Tag: personal branding | Page 6

Business Cards: Trash or Treasure?

Tuesday, April 9th, 2013|

Life gets more and more paperless every day. And in most ways, that’s a good thing. We archive our emails instead of printing and filing; we view attachments on the screen instead of using up expensive ink or toner. We share documents in the cloud instead of distributing paper copies before a meeting. Are business cards going to go the way of the memo?

We don’t think so. Whether you work for a company, own your own business, or are a freelance entrepreneur, business cards still carry relevant information in an inexpensive and convenient format. And with a couple of 21st Century tweaks, they can be a great little marketing tool:

Design—Make sure the design of your business card effectively reflects your business services. Colorful or subtle, austere, or complex. Think about the visual image as well as the information you present. For creative companies/individuals – the design of your business card is as important as anything you could say to a potential client. Your card should represent the type of design you prefer to deliver. Misrepresent yourself here and risk losing potential business – before you’ve even connected.
Email—Of course you will include your email address on your card, but if you are a freelancer, you might want to consider obtaining a more businesslike alias than your personal email address. Find out if your email service will let you have more than one. You can have it automatically forward to your regular Inbox and not miss a message.
Portfolio—Don’t forget the URL of your online portfolio or website
Social Media—If you are marketing your services on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or another platform, include your contact information on your card. You never know where someone you only met for a moment might look to find out more about you. Make it easy.
QR Codes—The latest trend seems to be putting a QR code which leads to your portfolio or website as well as the URLs on your card. People with smartphones can get all the information they need with just a moment’s scan.

Without business cards, the people you meet will have to remember your name to look you up later. Will they or won’t they? Don’t take a chance. Business cards will be around for a long time and for good reason.

Wendy Stackhouse, for Artisan Creative

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Creativity in Wonderland: Tips from Lewis Carroll

Tuesday, March 26th, 2013|

We hope your workplace isn’t like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, but when you are having trouble with a creative block, Lewis Carroll’s famous tale may have some good advice for you:

“Why is a raven like a writing desk?” Of course, it turned out there was no answer to this riddle, but setting yourself a nonsense question to ponder can get your mind out of a rut and into a more creative place.
“Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” There’s a lot to be said for doing something—anything—to get your process started. Finishing has a lot to be said for it, too. Remember your first draft doesn’t have to be good; it’s always easier to edit than to write the first draft.
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” Setting short-term goals, even just for the next hour or two, can break your project up into manageable pieces that are easy to complete.
“Yes, that’s it! It’s always tea time.” Take breaks. Counterintuitive as they seem, even fifteen or twenty minutes of doing something different can give you a great idea of what to do next.
“It was much pleasanter at home.” A change of scene can do you a world of good, especially if your office walls are closing in. If you have the option, go work outside, at a coffee shop, or even in your living room.

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” It will if you let your mind and your body make a new path.

Wendy Stackhouse, for Artisan Creative

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5 Ways to Create a Standout Online Portfolio

Thursday, March 21st, 2013|

Every Creative knows that the interview process for them is unique. While the resume is still important to potential employers to see where creative talent has been and what they’ve been doing, the work produced is what matters most.

Whether you’re a designer, developer, copywriter, or producer, employers expect to see an online portfolio of work that emulates what they are trying to create.

Sadly, many creatives fail to follow these simple steps to improve their portfolios, thereby decreasing their chances of success in the freelance or direct hire job market:

- Keep work relevant – Portfolios could be a unique URL of work or a collection of work on one of the many portfolio sites. In either case – the work presented should always be fresh, current, and up to date. Outdated work is the quickest way to be overlooked for a potential job. Update it regularly. Our recruiters recommend at least every three months.

