Make Your Own Lane: Why Twitter Is Not Working For You?

Forget about leads, conversions and sales through twitter

All the tall claims and success stories you heard about Twitter seems to be just hype. You are in such a pathetic state. The worse thing is even after months on twitter, you do not seem to have enough followers even. Loyalty is far fetched.

Image Source Credit: Canva Design

The Problem:

So basically, you have created your profile however you are not able to figure out why Twitter is not really working for you. Here is your checklist to assess what you are doing and what you are supposed to do.

The Basics:

1.   Your handle: It better be a smart, catchy, short and memorable one

2.   Your profile: Is it complete, clear and does it raise some curiosity? It does not really have to look very professional but at least does it hint that you mean business being here?

3.   Your website or blog: Have you included your website link or is it just your social page or LinkedIn profile?

Why you follow:

4.   Branding: Is it for creating awareness or leads? Your twitter strategy will depend on what you are planning to achieve by your presence here.

Who you follow:

5.   Identify people – personal and professional contacts

6.   Identify business entities and resources – Those who are in your business life cycle and tweet about subjects pertaining to your domain, business, function, business interests and industry.

7.   Identify prospects – Today, tomorrow or day after, they will convert. We need to know them. The more we know our customer profile, the more apt solution we can present.

8.   Influencers and bloggers – I do not know about others but I follow them because this lot create the best content, tweet and re-tweet matter that supports my micro learning almost on a daily basis

You may want to follow your Hollywood heartthrob. However that will make no difference to your own branding or business.

If you follow me and if I see that you do stuff that can help me in my business, what is the probability you have that I follow you back – Obviously close to 100%. What chances do you have that the Hollywood guy will follow you back?

What you tweet

9.   Are your tweets random, spontaneous, repetitive, self-obsessed, current or just pointless?

10.                Are they relevant to your business only with one objective - self-promotion?

11.                Are your tweets useful for your followers?

If you have only 40 followers and you tweet the same information about your company, product or service on a daily basis, what impact will it have on your followers?

Focus on growing your follower base. Focus on point 11. That requires some doing - A quick image like the one I posted here, to stand out; Some great hashtags - You will know soon that you need to think before you tweet.

If you do not compose your tweets mindfully, that affects your brand image and leaves your followers a little confused regarding what  you want them know, what you want to say, what you do and the purpose of your tweet.

According to BBC studies, the attention span people have today is that of a gold fish so anything beyond 400 words is likely to remain unattended even by the most intelligent mind. So the rest of the checklist will continue in the next blog.

Meanwhile, connect with us here if you want a quick evaluation of your twitter profile and tweet behavior. We do this for our BECKON Aspirants to lead them to their outcomes.

Make Your Own Lane: Are You Ready To Deliver Independently For An International Client?

A few beginners I have worked with want to be advised on what skills they should get started with to establish freelancing income online

How exactly is the coach expected to know what you are good at? If you specify what skills you want to offer as services, a coach can provide a few avenues relevant to that.

The next thing the beginners expect the coach to confirm – if it is the right time to go ahead and create an online profile in any freelancing portal and begin bidding.

This is seriously so juvenile. If you know what skills to offer and ready with your offering, why do you need an external nod to get started with your side hustle related efforts – When to get started is absolutely your call

Then you have another type of beginners who are driven by what skills pay more. I guess most of us, at least once think from this angle unless reality strikes hard.

Recently my interaction with one of the beginners goes like this – I have captured inputs I received about skills date wise here.

20^th September

Aspirant expressed interest in the following however realized soon enough that these require a great deal of learning.

a) Graphics and Designs            

b) Digital marketing              

c) Fun and lifestyle 

d) SEO – Keen to learn

22nd September

a) Advance Excel

b) Power point Presentation

I normally offer to review their samples to see if it meets international standards, before they upload their portfolio

29^th September

a)   Power point – I receive a sample.

b)   Excel – I receive a couple of worksheets

I shared tips how to do a good presentation and suggested the aspirant to send a revised version.

2nd October

Immediate (Based on current knowledge)

a)   Power point

b)   Research

c)   Word

d)   Excel

In future (Subject to learning)

a)   SEO

b)   Blogging

c)   Whitepaper

A practical demonstration was shown to the aspirant (Beginner) – how you read raw draft slides and develop it to a sleek 7/8 slides presentation with a strong storyboard.

