One of the many events i have gone along to was a mentoring event hosted by Craig Rispin, a futurologist i have been following for quite some time.
Why have i been interested in Craig Rispin you might ask? Well some time back, one of his comments was
‘In the future, everyone will be freelancing, you have to start thinking this way’
And the truth is, i have started thinking like a freelancer and all the right things are happening for me work wise especially, all i had to do was start on the IT freelancer path vision and start doing the right things for what i wanted to happen, to happen.
What are you waiting for?
Sounds simple enough? Let me explain
It is not good enough to be a plumber, carpenter or dog groomer in Sydney, Melbourne or Tokyo anymore, you need to be the best and if your not the best, appear to be the best and how do you do this?
One of the avenues you can use is social media for example Linked-in, Facebook ect, there will be other mediums in the future, maybe a few crystal balls too?
Medium of the future?
When someone searches for a service online, and you provide that service, it is good for your business if you are the top of that search list, its called Search engine optimization, sounds simple enough?
As Craig sai…
‘You don’t need a PHD when you have 4000 people following you on Linked-in’
Which is food for thought.
It has long been known that we pretty much make up our minds about someone within seconds, its a gut instinct, we might not be aware of this, but this is what social science indicates.
I have noticed, that rather than reading someone’s CV, you can tell all you need to know by viewing their website, people following them for example, if they publish content, you might see that ‘Barrack Obama’ is a fan and some people think he’s a smart guy?
Do you have any fans?
- People judge you by your friends, not that they might be aware of it, but we get impressions and hints in slight ways
- Some of the little hints i received were:
- To get a first appointment, give people something for free that has nothing to do with what you are selling, it could be an invitation to an event, report, video ect.
- When people you don’t know request to add you in Linked-in, request to have coffee first to see how you can both might benefit each other
Feture + Benefit
When stating a feature, have a bridge to the benifit of that feature
- Feature (export your contacts from Linked-in to Mail chimp)
- Bridge (Which is super for you or, Which is great for you)
- Benefit (You can target people with specific promotion material with is specific to thieir industry and relevant to their life)
- Always have something to invite people to, but only invite quality people to
- Wednesday is the number 1 day people check their emails, so Wednesday is a good day to do your email targeting
- Monday is the day people most follow the stock markets and business news
- The marketing world is moving to permission based marketing system
Do you need a marketing campaign?
With freelancing and promoting your business, you could create a campaign for free like this
Campaign example:
- Create an Event on Eventbrite for a promotion
- You can export your Linked in contacts and import them to a site called ‘Mail chimp‘
- You can target people directly VIA email with mail chimp/Eventbrite feature
- You can target Linked-in interest groups
- You can target customers with Linked-in ‘Status updates’
Craig said, the pro bono work he has done for charity’s has given him exposure to organizations and people ordinarily he would not have had the opportunity to meet and he has received a substantial growth in business, all from volunteering, there’s no excuse not to volunteer.
One of the words i learnt that morning was ‘Bespoke’, which of course means
Derived from the verb to bespeak, to “speak for something”, in the specialised meaning “to give order for it to be made”
Kieran O' Callaghan 
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