- Less is more – Remember to make the work the hero of your portfolio or site. Keep design clean, interface simple, and navigation to as few clicks as possible.
  - - Don’t include every piece of work you’ve ever done – Only include those of which you are most proud or that represent the work you want to be doing most. This might mean including screenshots of short-lived projects and even conceptual or personal work that was never produced.
    - Mention that additional samples of work are available upon request – A PDF of targeted samples can sometimes be more effective for some clients. Be sure to list the other industries or media across which you have worked.
- Organize your work – Depending on the nature of your work, find a way to display it most effectively. Should the work be categorized by industry, media type, client, or project? Whatever you decide, don’t forget to provide a short description that explains the company/agency for whom you worked, the client’s objectives for the project, your role on the piece, and (if applicable) the software utilized.

- Introduce yourself – While including your resume or past job experience is a must, be sure to also include a bio that explains who you are, your creative process, and even some personal trivia. Let your personality shine.

- Broadcast your brand – A portfolio of work is part of a creative’s personal brand. Make sure everyone can find your site easily. Include your URL on your resume and LinkedIn profile. If creating your own site – make sharing easy so people can easily follow your Twitter feed or blog. You might also consider a “Contact” form for potential employers to inquire about work.

Want to get a recruiter’s perspective of your portfolio? Send us your portfolio. One of our recruiters will get back to you soon with feedback.

Jessica Bedford, for Artisan Creative

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Personal Branding: Facebook

Tuesday, March 12th, 2013|

Facebook seemed to have been created to allow us to reconnect with old friends, to help us remember birthdays, and sometimes even to shout into the void when we feel the need to express ourselves. However, the longer Facebook is around, the more it changes and the more it becomes a marketing tool for companies, brands, and people. Are you using Facebook to your best advantage for marketing your personal brand?

Although Facebook allows you to have both a personal profile and a business-person page, since they changed to the Timeline format, strangers have been able to see your cover photo and anything you publish publicly by searching for you. You may not need a page as well as a Timeline if you are being thoughtful about what you post and what is in your Profile:

About You—Be sure to include a link to your Business Page (if you have one) as well as your website or other social media accounts and your online portfolio in the About section of your Profile. Make sure if a business contact finds your Timeline first, they can easily access your business information.
Privacy Settings—No one’s friends are always perfect and you can’t control what they post, so set your privacy so that your Friends List is visible only to you.
Business List—If you want to be Facebook Friends with professional connections, make a custom list of your business contacts so that you can limit the privacy of your posts. You can create a Custom privacy setting so that your default audience is only your personal friends, but not your business contacts unless you specifically include them.
Always Check your Audience—If you do post to different lists at different times, it’s easy to forget that Facebook remembers your last post and uses those settings again next time. If you posted something publicly on Tuesday night, your post on Wednesday morning will be public, too, unless you change it. Best practice: post to your custom list every time. After you have posted, change the audience to Public or Friends if you want your post to reach more people. That way Facebook does not forget your custom settings and you do not have to recreate them later and save yourself some time.
Don’t Be Blank—Since you are searchable, take a moment to post something publicly every so often, once or twice a week, so that even strangers will find something valuable about you if they look. Links to work samples are a great example.

It is just a fact of life that people you meet in either a personal or a business setting are going to look you up on social media. Make sure they are finding the person you want them to find.

Wendy Stackhouse, for Artisan Creative

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When Being Disruptive Is a Good Thing

Thursday, January 17th, 2013|

The dictionary defines “disruptive” as tumultuous, chaotic, troublesome, or unruly. None of these words sound too good in a job search or work context. But in business, being disruptive is taking on a whole new meaning:

Disruptive Marketing

Sometimes criticized for being more like spam or unwelcome communications, disruptive marketing at its best is marketing that is so different from what came before that it takes over for it. We can understand why this might be troublesome to those who are more traditional marketers, but creatives are outside-the-box thinkers and when given the opportunity to come up with a new way of doing things, they may very well come up with something that disrupts tradition in a good way.

Disruptive Innovation

Great developers and designers are practicing disruptive innovation—creating something new that replaces the previous technology. When we pick up a new app or tool, soon we wonder how we ever lived without it. Talented creatives are thinking of new ways to perform familiar tasks every day.

Disruptive Job Search

No one looking for a new role wants to be “unruly”, but what if you think of “disruptive” as “unexpected” instead? Most candidates are trying to match the keywords on their resumes and skillsets as closely to a job description as possible. But every candidate is also unique, with unique qualities and value they bring to a company.

