I noticed recently that many of my clients had a hard time wrapping their brains around the idea of social media services and how they could leverage them for their benefit.  So, to help them (and myself by not having to create redundant content) I wrote this document, Leveraging Online Social Media for Marketing Purposes.

There are lots of boutique options that I didn’t cover, but if I gave away all of my sources, they wouldn’t need to hire me!

In the course of creating the document, I did a quick search for other similar resources, and other than the ever-wonderful Wikipedia, I didn’t find much easily digestible information that wasn’t associated with someone trying to sell a seminar, a book, or their services.  Many times, this meant they either explained what something meant, but not how to use it successfully, or, they explained how to use something, but not what it meant.  I felt the interwebs needed a resource that tried to do both.

Feedback is encouraged — feel free to leave comments.

As with every major life decision that you share with other people, there will be the occasionally welcome opinions about how you should go about it, and whether it’s a good decision to begin with. I think it’s always a good idea to bring up your plans to other people because you never know what you’ll learn about yourself, or about them. And either way it’s usually interesting. But one of the effects of this is the inevitable naysayer. Those who believe, for whatever reason, that whatever you’re about to embark upon will fail for innumerable reasons. And no matter how confident you are, their opinions make you question your decision.

In my case — going from a decade of solid full-time work for large corporations to the life of a freelance designer, there are many things to consider. And it’s not a decision one arrives at overnight, if at all. In fact, there are so many people who would never consider working for themselves that there is a long-held belief that there is more security in working for someone else, than working for yourself. I am here to tell you that it is at least as, if not more risky to work for someone else than it is to work for yourself. Beyond any notion of having more control of your schedule and project destiny, if your income comes from diverse sources, you are *more* secure working for yourself, than if you work for someone else. If you have a single job working for a large company, and that company restructures, or gets bought out, or the recession causes them to cut back, you can lose your job. And there you are. With no source of income. If you have multiple smaller jobs, for multiple people, and one doesn’t work out, you have all of the others.

I’m not saying it’s easy — there’s no falling back on others or blaming someone/something when things go wrong. It’s just you and the quality of your work, and your ability to communicate effectively that keep you afloat. But to me, that’s the *reason* to work for myself. I *like* being invested in what I’m working on. I *like* knowing where it’s going and how it will affect things. I *like* that the buck stops with me. And, I like that I can live wherever I want because my work is location independent….

And out of kindness, many people still tell me how risky it is — how if I move somewhere with fewer jobs because it’s more affordable I better have a back-up plan, and how freelancing without face time is a pipe dream. And yes, it’s risky, but not any more risky than staying where I am and not feeling satisfied with my work. And, yes, living somewhere that doesn’t have tremendous job opportunity will make it more difficult to find a job there if that is important, but if I had to find a job working for someone else, why couldn’t I move again? And, yes, “facetime” can be important, but as we move forward, there are better and better ways of creating that connection with people from afar, and it becomes less and less important for us to be in the same room together, and most of the people I’ve done work for I’ve never met. I’ve noticed a definite gap regarding that thinking — how those whose whole professional career has been during the time with the internet was critical, or those who have embraced the internet economy whole heartedly completely understand. And while it’s not that important to me to help those who don’t understand, it is important to me to not let their thinking make me doubt myself or my goals. Just because not everyone sees the path to get there, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

As my husband and I think ahead to our next move, we’re considering something that hasn’t come up to any great extent for us before: how what we want in our home will be significantly determined by the fact that we will both be working from there. We both regularly work in our current home, me in a rather sunny breakfast room in which we’ve got a desk, and he on our sofa in the living room. But in the long term, that’s very impractical, not only for the health of our eyes and our backs, but also for our marriage. We really each need to have a space where we can keep things however we like to make working more efficient. Even less critical things like the amount of tea we drink while working has meant that we’ve added “instant hot water” to the list of must-haves.

We were just in Portland, Maine — one of the places we’re thinking of relocating when we’re ready to be full-time freelancers later this year. At the beginning of spring (when we were there), it wasn’t as obvious, but during the long stretches of frigid winters they have there we can both imagine that having plenty of space in your house to stave off cabin fever would be critical. But how practical is it to heat a huge house through 6 months of winter? And unless we have solar, how well does the idea of a $400+ heating bill each month factor into our desire to live well with less money? Even with wood fires and the warming aerobic activity of chopping wood.

As of this moment, we’ve decided that we would each like to have our own office space that isn’t shared with something like a dining room, but can serve double-duty as a guest room when necessary. Ideally, these office rooms would be located near both a bathroom and a kitchen, and would have enough space not only for our desks and various peripherals, but also for filing, and clean workspaces on which non-computing projects may take place. They will have good natural light, and plenty of wall space for art and a corkboard on which we can pin whatever’s important. Since neither of us have clients coming to the house, we don’t need a meet & greet public area, but I will need a space in which to do pottery which can be very easily cleaned, and wired with its own circuit for the kiln, which will need to be adequately vented.

In my mind, this means we’ll need a house that is mostly on one floor, with a small out-building in which I can build a pottery studio. We saw lots of spaces like this in Maine, which is promising. Our next stop is Portland, Oregon, where heating bills will be lower, but still a consideration, and it’s more expensive per square foot of space. It’ll be interesting to compare the two after that trip.