We have a lot of fun at LooseKeys and being a small team we’re able to take risks and chances that the other guys often can’t. We’re able to change and adapt quickly which is why I welcome new chances to take risks and try new things.

Being small, we can roll the dice on an idea for a podcast, a new short series, maybe a new style of animation or even a crazy social media marketing stunt. These risks or chances allow us to test and try new things that other businesses might not be able to. I tend to roll the dice and see what will happen at least once a week. 

This coming week I’m heading down to Florida for just a few hours for a meeting with a new client. Jake and I are flying out for the afternoon to meet with the new client and discuss a new project. Flying to Florida for just a few hours may seem like pretty far to travel for such a short period of time but I say why not?  I’ve only flown out a couple times for face to face meetings with new clients. But really what’s the worst thing that could happen… well a lot of things I guess but that’s what makes taking risks so much fun. Maybe you roll a seven and lose all your money but maybe you hit it big. 

Lately I’ve noticed that a lot of people using social media are being relativity positive. I’m not saying everyone is, some use Twitter and Facebook as an outlet to vent. Sometimes it just feels easier to be negative and complain. But I personally see a lot more positive tweets and updates in my stream. I guess it comes back to the if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all. Do you think anyone really wants to follow or be around you if you are always miserable or taking out your problems on the world? Uh, no. I wonder if there is a way to take the positive attitude we all put forward online and move it to our everyday life?

Yesterday when I was riding my bike I hit a pot hole and got a flat tire at the same time someone drove passed me in their car and yelled something about bikers. My day was not off to a great start. I started to tweet something like “Not a fun way to start your day… hit a potholed and got a flat tire. #FML.” Instead I spun it and said “First flat on the new bike. Looks like I’ll be switching these to armadillos when I make it over to the bike shop.” Although I had to walk a few blocks, I decided to take the positive and not have that event mess up my entire day. The day turned out to be a pretty good one and it was very productive. Don’t think it would have been that way if I had complained publicly.

If you handle what life throws at you with a more optimistic and cheery outlook, positive people are going to want to be around you, all the time. Wouldn’t that be a lot more fun to be around then someone complaining all the time and being negative about their lives. If you’re being positive online take it offline and enjoy life that much more.

I love creating successful work as much as the next person but I always try to remember to share what I’m working on as I’m creating it. Whether its the final product or samples of some works in progress. And I love when I see people take the time to tweet out links to works in progress or share finished projects on Facebook. I feel like not enough people do it though. So many times people I know only share their work when they put together a new reel or are starting to look around for a new job. Maybe its because they don’t want to look too self serving or to seem like they are bragging or being too much of a self promoter. Well I think its important for you to talk as much as you walk. Your talent needs to be shared and you can’t just have your head down pounding away at the keys every day… You have to find time to connect with the right people and share with them what you’re working on. Sharing a work in progress is fun for people to see because it can gather interest, make people feel like they get a sneak peek at a project or even add some suspense for people who follow your work.

Admit it, when you are proud of something you’ve created, you like to show it off to other people. And in showing if off you are actually performing a crucial role. If you are a freelancer, you need to show off your skills so that when someone is looking to hire they remember that project they liked of yours. If you run a company or work fulltime its also vital to get your work seen in order to attract future clients or future employment.

So why not take some time out of your day to talk about and share what you’re working on? Shout it and share it for everyone to hear and see. Become that unabashed self promoter. A true hype man. Use social media networking sites to share what you’re working on and to demonstrate your abilities and aspirations.

We’re back with the fifth episode of InsightIntell, thanks for joining us. In this episode Case Morton and Brad Chmielewski talk about the value of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one of those staples of the business world. You need to make sure that you treat your profile as if it were your resume. Case and Brad give you some advice on how to fill out your profile and stay connected with business and personal contacts.

As with most social networks, the benefit comes from when you interact with other members. Let us know if you’re having success connecting and building a brand with LinkedIn, we’d love to hear your story.

Thanks for joining us for the fourth episode of InsightIntell. In this episode Case Morton and Brad Chmielewski talk about the social network Pinterest and how you can can use it to promote your business and brand. Case and Brad discuss ways they are using Pinterest and how you can use Pinterest to reach the ever growing audience.