If your job search has continued for longer than you’d hoped, it might be time to try something new, displace your old way of doing things, take a chance on a new story in your next interview or showcase something unexpected about what you bring to the table. You might even disrupt your search by landing an amazing job!

Let us know what works for you!

Wendy Stackhouse, for Artisan Creative

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Branding for 2013

Thursday, January 3rd, 2013|

Whether one of your New Year’s resolutions is to get a new job or learn a new skill–or even pick up a new hobby–now’s the time to get yourself in gear. One of the best things you can do if you are a creative starting a new job search or continuing an ongoing job search is revising your online brand.

On LinkedIn

Remember all those people you got back in touch with over the holidays? Invite them to join your LinkedIn network. Be sure to personalize the invitations, including a reminder of where you met or your recent conversation.
Add 2012 accomplishments to your Profile. Your description of yourself may not be as perfect now as it was last year, so go ahead and tweak it for right here, right now.
Give some endorsements. The people already in your network are talented professionals that you trust or they wouldn’t be there. The new Endorsements feature in LinkedIn lets you give them some support without having to write a recommendation note.

On Social Media

If you have a Business Page on Facebook, take a look at the postings and descriptions. Make sure they are current and reflect your brand as it is today.
Evaluate how frequently you are posting. If you are neglecting your Page a bit, put a reminder in your calendar to post once or twice a week. If you are posting a lot, makes sure all of your content is high quality and relevant.

Your Online Portfolio

If you are a busy freelancer, your online portfolio is working for you. Don’t neglect to add new projects from the past year. You might tell a better story in a meeting with a potential client about something recent, that you are still excited about, than a project from a couple of years back. Put some new material in your portfolio to prime your interviewer with good questions that make for great storytelling opportunities.

At Artisan, we hope that 2013 is a banner year for you in all of your professional and personal endeavors!

Wendy Stackhouse, for Artisan Creative

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Enough About You, What Can You Do for Me?

Thursday, November 15th, 2012|

Utilizing your network of friends and associates to assist in your job search, is nothing new. The relationships you have built in these areas are extremely valuable, offering a number of new contacts and warm referrals just a degree away.

However, whenever you are networking for new opportunities, there is some etiquette to keep in mind to ensure your relationships last:

Keep in touch without asking for anything—You don’t want the people in your network to think you only contact them when you need something. Make regular contact with your network just to chat or catch-up.
Be clear—Make sure the people in your network know what you’re doing and what help you’re looking for. General requests without specific information make it hard for even those with the best intentions to be of real assistance.
Don’t be pushy—Your friend might work on the same floor as the company executive with whom you’d love to meet. Rather than asking the friend to introduce you, talk to him about how interested you are in the company and hope he suggests it himself.
Get professional recommendations—Ask people you have worked with for endorsements. Better yet, endorse one of your professional contacts on LinkedIn and hope they return the favor. These written references could be all the proof a potential employer needs to make the hire.

Networking can be fun – if you remember that it is, at heart, an effort in building relationships. Have genuine interactions and you will garner genuine advantages.

Wendy Stackhouse, for Artisan Creative

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Freelancing: What Do You Charge?

Thursday, October 11th, 2012|

Conversations with potential clients often begin with the bottom line: what do you charge for your services? It may feel odd, but by putting off the cost issue until you’ve established your value, you can actually put yourself in a better place to negotiate.

Your potential client, of course, is trying to rule out vendors who charge more than their budget can bear. However, they may not understand what your services include or what you think they really need. When clients ask the money question – be sure to tell them that you will answer the question, but that you need more information to provide the right answer.

