Tag Archive for: commercial freelancer

Twitter: Beyond the “Twivial” and Towards True “Twinfluence”…

Okay, so I’m not on Twitter yet but, against the odds, I’ve become intrigued. And I’m intrigued because I’ve decided to look beyond the silly, pointless “sharing-of-random-neural-firings” use of it that you often hear first about it (i.e., all the stuff that no one with anything even resembling a life would give a rat’s heiney about).

But those things sort of miss the point. And the smart marketers realize that. Think about when the telephone was first invented. Imagine if the first publicized uses of were, say, as a doorstop or a paperweight. I know, stupid, but that’s a bit like the way Twitter felt when it first debuted. But that’s changing, and we’re only starting to REALLY see the potential of this baby.

In the past few weeks, I’ve come across some very interesting stories involving Twitter. I shared one in an email last week (in publicizing the Social Media Success Summit 2009) about a fellow writer who, because of her familiarity with Twitter, was likely to be chosen by a Fortune 100 giant rolling out a new product, to cover the event, including Twittering about it daily for three weeks.

What started out as a $5K “maybe” just gelled last week into a $15+K green-lighted project. I have to imagine a company this big isn’t dropping cash like that just to chase a fad. They know that the people they want to reach are on Twitter. And here’s an article about others…

Then, heard from another friend asking advice. Seems a prominent organization at whose high-tech conference he spoke welshed on a deal he had with them, in writing. When he confronted them, both in person and in subsequent emails, their responses – each one nastier and more entrenched than the last – essentially boiled down to “TS. Take a hike.”

Until the day he Twittered offhandedly to his colleagues that he was contemplating “naming names” publicly… Suddenly, they contacted him with a totally different tone. They’re now in negotiations. Love it.

Finally, read about a woman having problems with her DSL. She goes to Twitter (after reading that her ISP had 8 FT employees assigned solely to monitoring Twitter), posts a message, and in one minute flat, she gets a Tweet back from the ISP. They assign a tech to her, who tells her that complaints they get through Twitter go right to the top and that he’ll stay on it till it’s solved. And he does.

As I see it, with Twitter, the operative question is this:

What’s the power and potential of a tool that almost organically connects many thousands of people to a point where, ultimately, little can happen in one place without the whole eventually knowing about it?

Ponder that. Viewed through that lens, it’s actually a pretty fascinating phenomenon. In the short term, it’s shaping up as a wonderful tool to ensure transparency, to keep entities honest and ethical where they once could behave badly, and with impunity. And given the short-and-sweet 140-character nature of the medium, it’s also becoming a way for companies and individuals, if they can master the effective writing side of it (are your ears perking up?), to relatively quickly influence opinions, trends, buying habits and who knows what else?

What are your thoughts on this?

Stretching your imagination, what do you think Twitter’s impact could ultimately be?

Any good Twitter stories?

How can we, as commercial freelancers, capitalize on this intriguing tool?

By the way, check out the Social Media Success Summit 2009. Enrollment has topped 730 so far! And until May 25th, you’ll save $100 off the $497 price – pretty darn reasonable for 11 sessions of quality content, nearly $400 worth of bonuses, access to recording/transcripts of ALL sessions, and interactive forum before, during and after the event. Details here.

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Ever Had a Client Expect You to Take Out an Insurance Policy?

Got an interesting though somewhat disturbing email a few days ago from a commercial freelancer. She wrote:

I wanted to get in touch because I have a concern that’s starting to affect my commercial writing business, and others will likely be coming up against this more frequently as well. In the past six weeks, I have been asked to sign contracts with three corporations. One company wanted me to obtain a General Liability policy in the amount of $1 million (has absolutely no relevance to freelance writing); the other two companies are insisting I obtain Errors & Omissions insurance, which also is irrelevant.

Errors & Omissions insurance is professional liability insurance for mistakes or negligence. One financial Web site said: “It protects a company against claims for financial injury that allege a product failed or the company failed to perform services, causing a loss of use of tangible or intangible property to others.”

I sent the following reply to my contact at one of the companies:

“Here’s the problem: If I/we as freelance writers are writing about a company’s products, the information provided to us comes from the company or company sources. The company is responsible for the accuracy of this information and having their legal departments sign off on the final document. With words, you could never gauge how someone would be making a purchasing decision and how your choice of language influenced that. The only thing you can gauge is whether the facts are correct or not—statistics and so on. And it is the company’s responsibility to check their facts and give a final okay.