If you’ve had any success growing your brand and reaching a new audience with Pinterest, we’d love to hear about it. And if there is anything you’d like us to talk about or any questions you might have, please let us know.

The freedom of working for yourself can be great because you can focus all of your time and effort on just creating. It’s a great feeling when you first go at it, you have all these ideas and concepts you want to explore that had been bouncing around for months or even years with other creative people. But every once in awhile you can find yourself stuck in a creative funk and you have no one to help get you out of that. When you’re at an office or even a co-working space you can easily turn to the person next to you and ask for their quick thoughts on the problem. Just this quick outside prospective can add new creative energy to the project that can help you to bring your work to the next level. When you’re a solo entrepreneur finding the opportunities to share and show ideas is sometimes a tough task.

Peter Maxwell Davies said “If you don’t get feedback from your performers and your audience, you’re going to be working in a vacuum.”

You can think of that website your designing or your logo animation the same way, as a performance. Somedays it feels like you’re in this vacuum or bubble and have no idea if what you’re working on is relavent or even good any more. You can lose touch with what other people are working on and what boundaries they might be pushing with their own projects. Great work doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You need to get real feedback from your colleagues and customers. I’m lucky enough to have a very talented fiancée who has no problem telling me when something sucks. It might hurt my feelings or ego for a moment, but it helps me make something better. I also make sure to post samples of what work I’m doing online. Social media is a powerful tool for criticism; good and bad. You’ll find me sharing a sample on Dribble, putting up a photo on Twitter or Instagram and every now and then I’ll toss a video of a work in progress on my Tumblr. I know that you can only get better at your craft by working hard and getting constructive criticism; bringing in an outside perspective on things is always valuable.

So the next time you’re working on something, grab lunch with a friend and get their thoughts. Or toss it up on-line and get some outside opinions on it before you release the final product. You may just find that what you’re working on gets better once you reach for ideas outside your bubble.

Twitter is all about making meaningful connections and why shouldn’t some of those connections be new work ones. Using Twitter to find work is something I’ve been very successful with and since I’ve already shared in previous posts how to use Facebook and LinkedIn, I figured Twitter was the next one to cover. There isn’t one correct way to use social media, these are just a few ways I’ve made it work for me.

First when you sign up make sure you use your real name, first and last, this is what will show up on your profile box. Then be sure to choose a Twitter handle that says who you are and the best way to do that is by making it your first and last name. It’s simple and allows people to instantly know your name when they see you in the real world. This is something I didn’t do when I first joined and at this point it’s really not in my best interest to change it. I’m known on many design and video web forums and other sites as beerad, so it’s easy to find me across multiple networks. Next is to think about your photo. Just like on all other social media networks this is the first thing people will see of you. Adding a professional looking avatar or something with your face visible is the best way to go; you want people to clearly be able to recognize you offline if they run into you. Mine, which could use an update, is a close up of me holding a beer in my hand. It may not seem very professional but since I co-host a video beer podcast it works out well for my purposes. The next step is to find users to follow. This is one of the first issues that a lot of people have when they sign up or think about before they sign up. Who to follow? To begin with, follow your real life friends. Twitter offers the option to search your address book to see who is on twitter. Next see who it is that they follow and then see who those people follow. But as I mentioned before don’t just start adding a ton of random people, instead start more slowly and look for quality, not quantity. Choose to follow those whose content matters to you and who you think would benefit from yours. Once you’re following a few people and hopefully they are following you back you need to choose a Twitter tool that will suit you. Using just Twitter.com is inefficient if you are going to use Twitter to it full capacity. I recommend either a desktop or mobile app like Sprout Social, Hoot Suite, TweetDeck or Seesmic. Now you’re ready to tweet and begin finding those hundreds of jobs that get posted everyday.

To start off with, begin by engaging with the people you follow, ask questions, share your knowledge and post interesting links. Tweeting about your field of work shows knowledge and expertise. While the details of your workday may be mundane to anyone outside your line of work, they can be of great interest to your clients if they’re interested in following along with the project (and if you’re willing to give them your user name to follow). Also by reading your tweets that show off your expertise, other people will begin to find you and follow you. Get your voice out there and share what you know, this doesn’t take any secret Twitter knowledge. Just think of it as talking with people you “know” online. But don’t just talk at your followers, talk with them, remember building connections isn’t a one way street.