14^th October

a)   Web Research and Power point

b)   Article Writing

c)   MS Word and MS Excel

15^th October

Resume shared by aspirant with following inputs, seeking my thoughts

a)   Efficient in MS word, MS excel, MS power point.

b)   Efficient in creative and content writing in English

The aspirant had created a profile in a portal and wanted to create gig for content writing

After multiple rounds of discussion, sharing examples, reviewing samples etc. for power point presentation (one skill) – this went on for close to a month and the first gig being offered is Content writing (completely different skill) for which I have not seen any sample from the aspirant.

17^th October

I asked sample of content written by aspirant with the same objective –to check if it is good enough and meets international standards

I have not received:

1] Any sample for content writing

2] Revised version of power point presentation incorporating my tips

3] Revised version of resume for which I shared my perspectives.

18^th October

Gig was created for power point presentation.

Please read the above sequence again date wise. You can tell easily that the skill choices are being done without much thought or rationale.

In this context, here are my tips for beginners:

Identifying the right skills is critical in freelancing. If unsure, take time to get there, micro learn to bridge the small gaps

There are basically three types of thinking the beginners entertain in their minds.

1] I have this skill (say Content Writing). I know how to do this and I will learn the rest when I have an order to deliver.

Are you planning to practice with real time client's assignments?

2] I have created a few slides (Power point presentation) – I kind of know it is not quite up to the mark. I do not have time for any more rehearsals and revisions at the moment - I will do what it takes in the final stage. I will offer multiple revisions to client

Do you think client has time for all those revisions? Will the client ever return to you with his future assignments?

3] I cannot waste time now in learning. I want to deliver orders first to see how it goes.

Will the client waste his time and money for this kind of expertise?

Few of the beginners have 25 years experience in corporate roles and never thought they were wasting their time doing the same thing for years together for a steady pay check. If suddenly they have all the urgency to get started with real time clients, though under prepared, without adequate skill enhancement and learning, this pursuit is likely to end as abruptly as it started.

Prepare. Practice. Perform. 

Connect with here for detail skill evaluation

Gig Economy: How To Choose Your Gig Buyers Judiciously

If you are a beginner with just a gig or two in the online arena, you will be pretty excited when a buyer contacts you for the very first time. It immediately boosts your confidence just knowing that a potential prospect has reached out to you for one of his projects based on what you have uploaded in the portal as your portfolio.

When you realize it is not company branding, someone’s recommendation or any sales pitch that has got you this first connect it does give you a high as it sinks in your mind - that it just all about you and nothing else here – that worked in your favor so fare. It is purely you and your online credentials that encouraged the buyer to contact you and take this forward.

Now in your excitement, do not forget to evaluate who you are working with. Here are a few clues to assess your buyer before you proceed.

Reviews

It is important to note what kind of reviews the buyer has gained for himself. If you read of a few of them, you can use your discretion to rate the buyer as per your mental map and decide, if you would like to work with that buyer.

Badge

What kind of badge does he carry? Some portals recognize a few of their buyers as top buyers based on their payment track, dispute record and interaction with sellers through different orders.

Amount spent

Some portals provide amount earned by sellers and amount spent buy buyers on different projects. I somehow do not bid for buyers who have not spent a dollar yet. I am not sure, if this is the right approach. I am too busy to deep dive in to their background to check whether they are new, do they just initiate projects and not award it to any one and assess past records.

However if the project is interesting, well described that hints at the earnestness of the buyer, it is green signal for me, regardless of whether the buyer is new or yet to spend

No of Bids

For a simple project if there are too many bids already, it is better to let it pass. Either the buyer will award it to the first good resource he finds, without checking the rest of the profiles or he may delay awarding for an indefinite period (Read considerably long time) as he will evaluate each and every profile. The buyer may actually be efficient, organized and in one word great however, you cannot keep yourself available for this project till the time he decides.

Project expiry

If you notice the buyer is likely to take a call three months later about the project it is a huge signal that he is either under-prepared for the project or he must have uploaded his need/ project in multiple forums and he is aware this hiring will be a long time process.

