Freelancers are Stronger Together
Posted by The Running Start in B2B Marketing, Entrepreneurs, Online businesses, Random Thoughts on April 4, 2012
Over the past few months, I’ve made it my mission to meet with other freelancers in my industry to learn how they manage their own 
businesses and get their feedback on what I’m doing right or wrong. The more I meet with other freelancers, the more I realize that no one can run a business completely alone. That’s why I truly believe that freelancers are stronger if they work together.
So, if you’re just getting started in the freelance game, here are some recommendations that I have collected and learned from my first year of running my own small business:
1. Grow your network and form a support group.
It’s important to meet regularly with other freelancers or small business owners to share ideas and get advice on how you can improve your business. There are now plenty of events and conferences in Toronto that facilitate meeting other like-minded professionals. A few examples are SproutUpTo, FreelanceCampTO, Enterprise Toronto and more.
2. Follow and engage with other freelancers through social media.
Building online relationships is just as helpful as building in-person relationships. It’s important to develop a good rapport with a few other freelancers on platforms like Twitter, Quora and LinkedIn so that you can pose questions to your colleagues when you’re in a jam and/or can’t find the answer yourself. To find other freelance professionals, you can use tools like Search.Twitter.com (search for keywords and hashtags related to your profession), or search for other freelance professionals on LinkedIn. But always remember that your relationship will grow even further if you eventually meet in person.
3. Read and comment on blogs and articles from other freelancers.
Many freelancers (including myself) write about their experiences to share with others. So, make sure you visit and comment on their blogs and articles to build a relationship with them (and even share your own advice). Here’s a great resource that was recently Tweeted by one of my social media friends @thecoffice: The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Successful Freelance Marketer http://freelanceswitch.com/freelance-marketing/beginner-freelance-marker/. Even though the guide is geared to marketers, there’s some useful information in there for any freelance professional.
Have a tip on another way that freelancers can work together to help each other grow their business? Please share in the comments section below.
Image source: iStockPhoto.com
Patience and Perseverance are the Keys to Content Marketing Success
Posted by The Running Start in B2B Marketing, Online businesses, Storytelling on March 28, 2012
Many of my friends and colleagues ask me why I blog so often (on my own blog and on other channels). As many social media and content marketing 
gurus will tell you, it’s extremely important to be consistent and have patience when it comes to generating sales leads via blogs.
Building an audience and rapport/trust with potential customers through content marketing is a huge time investment. But the payoffs can be quite amazing. Just remember that no blog or social media profile is ever an overnight success. Just like Tweeting and posting updates on Facebook, it’s important to stick with it – even if you feel like you’re just talking to yourself in the beginning. Over time, it truly is amazing how many people will start to recognize your efforts and contact you to find out more about your services.
For best practices on what type of content marketing stories can help to generate sales leads, check out some of my previous posts:
- Why Digital Storytelling is Just Like Being Single
- Seven Thought-Provoking Corporate Storytelling Ideas
- Influential Corporate Storytellers in the Digital Space
Good luck with your content marketing commitment. Just remember to think like the tortoise and not the hare! Good customers come to those who persevere.
Image: http://www.veezzle.com
Deals for Canadian Startups and SMEs: Preview of the GaggleBiz Launch
Posted by The Running Start in B2B Marketing, Entrepreneurs, Online businesses on March 20, 2012
On April 2nd, Toronto-based group buying startup GaggleUp Inc. and Post Media (Financial Post) will launch a strategic partnership called GaggleBiz. The new service will offer
business
to
business
daily
deals,
targeted to small
to
medium-sized
Canadian businesses.
I asked Mark Skapinker, founder of GaggleBiz a few questions to find out how his company will stand out in a sea of group buying websites, and why it will be a hot destination for Canadian SMEs and startups.
How will GaggleBiz differentiate itself from other daily deal sites out there?
The group buying space is finally growing up. It is no longer what the Groupon clones do: “throwing together a deal and buying some consumers”. Merchants are looking for the long‐term value in group buying, customers are looking for new and different deals. GaggleBiz will sit between the small business and the merchant trying to cost-effectively reach small businesses. By using the power of group buying and pulling together many small businesses, we facilitate a much lower cost interaction – this leads to much lower prices for small businesses.
Why go after the small business market?