Sure your friends may know of potential jobs and getting a hook up straight from them is great but there are a ton of job requests happening that you can be monitoring at any given moment. My favorite feature for finding new clients is to use the Twitter search. Here’s a Twitter search for #motiongraphics & #webdesign which returns the most recent tweets including those hashtags! People posting jobs will more than likely use the hashtag feature in Twitter. This is more effective than not using hashtags, due to the signal to noise ratio. For example a hashtag tweet of #motiongrphics, is going to stand out more than just someone tweeting something like, I love motiongraphics. Using the hashtags help to improve visibility. I’ve be able to find a dozen people looking for #motiongraphics help this way and I’ve also been able to find new, interesting and creative people to follow this way as well. If you are using one of the Twitter clients I mentioned, you are able to save your searches to quickly access and monitor them. Another great feature for monitoring potential new employers is by building a Twitter List. Follow and add the companies you are interested in working for and the people who work at these companies; there is a good chance one of them could ask for help on an upcoming project. With the power of Twitter you can be right there instantly to offer your skills. Even if they don’t choose you for the job, you were able to potentially start a conversation. Don’t be afraid to join in conversations happening on Twitter, since it’s only 140 characters it’s easy to chime in with a quick tidbit.

Now that you’re involved and engaging 140 characters at a time, make sure you get your name out there. Get yourself listed on sites such as WeFollow and Twellow. These will place your twitter page in categories and give you another way to be found. Also put your Twitter ID on everything so you are easily accessible. For example: link to your account through Facebook, LinkedIn, Email signature and put it on your business card as well.

More then Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter takes time. You need to use the service to figure out what works for you and how to best showcase your experience. Be yourself to be genuine. Let your skills shine through naturally. But remember Twitter isn’t something you can just check once a week and expect to know what is happening. It doesn’t stop just because you are not there. You have to keep up, other wise you can miss out on that dream job.

I know a lot of people who are surprised that LinkedIn hasn’t vanished into social media history with Friendster and MySpace. I tell them that once you’ve begun to use LinkedIn for what it was intended for “a networking tool that helps you discover inside connections to recommended job candidates, industry experts and business partners…” you begin to see why it’s still here and what makes it so valuable. If you’re not already on LinkedIn, you definitely need to be, even if you already have a job you are happy with and plenty of clients knocking on your door. Sign up! It doesn’t take long to set up a profile; you never know what the future could hold or what opportunity you have been missing out on. No matter how the economy or your career is doing, having a strong network is a good form of job security. Don’t wait until times are tough to start networking, you’ll just be playing catch up. With LinkedIn and other forms of social media it’s not always who you know but also who knows of you. Building a large and effective network never hurt anyone. Having an up to date resume available online for anyone interested is highly valuable. Everyone wants to know who it is that they are doing business with and this provides an easy way for people to check you out.  LinkedIn is in my opinion the best option for a resume, you are able to list your job history, educational background and get recommendations from past and current employers and co-workers.  Since LinkedIn is a business relationship tool it makes it a perfect place for job searching. Just like any other tool, it is only valuable to you if you use it and know how to use the tool properly.

When signing up for LinkedIn, there are a few setting that you want to make sure that you have right before adding all those great connections. Be sure to sign up with an email address that you own. Use a personal email address, not a company one. In the event that you lose your job, your employer technically owns your account and you may lose access to it. It is all right to list your employer’s email; in fact you should add it there. Just don’t list it as your primary email, make it a secondary email so that you can change it if needed. Next be sure to select your vanity URL. If it is available, using your first and last name or your website name; I have my vanity URL set to digitalhitchhiker. Once you are all signed up you need to make sure that your profile is complete, accurate and professional. As I mentioned in my previous post; with your Facebook profile, your profile photo is the first thing people see when they come to your page. No matter how much I enjoy the photo of myself eating that giant sandwich from Big-Ass Sandwiches you wont find it as my LinkedIn profile photo. Next make sure you put your full work history but you are not limited to that one of two-page rule they preach in College. Be as complete, truthful and professional as possible with your knowledge, skills, and achievements without going overboard. You want to impress the person reading without turning them off and make sure you come up on as many search results as possible. Again just like I mentioned on the “Leveraging Facebook To Find Work” blog entry, do not lie. The information is out there and you will be exposed.