Project description

When you read a project, you can easily assess the effort taken by the project owner to communicate the dynamics of the project to the target audience and articulate their current need. That is a huge hint about the genuineness of the need and you can be sure to get adequate support from buyer in execution if you bid and win the project

Buyer queries

Some buyers tend to ask a lot of questions in their projects along with the bids/ proposals – You can read the questions before you bid. If those are experience related, then probably they are using them to filter appropriate profiles. If they are new, or being cautious or had bad experience the questions will be mostly trust related and you got to answer them accordingly.

Intuition

Above all respect your intuition. You can ignore all that is stated above and proceed with a project, be happy about your bid and submission if that is what your inner voices asks you to do. 

  

Beyond financials

Keep three things in your radar when you bid – How will this buyer make you rich?

·         Add to your learning

·         Improve your portfolio experience and exposure wise

·         Financially.  

    

     It is not always about the revenue. It is about how it adds value to your existing profile for better opportunities in future. How you decide who to work with and the qualifiers you use to filter them is the foundation for your success.

Why a Personal Website is much more effective than Resume?

A resume is one dimensional – Work specific.

It does not indicate how you are as a person. Does it? It lists the firms you worked, responsibilities you had and your achievements. Does it tell your potential employers or prospective clients anything about your social intelligence, your integrity or your spiritual inclination? It doesn’t.

If you want to lull yourself to sleep thinking these attributes are not really essential today – in the world of business. Try and remember your experience in detail when you worked with a resource having brilliant credentials and pathetic moral standards. Does it make you feel good about those achievements or recognition? If it does, you are just another common victim of syndicate thinking and herd mentality.

Being human is the God of all strategies.

Anyone who has made it to the top is not because of how well they fit in the existing syndicate thought process but how they distinguish themselves from group thinking and how deeply well connected they are  to themselves, ethically

Those professional smart resume services must have tweaked your personal interests to such an extent that you cannot relate to it any more – Glorifying one of your simple interest to take care of your terrace garden as “Supports Initiative on Environment Conservation”. 

Mincing words is also a serious compromise on integrity.

Most Resumes Are Just Waste of Ink/ words

It takes anywhere between 2 to 6 hours do write a good, honest, customized resume (I know that because I charge my buyers accordingly. My fees are not based on the length of their profile but the amount of crap I have to cut from that document that tells the world today in 2016 what they did in 1989 or when the dinosaurs lived). Relevance is the key word. 

HR Team has barely 7 seconds to see your resume from the tons they receive. It is common sense, if the first page is good enough, that gives them a reason to look at Page 2.

The more senior you are, the more it is critical for you to project different dimensions of your persona. A professional resume has its limitations.

A life by design, not by default!

You are an Engineer by default (Academically).What are you otherwise – A traveler, a family oriented person, a powerful negotiator, a credible environmentalist, a cyclist, a marathon runner, a Karma believer – Do you get the drift?

You are not just the sum total of the roles you had in different companies. You are much more than that. That is why it makes sense to create your own website to highlight how even one service that you offer can fit in various industries and market ecosystem, impacting results positively.

Needless to say, the old thinking that only celebrities have personal website to build their fan following, is really a thing of the past. Anyone whose life is not just job or pay check centric - who lives a life designed by him, not a life that came to him by default due to his academics or conditioning - has more to offer to the world with his combined portfolio of services than just the experience he gathered in work environment. His contribution is many-fold.

What are your potential services?

1. As a volunteer, which firms do you assist for free and how?
2. As a domain expert, how much do you charge to build intern’s career in the same field?
3.  As an Engineer, what projects do you handle independently end to end at a reasonable fee?
4.  As a consultant, what kind of companies do you support, recommend solutions to and own results?
5.  As a network marketer, what products do you endorse or refer to others that help people who are looking forward for your advice?
6.  As a coach, who do you train to brighten their future for a fee?
7.  As a blogger, what topics to you write about?

How much of this will fit in your resume? 

A website can articulate all of these and more. The best thing is - you continue to make it current that encourages prospect to reach out to you for who you are, what you are capable of, what you continue to deliver in different projects and how they will benefit from your services.

Here is a link with step by step instruction on how to create a blog 

To know more about content development for critical web pages based on portfolio of services, blog maintenance in the initial months and tips for effective content selling click here