“Also, the company always touches the piece last, and unlike an actual product such as a computer, medical device, electric fan or something else that could have flaws due to its manufacture, words can be changed and altered by the client right up to the last moment–or continuously, if the words are in an electronic format. Therefore, the final copy or ‘product’ is never static and the product the original writer produces can and often is very different from the final product the public sees.”

Her reply was that she completely agreed, but her hands were tied. Either I obtain the insurance or I cannot work for that particular company. This is a company I do quite a bit of work for, so I am probably going to cave in and purchase this insurance; she thought it could cost up to $1,000 per year.

I feel like this is a big issue that’s only going to get bigger, and this change is happening fast. I feel like we need to educate corporations about the fact these types of insurance have no relevance to what we do. I thought this might be helpful for other freelancers to know that this is happening and perhaps we can work together to find ways to deal with this (or get around it).

Other actions I’ve been asked to take within the past year (by only large corporations, not smaller businesses) that I have never been asked to do in the 12 years prior:

1. Change from a sole proprietorship to an LLC
2. Obtain a Dun and Bradstreet number
3. Take steps towards becoming a registered woman-owned business
4. Provide information about my personal health insurance coverage and homeowner’s insurance

Companies are trying to cover themselves, but need to be educated about what we do. Any advice freelancers can share with each other regarding this would help us all.

**************

PB: Okay, so all of this is just bizarre to me, but if this person’s encountered it multiple times from different companies, something’s going on. I’ve never gotten hit with any of these demands in 15 years, though in the past 4-5, I haven’t been working (by choice) with many large companies. And in 15+ years in the business, I’ve never ever heard of any copywriter being hit with a lawsuit over copy they wrote, nor even heard of someone who knew a copywriter in that situation. We’re talking about Powerball lottery odds here.

Given the fundamental irrelevance of this concern on the part of these companies to what freelance commercial writers do, and the ensuing demands being made of this particular copywriter (and others, presumably), in my humble opinion, it has all the earmarks of corporate legal departments working overtime to come up with anything that could possibly go wrong. Pretty much the raison d’etre of the legal profession anyway.

But why now all of a sudden? Any thoughts?

Have any of you come across any of these demands from your bigger clients?

If so, how did they explain their thinking on it?

And if so, how did you deal with it?

Any other input based on specific knowledge of industry trends?

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Who’s Got the Right to Say What a Creative Practitioner Charges?

Got the following note from Twin Cities, MN commercial freelancer Megan Tsai (www.RedWagonWriting.com), who thought it might make a good blog post. At first, I didn’t think so, as it wasn’t about commercial writing, but the idea grew on me, and I starting seeing the potential for a good discussion. She wrote:

I sometimes take on assignments for a low-paying national magazine with high production value because I enjoy the work and the clips look great in my portfolio. Typically I take the photos myself or allow the publisher to select stock photos, but because I know the value of these clips and have no use for national photo credits myself, I thought I’d offer the opportunity to a local freelance photographer. As you discuss in your book, many freelancers get their start by doing non-paying work.

I posted a quick ad on Craigslist, explaining this would not be a paid assignment, but would result in some high-quality clips for a freelancer just getting started. I asked that anyone interested shoot me an email with a link to their portfolio. Within minutes, my post had been flagged and removed, and several angry responses posted (the site is self-policing, so it was the freelancers who had it removed, not Craigslist itself). At the same time, I received three emails from interested photographers and dozens of hits on my Web site. So the question becomes, is it fair to deprive fellow freelancers of the opportunity to complete non-paying work, or should this decision be left to the individual?

My take? Megan, you’re right. They’re wrong. I’m a libertarian at heart, believing that people should be free to take or not take work, and no one should dictate the conditions under which that happens. You offered a “free market transaction”: people were free to respond or not, and for others to attack you and move to remove your post note, was wrong.

Those applauding the freelancers’ decision to silence you think they’re “standing up for the rights of creative practitioners to be paid what they’re worth” as if you were forcing them to work for nothing. Instead, as you pointed out, what they were doing was indeed depriving freelancers who wanted to exercise their right to do non-paying work (to build their book and reputation) to do so. And in this case, even more so, because it wasn’t as if the publication was going to pay a photographer “market” rates for the gig.

That decision should be no one’s to make but a given freelancer. Yes, I understand the philosophy that says, “If you encourage the idea of working for free, you cheapen the value of what any practitioner in that field does.” Arguably true, but still not your decision to make for someone else. And not compelling enough in my books to make that decision “for the good of the industry” under the guise of protecting rights. Obviously, those people who responded positively to your ad didn’t feel they needed anyone else’s protection.