Having your resume looking great is killer but one of my favorite features on LinkedIn is the ability to get and give recommendations that show up right on your profile. This makes it easy to establish yourself as an individual who is competent and trustworthy. Nothing beats a rock star recommendation from a boss or past client highlighting your strengths and showing they valued working with you. How do you go about recommendations? The simplest way is to ask. Those past and current connection if they enjoyed working with you and value your experience are more then happy to sing your praise. Another way is to provide recommendations for others because once they post your recommendation on there profile page, LinkedIn has a call to action for them to return the favor and you’ll find that most people will. You want to have a good group of connections on LinkedIn of past and current employers and co-workers to get these recommendations from. Don’t be afraid to connect with the boss of your last job as long as you left on good terms. Or if you are a current intern at a company connect with the staff in the office, they are more likely to accept you on LinkedIn than on Facebook. I accept whenever an intern at Daily Planet ltd. asks, I like to see where they go once they leave and if they were a good worker I’m more then happy to help them find work in the future.

A new feature that was added recently is great if you are a designer and have a behance.net profile. Behance and LinkedIn teamed up to showcase your portfolio right on your profile. Many of you already know I love the behance network and have been using it for over two years. It’s a valuable tool to showcase you work and shouldn’t be skipped if you are a design, editor, motion artist or animator.

Linkedin doesn’t end at your profile and the connection, the creators and developers have build a lot of useful tools onto the site as well. One of those is LinkedIn Answers, which is an easy feature to forget about on the site. Answers allow users to enter questions that they want answered and other users answer these questions. Just like on Facebook and Twitter it is important to engage with other users and the Answers section of LinkedIn is perfect for that. It will allow you to connect with new people by presenting yourself as knowledgeable within your field. Another feature that’s just as important as LinkedIn Answers, is the Groups. The Groups are simliar to the ones on Facebook and they allow to you interact with people with similar interests and quickly discover the most popular discussions in your professional groups. Having an active part in discussions in your groups help showcase your knowledge and allows you to interact with possible future connections. Anyway you can show you are knowledgeable in your area is a plus. If you have a wordpress blog that relates to your industry be sure to install the wordpress application that imports the feed into LinkedIn. One of your connections may notice something that catches their eye and head over to your site to find out more about you and your work.

Since the point of this post is to use LinkedIn to find work, I can’t forget about the portion of the website called Jobs. Keeping with the LinkedIn spirit, you are able to see any relation that you may already have to the jobs posted. If one of your 3rd Degree contacts post a job, you will know exactly who you need to talk to in order to get your foot in the door. This can be a huge advantage when compared to just blindly sending emails out with your profile or resume.

Finally a simple thing, but don’t forget to just search. Hopefully hiring managers are searching the site and coming across your killer profile but you can also find out who is hiring. The best case is getting to someone in the HR department or a new client via a connection you have, but if that isn’t possible you can still use LinkedIn to find someone inside the company to pass your resume or profile on. Nothing beats having you name mentioned from someone already on the inside. Also if you search and realize you have a connection that has worked at this company or with this client before, ask them for the inside scoop. They could have the key you’re looking for to land that killer job.

If you haven’t noticed a trend already, the key to using social media to get work is to be professional, engage with your network and community and use the tools that have been given to you.