Find out why they are calling you. Then sit back and listen actively. Express empathy with their frustration and understanding of their issues. Empathy and understanding will help build a relationship with you and not someone else.
Ask questions to clarify what they require, find out where they are in the process and what kind of timing and resources would be needed. Answers to these questions help you determine the value of this opportunity overall. Remember, what you charge isn’t always about the numbers. Sometimes growth potential, client partnerships, new technology or timing could play a factor in what you are willing to charge.
Tell them about a similar problem you solved for another client. Establishing your experience with a story will build your credibility. This is also a great way to sell the client on other benefits you can provide without sounding “sales-y.”
Tell them what you would do to solve their problem. At a certain point in the conversation, you should have a pretty good idea what the client needs and what you would do to solve their problem.

Now it’s time to talk rates and negotiate.

If you have done your job correctly, the client has seen that you understand their plight and have the experience to deal with it. This puts you in a great position to ask for the fees that you deserve with confidence.

Wendy Stackhouse for Artisan Creative

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Maximizing LinkedIn: Endorsements

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012|

When we first started writing about LinkedIn, we talked about asking people in our network for Recommendations and especially the value of volunteering in getting Recommendations for your Profile. Recently LinkedIn made it easier for your network to recommend your work through a simpler process: Endorsements.

Endorsements offer an easy one-click way to agree that someone in your network has a particular skill. Where Recommendations take time and thought to do well, as well as careful consideration of not only whom to ask, but whom to recommend, Endorsements are easy to give and nice to receive.

If you haven’t logged into LinkedIn recently, you will see a popup box like this:

Click on the Endorse button and that’s it!

Keep in mind that you should only endorse people in your network for skills that you know they have because of your experience with them and if you are unsure, wait. The same endorsement opportunity will come by again later.

When you click on Endorse, LinkedIn will repopulate the box with more people and skills for your perusal.

There is no word yet on whether Endorsements are enhancing the job search process or whether hiring managers are checking Endorsements when culling out candidates, but additional positive information in our Profiles can only be a good thing. Happy Endorsing!

Wendy Stackhouse for Artisan Creative

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LinkedIn Part 3: 5 Mistakes You Should Not Be Making

Tuesday, July 17th, 2012|

Talent Manager Laura Burns sent me a link this week to an article in Forbes Magazine about LinkedIn mistakes and since we are in the middle of a series of blog posts about LinkedIn, I thought you might be interested in my take on what Forbes thinks many people are doing wrong on LinkedIn.

Forbes emphasized the importance of LinkedIn for talent and companies alike and we agree. LinkedIn is a great way to connect easily with the people you work with and meet through your work life and also a great way for companies to find talent and talent to find jobs. But it definitely can suffer from the old “garbage in garbage out” problem. If you don’t use it well, it could hurt more than help. Here are the mistakes Forbes says people are making and our opinion on them:

1. Sending general invitations

Sure, if you click on that “Connect” button, LinkedIn will provide you with a little message box, already filled in with a message: “I’d like to add you to my professional network.”

Oh, sorry, I got bored.

You should personalize every invitation. Remind your connection of where you met or your most recent conversation or where you worked together. Be friendly and inviting and you are much more likely to get approved before your connection falls asleep.

2. Ask for recommendations

BUT be sure you really know the person and be specific about what you are looking for. Let them know what you would like them to talk about in regard to your experience and their relationship with you and they are much more likely to help you out. Writing a recommendation without any parameters takes a lot more time than writing one with a specific purpose in mind.

3. Never use default text.

If there’s anything you want your professional connections NOT to think about you it’s that you’re lazy. Write your own messages, always.

4. Don’t link your Tweets to your LinkedIn Updates.

If you were doing this, you’re not any more because this service has been discontinued, so lucky you! Read more…

5. Proofread, proofread, proofread.

You can never proofread too many times. Send a link to your profile to some trusted friends and have THEM proofread. There are never too many sets of eyes on your professional materials, digital or print.

Forbes hit the nail on the head here, although they left out one of my favorites that newbies on LinkedIn like to do—don’t let LinkedIn populate your profile. They can, but it won’t be in the right order and the details will not be presented in the ideal way. Take the time to do it yourself here and when you connect and LinkedIn can be an asset whether you are a job seeker, employer, or entrepreneur.

And if you find a typo in my Profile, please drop me a (personalized) note!

Wendy Stackhouse, for Artisan Creative

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