Your frequently asked questions: answered by tutor Muriel McClymont

 

Q1. What’s the difference between portfolio working and freelancing?

A1. It’s easy to mistake portfolio working with freelancing and there are certainly many similarities. However by our definition, a freelance delivers the same service to many different clients. For example, a freelance features writer might sell features across the board to newspapers, magazines and company publications.

A portfolio worker provides more than one distinct and separate service, all of which they are skilled and experienced in, to clients in different industries. For example, a features writer builds on core writing skills to move into screen writing and teaching in both feature and screen writing. While the work is based around writing, the skills, market and services are different. Portfolio working was once brilliantly described as “Turbo Charged Freelancing!”

Q2. My two portfolio offerings are poles apart and don’t lend credibility to each other. How do I market this?

A2. This is an issue about professional identities. As a portfolio worker, you may develop two or more such identities. One solution is to market yourself as different people.

Many people have two or more online identities including separate and unique websites, separate Twitter and LinkedIn accounts and Facebook pages.

When you approach new clients, you give them the appropriate business card that directs them to all the relevant online sites. Even if they accidentally come across other information about you online, they have seen what you wanted them to see first.

If your other identities are found on Google, it is important that you have a clear and concise account of how your other work supports what you do, and how, of course, it’s a secondary activity to what you are planning to do with them!

You need to work out what the cross-curricular benefits genuinely are, so that when you explain it, you are completely sincere. Even if the alternative work you do is disliked or not respected by your potential client, they can’t deny that you will make every effort to further your art or income, which is a strong and desirable character trait!

For example, if you are a classical musician and also earn money from pub gigs and busking, your classical customers might be a little disdainful if they find a website showing you in fancy dress, fiddling the Congo! In this situation, it is important not to be defensive or apologise about your less ‘conventional’ musical income. Instead, explain it in terms of what you have learnt from this type of performance and how that adds to your skill in the concert hall. You might say something like: “Yes, I can see how this would surprise you. However, this is an incredibly challenging performance environment in which you have to engage people who would have had no intention to listen to you. I have learned so much from this and it has contributed to improving my performance. It’s helped with confidence, audience connection and technique. I enjoy the challenge.”

Q3. Why is social media important for marketing? How do I learn to use it to my advantage?

A3. Social media has changed the way the world exchanges information and communicates. We are increasingly hearing about people getting work through Twitter and LinkedIn so, for a serious freelance, it can’t be ignored. If you are not aware of how it works, you are excluding yourself from a whole sector of an available market.

Both Twitter and LinkedIn are excellent networking tools with quite distinct characters and etiquettes. LinkedIn is the more professional of the two and is an opportunity to present your CV for the world to see. It allows you to connect to colleagues and potential colleagues. The general rule is to have some connection in real life to those you link to (e.g., you might have met somebody at a networking event and now want to keep in contact). Also, your other connections can introduce you.

Twitter is much more informal and you can follow anyone you like. The art of Twitter is to get people to follow you back. There is a fine balance to be struck between interacting with your followers in a way that is interesting and/or amusing and not solely sales driven. You can also respond to people you would never get the opportunity to speak to in reality. However, if you overdo this, they can block you!

Other avenues for networking online include using Facebook pages and blogging. To learn more about social media, sign up for the next FEU Training social media course (look out for our email updates for the next sessions).

Q4. I don’t know what to sell. How can I identify new portfolio offerings?

A4. The first step in working out what else you can sell, is to take a long, hard and detailed look at yourself and your experience. In addition to your education, training, and work experience, consider hobbies and activities you have done in your free time. Take some time out and ask yourself the following questions (ask friends or family to help if you find this difficult):

• What have you excelled at?
• What do you particularly enjoy?
• What do people ask you to help them with?
• What are your greatest achievements (work and non-work)?

From the answers to all of the above, start to identify common themes and core chunks of interests and skills that you may have neglected or forgotten over the years. Find areas that you would like to develop further. Then, think of people you know who are doing some of this and go talk to them about how you could best target work in this area.

Q5. I’ve got the skills but not the insider knowledge or contacts to break into this new market. What can I do?

A5. Who you know is still one of the most powerful marketing tools any of us can have. This is why you keep hearing about the importance of networking. Taking time, especially in the good times, to keep in touch with a wide circle of people, is your insurance policy for the future.

When you are breaking into a new market you’ll also probably need to take a pro-active sales approach to make new contacts from scratch (for help with sales techniques, see our e-course ‘Business Skills for Freelances here in our digital learning centre).

If you have the skills but haven’t the experience yet, it may be necessary to take a more mundane job in that field on a short-term basis to get your foot in the door. This can be useful in that it gives you the inside knowledge you need and it helps you make those all-important contacts.

It may also be appropriate to sign up for some training or attending events held within the area you wish to get into. This will help you to channel your existing skills into the most appropriate direction and create another opportunity to meet people in the right area.

Q6. How do I juggle all the elements of my portfolio to make sure I don’t let anyone down?

A6. The three elements to making a portfolio career work are good planning, great organisational skills and discipline.

Planning: to make sure you get the work you have, done on time. While taking steps to secure the work for the next six months to a year after that work ends.

Organisational skills: to make sure that your paperwork is up to date and that you schedule in all activities including unpaid ones to keep up with all your commitments – current and future.

Discipline: to keep going to meet all your commitments as agreed and to say no to the projects you’d like to do, when that gets in the way of the projects you need to do.

If you have an overall plan or programme of what you are doing, what you would like to be doing, and a realistic allowance of time to make it happen, this will help you keep the majority of balls in the air.

Another great asset is to have a plan B. If one of your portfolio offerings is completely unpredictable and you want to take other work, it may be useful to work out a plan B where perhaps you have a colleague who could step in and complete some work on your behalf. A client will not see you as unreliable if you offer an immediate solution to what could have been a problem.

Q7. I never seem to have to time to look for new work until I am out of work again! What’s the solution?

A7. The only way to achieve work continuity is to continually look for new work opportunities even when you think you’re too busy. Approximately 25% of your time on an on-going basis needs to be focused on your future work opportunities. This includes marketing, networking and selling yourself.

Committing your time in this way will stop you falling into that awful see-saw of periods of working flat out, followed by a periods of damaging idleness. That’s not to say you shouldn’t schedule in breaks, you absolutely should, but the key word here is schedule!