Facebook is not just about connecting with family and friends anymore it’s also becoming an effective networking tool. If you think of Facebook as a place that you like to keep separate from work, then that’s fine there are plenty of other tools out there to find work. But if you’re looking for work why not use every tool you can to connect with the people hiring. Companies and recruiters are becoming more focused on using Facebook, both for looking up potential candidates and finding new hires. If you’re looking for work either as a freelancer, for fulltime or a potential job move in the future why not leverage this powerful social media network.
You never know which one of your friends or acquaintances are going to have a job opening or know of a job opening and are going to think of you. Word of mouth works and someone is more then happy to recommend you if you are a good worker and have genuinely grown to trust and like you from what they have seen of you from Facebook. Since Facebook’s main focus is a place for friends, people get comfortable and end up posting things or sharing things they wouldn’t normally share. Don’t forget Facebook is rather public, unless you are savvy enough to lock down your profile it’s easy for people to see what you are posting and sharing. I personally have my Facebook account open, I’m happy to live in public and hope nothing I share or post now will come back to hurt me in five or ten years. I have a few things I’d recommend if you’re looking to use Facebook as more then a place for friends without going all business as if you were on Linkedin. You shouldn’t post anything on Facebook or put anything on the Internet you don’t want your mother or potential employers to see or know about you. Assume that everything that goes into the cloud is available for public consumption and that means any future employer can find it. If you don’t like that bad photo a friend posted of you on Facebook then un-tag yourself or ask the person who posted them if they would mind removing them. You’d be surprised how understanding people are with removing something you think might be inappropriate. Even if you’re only using Facebook to reach out to your existing social network, you might still want to consider revising your Facebook profile to be more employer-friendly.

Make sure your profile is looking sharp and be sure that across the board you are telling the same story on all your social media networks. Don’t lie, the information is out there and you will get busted. The first thing potential new clients or employers are going to see is your profile photo. Make sure it is you and something that looks good. I’m bad at that… right now I think I have a photo of myself eating a sandwich from Big-Ass Sandwiches. So in this instance, don’t follow in my footsteps. Next thing is your work history and education; make sure these dates are correct as I said it is very easy to check if those are right. Also on your profile you should list any volunteer work as well. Anything truthful that can make yourself stand out is worth mentioning. Now that you have your profile looking sharp and professional, don’t forget Facebook is a community. Post updates on work you are doing, either client work or personal projects. Also share your work and career knowledge. If you have a blog, you should make sure those updates are being posted to your Facebook stream. Install one of the applications that not only posts a link to your latest blog entry into the Facebook stream but also use one that creates a note for each post as well. Notes carry more clout then a link in the Facebook eco-system and notes allow for people to leave a comment in a more blog friendly sort of way. With all this work and business posting be careful not to get too serious it can be a turn off, especially for your real friends on Facebook. Don’t forget to let your true personality shine through on your page. Show that you have a sense of humor and have interests outside of work. Be sure to keep them clean and try and keep them unoffensive. Employees and clients want fun people that they can work well with. All of this posting can quickly become a one sided conversation so don’t forget to give back and engage. Like Twitter and other social media outlets you need to build relationships. Get involved with the conversations going on within your network. Don’t just make meaningless comments, add some opinion and in depth answers, engage in proper conversations. Your network will see you commenting in this meaningful way and as I have mentioned a couple of times, it helps build credibility and presence. Through such engagement your network or friends are going to feel more comfortable potentially recommending you for work.

Feeding your Facebook profile and friends with quality content is great but you can’t rely on clients and recruiters just finding your profile or your friends to know you’re looking for work. Facebook is here to connect people, so use it. With so many people on Facebook and with so many people looking for work, don’t be shy about saying you are in the market for work. Your friends, colleagues and people in your network would expect you to help them if they were in need, they are likely to help you in your job search process. All you have to do is actually tell them you are looking for a job. The best way to land a job is still by having someone who already works at a company mention your name. If it’s someone in your network that knows you, they’re more likely to think of you when opportunities are available. Don’t just write a generic status update – “need work”. It’s going to get lost in the stream of updates that happen on Facebook. Instead consider writing a private message to each of your Facebook friends.

Finally, an interesting tool I came across the other day was from a recent New York start-up. It’s called Jibe and it’s hoping to revitalize online job searching using Facebook. And recently it just came out of beta. For job seekers, it’s looks interesting and is something to keep an eye on and give a spin.

I hope that as a job seeker you find this interesting and learned a thing or two. Of course there are other ways to successfully leverage Facebook to network and find a job and I hope you share any of those with me.

Twitter is becoming a great place to search for a job on the internet. If you have yet to utilize social media for your job searching needs, especially Twitter, it’s about time that you did. I have compiled a list of my 10 favorite Twitter accounts to follow to help you find freelance work.

