills, a genuine desire to prove yourself and a safe platform to attract work. Register yourself on online service marketplace like Ruprr.com and give your skills a global exposure.

Monday, 18 April 2016

How to Create a Winning Profile as a Freelancer

It’s rightly said: First impression is the last impression. And in today’s competitive world where everything sells on its face value, creating a winning profile is increasingly becoming important. This specially holds true for freelance experts for hire, as the physical contact to prove one’s worth is minimum in this field of work. To begin with, your profile and then the quality of work are the parameters that will make you stand out in the crowd.

So, what does it take to give your portfolio the very essential magical touch? Why would a company wanting to find freelance experts online zero in on your profile? How can you make an impact on clients to win projects regularly? The bitter truth is; if you aren’t getting projects so often, then you are bound to plunge into insecurities.

Become a Freelancer
Well, you can put a stop to all anxieties and make way to busy working days, promising career and fuller pockets by integrating the following in your profile.

Effective Heading:-

Your profile’s heading should be captivating enough to arrest the attention of buyers, who are desperately looking to hire freelancers. As the basic human psychology asserts that people look for a substance in the heading, before they move on to the main body of the content. You, as a professional, should highlight your current position, work experience and specialty in the heading. If you can do that, surely you can walk past the simple skill posters. A heading outlines your overall profile; hence, it should hold some value.       
 
Think beyond Introduction:-

No service portal comes pre-filled as soon as you join it. You need to put your professional introduction there – telling about your core and sub competencies, academics, past projects and many other revelatory things. To put this information you must use relevant words and good language, otherwise your basket’s share will go to some other freelancer.

If your profile sounds like a good copy, it will sell. Otherwise, stagnant profiles add frustration and bring diffidence to one’s self-esteem. At times, people have good experience and lustrous references, but fail to glean their expertise into appropriate words. A word-deficient copy may land your profile into no man’s land. So, choose your words carefully, don’t be cheesy either.
  
Add a Professional Photo:-

Professional photo not just adds face value to your profile but also contributes to the train of impression. So, always put a positive click, for a friendly smile and warm welcome may do the trick for you. Clients watching you in the picture will try to calculate your age and make presumptions about your nature in their subconscious. Thus, never leave a photo column empty. Blank stands for unprofessionalism and clients hesitate to move ahead. Ultimately, they will try to verify you on social sites. So, you better show them your killer looks if you want to find freelance jobs online.


Make yourself Contactable: -

Your verified contact information proves that you are not a scam mistake. If you sound rational and contactable, you can win local clients. A profile easier to communicate with; is convenient for clients to think about giving work. Also, to sow seeds of reliability, cover up or put past clients’ testimonials.

As freelancers are ever-increasing, the market is taking fierce and competitive stance. Therefore, maintaining a successful freelance profile is a challenging proposition. Accordingly, to earn a sustainable income regularly, you need to be a game puller.

Monday, 11 April 2016

The Changing Face of SEO Trends and Techniques in 2016

Content helps in discovering products or services; hence businesses put millions in the digital arena and remain obsessed either about content or company’s ranking in the search engines. And they rarely care whether their content makes sense to their target audiences or not. So, keeping the usability factor at front, search engines, like every year, change the SEO policies to bring a wave of shuffle among content and digital marketing people. Until few years ago the search engines were regarded as content tanks, however much has been changed since the arrival of smart phones and tablets. So, today there are multiple platforms to run the searches and find answers for queries. For this reason, traditional methods of surfing internet have been fashioning out for more social and faster approach. But still two aspects will persist for long: the contest to improve rank and changes in SEO. Like every year, 2016 has also seen some good changes in SEO. Latest SEO trends of 2016 will certainly affect the web activities and online presence of all things that happen to be online.   

Social Content Leads the Race: Of formal and social content, social content is highly widespread in our day to day lives because it doesn’t have any peculiar angle, for it is dynamic and appealing in its nature. Users prefer writing and reading on social sites for it gives them feel-good factor towards life. Social sites are of great potential to add genuine traffic to a brand or cause seeking online response. At times, many causes or brands become runaway hits overnight. But why do people read more content on social sites than on other sites? On social sites content looks charming and is always accompanied with responses in the forms of likes, shares and comments. Today SMO, any time, beats the SEO of yesteryears. The world changes with time, so does SEO.

Latest SEO Trends 2016
Mobile Optimization beats Desktop Users: Mobile devices (smartphones, tablets and watches) have taken no look back since their invention. Compatible mobile browsers, apps, faster networks (now 4G) mobile-friendly designs - have set the scene for increasing mobile users. The trend will continue to grow because now users can have access to internet anytime, even while moving, so, along with accessibility they get freedom too. Websites which can’t be mobile friendly will eventually run out of the race and hardly rank in the first page. However, Google bloggers have an advantage to this situation, for blogger is a mobile-friendly platform. So, blogging for Google will see good responses. Subsequently, current trends in SEO will not be same like pat years; with mobile user it has got to be changed. Interestingly, over 50 percent users searching queries on mobiles are genuine which leads to healthy conversion rate.

Intention matters, more than Keywords: Search engines have impeccable artificial intelligence that helps them to read users mind even before typing the full keywords on search engines. This intelligence has cornered away the rubbish content actors and finished the game of overstuffing mafias. So, only relevant and user-friendly content will work wonder for businesses than gossiping. This way SEO experts are being compelled to play safe with good content, because nowadays ranking is not all about content. Content will continue to lord the digital arena but in a cultivated way. 

Voice search a new invention - searches will go Audio: With the generation going faster and running out of patience for everything; people, especially youth, need answers to the queries without having the need of typing. To carry out this expectation, voice search is picking up the trend. Survey reports show that 57 % teens would like to do voice search when they are with friends, while for adults it is around 24 %.

The need of Interactive Content:
Content varies from website to website, for content can be impactful, banal or can be interactive too. So, businesses publishing B2B or B2C content for greater conversion ratio must focus on interactive content. Provision for comment, review and rate attributes to interactive content. These aspects can help businesses to gauze the sentimental depths of consumers towards products and services being used by them. This way a business can work out its marketing and branding strategies. Content on social sites and blogging platforms gains much importance than on any other platform. Effective and relevant keywords can make the content interactive, not loads of words. Clearly, from keywords to voice search to content interaction a lot has been changing in SEO trends and techniques to meet the needs of the world.