Small businesses usually pay a premium for everything: be it products like coffee supplies or paperclips, services like IT services, insurance, cell phones or backup. The main reason is that they are making much smaller purchases than larger corporations and it is expensive for sales forces to reach them and service them. GaggleBiz is focused on delivering low-cost products and services to small
businesses.
What do you anticipate to be your biggest challenges in growing an audience/user base?
From the start, GaggleUp has offered a differentiated service. However, the crowded nature of the group‐buying market means that we need to constantly get beyond the noise of the Groupon clones. As we partner with more large corporations and our offers become further differentiated, it becomes easier.
GaggleBiz be offering great deals from top national and regional business brands to small-medium size businesses across the country, ranging from 50% to 90% off. From deals on office supplies, to maintenance and operations services, to technology and software solutions – there will be something of value for any SME or startup in Canada. Visit http://gagglebiz.com/ to enter to win fabulous prizes and get exclusive deals.
Why Digital Storytelling is Just Like Being Single
Posted by The Running Start in B2B Marketing, Online businesses, Storytelling on March 14, 2012
When a man or woman is dating, their friends will tell them to just keep themselves busy, do activities that they love, and show the world that 
they are fun, well-rounded and approachable. But this strategy takes time as a person builds up their confidence, gets out there to meet a lot of potential suitors, and inevitably makes the right connection, at the right moment, with the right man or woman.
The same can be said for digital storytelling through social media and blogs. When a company is trying to attract new customers, it’s extremely important to peak your target audience’s interest. This requires that the business shows the world not just what its key product features are, or where you can buy the product — it’s necessary to make a lasting impression with that audience by sharing what really makes the business, and it’s people tick. This involves telling many different stories and sharing many different details about the business, and its industry, through a variety of channels and touch points.
In a real-world situation, you would never walk up to a perfect stranger and tell them all of your personality traits and your interests without getting to know the other person better. You would ask them questions to find out who they are and where their interests lie. From there, you would naturally share information and personal stories that relate to them specifically.
That’s what makes digital storytelling through social media and blogs such an organic way to attract new customers. As you share stories that describe the heart of your business and your industry expertise, your customers will share their interests in specific topics (via comments and social media channels) – to help you create and share even more stories that inevitably attract the right customer, at the right time.
So, when you’re crafting your next corporate story, think about how you would want to tell it to someone on a first date – it might just be the spark of a new customer connection.
Image source: http://www.freepik.com/free-vector/magnet-clip-art_397476.htm
Will our digital memoirs ever tell the real story?
Posted by The Running Start in Random Thoughts, Storytelling on March 7, 2012
In the past year, a number of new online tools have emerged to help catalogue and track a user’s digital memoirs. From the launch of 
Facebook’s new timeline feature, to the growing popularity of pinning our hopes, memories and dreams to Pinterest, to the ability to collect and weave your favorite photos, Tweets and social streams into a tale on Storify, the possibilities to recount a sequence of events seem endless.
But these digital scrapbooks of one’s personal history likely do not reflect the real, or whole story. I see it more like users are revealing a scattered collection of moments online. If this isn’t the case, then many of my friends’ lives could be summarized on Facebook timeline as follows: you are born, you attend university and a few major events, you randomly “like” some cat videos, photos of friends’ vacations and children, to be continued…
As privacy concerns grow online, my compulsion to share personal experiences and memoirs on sites like Facebook and Google+ seems to be fading – especially when I know that these companies plan to share my personal data to advertisers.
Therefore, like true human memories, there are many holes in my digital story. And until my online privacy is better protected, my timeline will remain a mystery, rather than a biography. Let me know your thoughts about sharing your personal story online via social media.
Image source: iStockPhoto.com
Why It’s Ok to Promote the Competition Via Digital Storytelling
Posted by The Running Start in B2B Marketing, Entrepreneurs, Online businesses, Random Thoughts on February 29, 2012
When I played competitive soccer growing up, our club coaches would sometimes share their best players up an age group if they were 
short on numbers for a game. The same rules can apply to digital storytelling.
I often link to competitive blogs, videos and presentations when doing content marketing for my business. You may think that it’s wrong to send your social media followers and blog readers to competitive stories or websites but I see it differently. Here are my main arguments for why you should promote the competition via digital storytelling:
- Focus on growing your market. As a small business owner, it’s in my own best interest to grow my market. If my competition is contributing to the conversation about digital storytelling and B2B marketing, then I feel that it is necessary to share links to their stories with my potential customers and followers. The more that your customers and industry are informed and interested in your services, the better it is for everyone. This leads nicely into my second point about collaboration.