@freelance_jobs

@work_freelance

@joblance_jobs

@allfreelance

@getgradesigjobs

@odesk

@elance

@webbyslist

@thejobsguy

@jobshouts

@JobHuntOrg

Social media has become the fastest growing communication medium in our history. It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million listeners, Television 13 years, the Internet just 4 years and Twitter has added 50 million users in the last six months. For everyone involved, Twitter is becoming a preferred way to create meaningful relationships and stay connected. Still, no one simply signs up for Twitter and immediately knows how it works and what to do. No matter how complex a new site or service is, if you take the time to learn what it has to offer, you will see it’s value. I believe that Twitter is one of the biggest values in social media marketing, especially for freelancers. Social media and especially Twitter has completely changed the way I interact with my peers and clients. I’m able to create a direct connection to the clients I want to work with and them with me from anywhere and anytime. For me, Twitter has really replaced Facebook as my main community “hub”, clicking links when people share their blog posts and sharing links to my own work. Before Twitter and other forms of social media, we were limited by phone, snail mail and email to drum up new business and drive growth. Those forms of communication also cost money and cut into the bottom line. Where the cost of sending a message to your followers on Twitter is free and takes less then a minute of your time. Twitter has opened the channel of communication so that anyone can interact and build instant connections. The playing field has leveled out and you can have just as much of a voice as the big agency or design firm down the street. Getting that voice heard is what will benefit your business and as a freelancer your business is you.

Once you have joined the conversation it’s finding people to follow. Don’t just start adding a ton of random people, instead start more slowly and look for quality, not quantity. Choose to follow those whose content matters to you and who you think would benefit from yours. I personally find the discovery tools on Sprout Social to be very useful for finding new people or companies to follow. It uses a combinations of keyword searches and general recommendations to match people you may find useful. There are a ton of other great tools online to help you find useful users as well like Twitter lists or Mr. Tweet.  Now that you have people you are following and some that are following back, your next step is to begin to turn those initial connections into fruitful relationships and meaningful connections. How? You need to show that there is a ‘real’ person behind that Twitter account…not simply the name of a company or corporation. Engage with people, ask questions, make comments, share links and actively interact so others see that you are interested and care about what they care about. Don’t just use this tool to promote yourself and boost your ego, remember it shouldn’t be a one sided conversation. A simple and fast way to add value to your followers and interact with new people is to re-tweet. If you see a tweet that is particularly helpful or provides a link to cool info or work that you think others would appreciate, use the re-tweet function built into Twitter and pass it on to your followers. Be selective with your re-tweets, simply re-tweeting everything will quickly become noise and could create a black mark on your Twitter reputation. Forming relationships and connections on Twitter takes time, just as it does in the ‘real’ world. With large number of new users joining Twitter every day it’s likely some of them are going to find what you have to say beneficial. Be yourself and do your best to add value to your community and your business may grow in the process.

Word of mouth works and social media is playing a huge roll in spreading that word. There was a recent poll on Freelance Switch that showed just that! The last numbers I saw on the poll showed about 60% of people get their clients from word of mouth. It’s said that good work leads to more good work and it’s likely that some of that new work coming in is from happy clients spreading your praise to their friends. Think about it, when you need something like a photographer, programmer, designer, or editor you either open up your web browser and do a google search or you ask people you know. Either friends in person or your friends & followers on Facebook or Twitter. Most people are more likely to take that recommendation from someone familiar and trust-worthy to them then that blind google search. Even if those “friends” may just be avatars on Twitter that you hardly know. Why? Because recommendations are generally perceived as incentive-free, the person making the recommendations has nothing to gain except being a kind person. Unlike what you may find on google or in a sponsored ad, you don’t know if they can be trusted.

Word of mouth marketing doesn’t exist in a vacuum and it can certainly develop and spread without any efforts on your part especially with the number of people who are creating connections on the internet. If your work is seen as creative, interesting, unique or valuable by others then word will spread. When you are looking for work of course you can’t rely solely on word of mouth to get new business. No one source can drive growth in your business, word of mouth is just one of the strategies to help you on your way.