This morning, I made myself a cup of tea and sat at my desk a little shy of 7:30 am to start my working day. As a freelancer, it is pretty much my computer, telephone (sometimes), inbox (always) and myself. Today, I have no translation project planned. After a long, hectic period of hard work, the last couple of days have been somewhat quieter, which has allowed me to dedicate more time to various marketing and CPD (Continuous Professional Development, for those of you who are not familiar with this acronym) endeavours.

So, as I sat down at my desk with my cup of tea, I was already planning the programme of the day. It is often too easy to get sidetracked when you work from home : the washing needs doing, the postman rings the doorbell, the phone keeps ringing, dinner needs to be sorted out, etc. As a matter of fact, the postman did ring the doorbell today – special delivery for my dear fiancé…

Most freelancers who work from home will know that : being productive at all times can be a real challenge. It is easy enough to work fast and efficiently all day on a project, particularly when a deadline is to be met. Some days, you wake up to an inbox full of messages, from people requiring quotes or offering you new projects to work on. Some days, you have more time to yourself. Sometimes, there is too much work for a single person; sometimes, you can spend some time catching up on industry news, or… marketing your services.

In search of inspiration, I decided to start my day with a couple of hours of CPD building and watched a webinar on Proz.com, entitled Be Special: Standing Out in the Language Services Industry, by Suzanne Deliscar, a fellow translator. The webinar tackled using Social Media as a marketing tool. I normally take notes on the presentations I watch and attend, in order to keep a record of the training undertaken (understandably, some clients expect to see some proof of CPD from the freelancers they collaborate with). I also print off and keep any receipt, which the course providers send to me. Mrs Deliscar’s advice was interesting and eye-opening in some respect. She made the “stand out from the crowd” piece of advice – which you get from every single marketing course – clearer and more accessible, if you ask for my opinion. She has inspired me to some extent, hence my decision to spend some of the day writing an article for my ‘blog’ – or, should I say, the blog section of my Website – and finding out how to automatically publish all relevant articles on my Facebook and Twitter feeds. I have also spent some time updating my LinkedIn profile and joining different, interesting groups; I did all these in an effort to ‘get known’. However, joining groups is not enough. You need to contribute, and contribute intelligently, please. To be fair, Mrs Deliscar has a point: if the relevant people in the industry see you around and know that you are knowledgeable, they are more likely to trust you and want to do business with you when you approach them. They might even approach you themselves. Therefore, my next objective is to make myself more ‘visible’ on the Internet and Social Media scene and to contribute more.

Being so busy recently, I almost stopped marketing my services altogether. This is obviously a mistake, which I might be paying for now. There are two types of translation clients: those who offer recurring work and those who need a new collaborator to help them to cope with extra work for a few weeks, or months. Clients who require a recurring collaboration are a nice addition to any database, as they will ensure that you are never out of work for too long. The second category of clients is equally excellent, in that it provides variety, but also extra work during quieter times. However, these potential clients need to know that you exist if they are to use your services. So, I have started a new small-scale marketing campaign, to find the elusive new clients in need of my translation and proofreading services. I have to admit that every single of my marketing campaigns has brought good or satisfactory results. By this statement, I mean that they usually met the average 1 to 3% success rate. In other words, sending out mail, responding to ads, setting up Internet profiles and building a Website, etc. has generally yielded some positive responses and earned my business new clients.

For all the above mentioned reasons, I think it is worth continuing to explore different routes, with the aim to market my services in an more effective way.