- “Collaboration is the new competition.” This statement has been discussed a lot lately in blogs, keynote presentations at events and social media. What this statement means is that we can no longer work in silos. We all need to collaborate on occasion in order to complete a project or achieve a goal. In fact, I’ve personally started reaching out to other professionals who do the same kind of work as I do in order to find partners for future projects. So, by promoting your competitors, I believe that you are leaving the door open to attract future collaborative efforts.
- Your customers will thank you for it. I often share competitors’ blogs, research and whitepapers with my current and potential customers. If there is data out there that will help your customer to succeed, then it doesn’t matter who the information came from. Yes, there’s a risk that your customer might leave you for the competition – that is always a risk. But if you put the customer’s needs first, you are setting yourself up for success.
Image source: iStockPhoto.com
A Woman’s Obsession With Pinterest Explained
Posted by The Running Start in Inspiration, Online businesses, Random Thoughts on February 21, 2012
Over the past few months, I’ve read a number of articles about the female obsession with the popular social photo sharing tool called 
Pinterest. A recent Washington Post article dubbed it “crack for women.” So, I was reluctant to try out the new platform for myself, thinking that the last thing I need to worry about is another social media platform to manage.
However, after dedicating a few hours of my holiday Monday to playing around with the tool, I am now hooked. Although I know that there are more productive things I could be doing with my time, I predict that I will spend many more hours completing and updating all of my virtual Pinterest pin boards – selecting images of my favourite recipes and home decor items to stick under different category headings.
But why did I so quickly become hooked on Pinterest? Basically, I see it as a virtual scrapbook which allows me to arrange all of my favourite hobbies and interests in one place. So, if you like to organize and categorize your life in a visual fashion, this platform is definitely for you. It’s just like rearranging your closet by colour coding – something that many women enjoy and attempt to maintain.
While there are other social media tools and apps that enable people to arrange and share photos, Pinterest is extremely user-friendly. Plus, many people have now enabled their “pins” (i.e. images they’ve attached to their virtual pin board) to be shared in their Facebook timeline. So, the Pinterest user base is growing rapidly as women share their interests with all of their Facebook friends.
I predict that consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers and marketers will be flocking to this tool in droves to better understand their customers. That’s because I believe that Pinterest enables you to capture a glimpse of a person’s psyche – identifying the items and activities that they covet and enjoy.
As a blogger and small business owner, I see a lot of promotional benefits to using Pinterest. I can organize and promote stories that I have written, or link to ideas and images that have inspired me to write future stories. I can also see what my followers or the people I am following are interested in and then tailor stories and images to suit their curiosities. One important caveat to note is that the image that bloggers use to promote stories on Pinterest needs to be extremely visually compelling. It’s just like judging a book by its cover – you need to entice people to find out more.
It’s also important to note that you need to copy and paste the URL of the blog post or website that you’re referencing into the comments section when you pin your image. Unfortunately, the images that you select don’t automatically link back to the website from which you’ve pinned them to your board.
So, if you’ve created a Pinterest board worth noting, please send me a link. I’d love to find out how other people are using Pinterest to share ideas, products and more. In case you’re interested, here are the boards that I’ve started. Stay tuned for more photos as I visually make sense of the things that Pinterest me.
Image source: iStockPhoto.com
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Subscribe to my feed- Celebrating My 100th Post: Who Would Have Ever Thought… May 23, 2012I am excited to announce that today marks my 100th blog post on this website. As I look back over the past year and a half since I started this blog (and my own business), many exciting things have happened. It truly is amazing to see how my small business has evolved as a concept [...]
- Should The Globe and Mail Adopt eMarketer’s Content Marketing Strategy? May 15, 2012Last week, one of Canada’s most prestigious national newspapers, The Globe and Mail, announced that the business was moving to a “metered pay wall system this fall, asking online readers to pay if they read more than a certain number of articles each month.” This bold move by the Toronto-based publisher follows a trend that was started [... […]
- Celebrating My 100th Post: Who Would Have Ever Thought… May 23, 2012