As I see it, is there any substantive difference between what they did and, say, removing an ad for a TV you had offered for $50 that they thought should have been worth $200? For those who’d say, “That’s different,” I’d ask “How so?” Whether a TV or someone’s time, you’re still deciding for someone else what the value of that thing is, and that’s not your decision to make. And, yes, the same would go for commercial freelancers willing to work for free or for far less than their competitors. I don’t like to see it, but it’s their right to decide, not mine. And until this economy improves, we’re likely to see more and more of this.

Granted, for most established commercial writing practitioners, we’re not likely to find too many newbies beating us out on sophisticated commercial writing projects (e.g., brochures, ad copy, direct mail, case studies, etc.) by working for free or for $25 an hour (they’re more likely to operate on online writing job sites and in the online article writing realm), but I’m still interested in hearing people’s take on this.

Your thoughts on this subject?

Have you had any similar experience of being on either side of a situation like this?

Where do you draw the line between individual’s rights and the “greater good of the industry”?

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What’re Your Favorite “Well-Fed Writing” Resources?

OK folks, I’m closing in on finishing the updated edition of TWFW – due out mid-2009. Just to refresh your memory, I’ve combined and updated the content of both how-to guides on lucrative commercial freelancing, The Well-Fed Writer and its companion, TWFW: Back For Seconds, while retiring the latter. Two 300-page books into ONE 300-page book. Can you say “Editing Job of Biblical Proportions”? Though, I will be offloading some of both the original books onto the web site and a beefed-up Well-Fed Tool Box companion ebook. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, I’m putting together THE key appendix: Well-Fed Writing Resources, the equivalent of Appendix A in Back For Seconds. I’d love to get your input as to YOUR favorite books, web sites, blogs, conferences, local commercial writers organizations in your area, or any other commercial writing resource you’ve found indispensable (or even just plain useful) as you’ve grown your commercial freelancing business.

Whattaya say? What are your faves?

Put another way, what resources should no self-respecting commercial freelancer be without?

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Even Seasoned Scribes Fret Over “Just-Turned-In” Copy…

I recently got a note from a fellow FLCW and friend of mine up in New York. Here’s what he wrote:

Peter: Do you sometimes anguish over the waiting period, after you’ve submitted work to a client and then anticipate their thumbs-up or thumbs-down response? As I write these words, I’m waiting on a client to whom I sent what I believe is some pretty solid creative copy. But the longer it takes to hear back from them, the more that glass-half-empty side of my mind’s town crier belches out, “Now hear this: they hate it! They hate it!”

Do others ever go through this kind of self-doubt? Do you sometimes think the worst? Or wonder if you’re good enough to be doing this sort of work? Do you find yourself too needy in the “I-need-validation” department? I confess that this yoke finds itself around my professional neck more often that it ought to. But, I can’t help it! Am I totally alone in my self-imposed angst?

My reply?

You’re absolutely NOT alone in that. Believe it or not, I go through the same thing on every project. Thanks to a lot of successes and happy clients over the years, I’m not nearly as crazy about it about it as I was some years back. In fact, in the rare cases in which I DO miss the mark these days, in most cases, it’s a matter of the client changing direction or not being clear, because I will ask the right questions to get the copy right. But yes, until I hear, I’m always a bit concerned.

In fact, as I write this, I’m waiting to hear back from a client about the third ad I’ve written for their company in the past few weeks. The creative director loved the first two, and I’m sure she’ll like the latest, but she also usually responds within a few hours. It’s been closer to 24, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t nag at me a bit…

Perhaps it’s something in the nature of writers (okay, some writers; I’d be curious as to Jon McCulloch’s take – the subject of the 5/12/08 blog post (just scroll down) – a fundamental insecurity about putting our creations our there – especially when money’s on the line. Perhaps it’s just human nature – the propensity to think the worst when an outcome isn’t certain.

So, if that sounds familiar, you’re not alone, and if you’re still on the outside of the business looking in, know that even the seasoned pros chew a fingernail from time to time. And in a perverse way, I see an upside: that mindset will always keep you a bit humble, and humble writers listen carefully to their clients to make sure they DO create work that hits the mark. Which, in turn, will keep those angst-ridden moments to a minimum.

Do you experience those pangs of insecurity if you don’t hear back from a client after turning in copy?

Have you gotten beyond it, and if so, what made the difference for you?

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