Who’s in charge here?

by Georgina Guedes, freelance writer, editor and member of the South African Freelancers’ Association Executive Committee.

One of the scariest things that you have to confront about going freelance is that there’s no one in charge. When things start to go wrong, when you’ve been treated unfairly, when payment is late or when a relationship turns sour, you have no one to turn to but yourself.
There’s no rulebook, no governing body, no ten commandments and no HR manager. When you find yourself in a tricky situation, you have to find your own way out of it, with nothing to support you but your own experience and hopefully that of friends and colleagues who might be willing to share their ideas with you.

The sad fact of the matter is that as a freelancer, you are less valuable to a publication or client than its own employees. I’ve even found this to be true of companies that I used to work for, for whom I now do freelance work. It can be a subtle shift – in situations that were resolved in your favour in the past, you suddenly find that you’re no longer supported by management.

Even though you might have had a contract, a verbal agreement or a great relationship with a previous editor, you can easily find yourself in a situation where you have to stand up for your rights, but risk losing business.
For instance, I used to work at Company A. After I went solo, they asked me to do some project work for them. I put a lot of effort into the preliminary planning, after which they suddenly realised that they had the capacity to handle the job internally. They cut me loose, and weren’t willing to pay for the initial time I’d spent on the job. When I worked for them, they were great at acknowledging my overtime – and of course it hadn’t mattered to me as much because they were paying my salary at the end of the month.

At the same time, I was benefiting from the relationship and doing plenty of work for other departments at their organisation. Do I think the situation was fair? No. Was I going to have a huge fight with them about it? Also no. Sadly, they were far too valuable to me as an ongoing client for me to make too much of a fuss about one issue of non-payment. I kept the relationship sweet at the cost of a single paycheque.

The rules of relationship management
 
There are a couple of things to bear in mind when managing a freelance relationship.
1. Always be polite. You may be a journalist in good standing with years of experience, and you may be cleverer than the teenager who has just been appointed as editor, but he is your client.

2. Push your case, but not too hard. If you disagree with something that your client has done, from providing a bad brief to dodging payment, your initial response should still be polite. Alert them calmly to your reason for concern, raising it as a topic for discussion rather than as a direct challenge or criticism.

3. Once you’ve come up against a brick wall (which doesn’t always happen), you then have to make the decision about what to do next. Are you going to fight it out and risk damaging the relationship, or are you going to agree to disagree, and hopefully secure future work. It helps in this situation to weigh up whether this is the kind of disagreement that is likely to repeat, or is an isolated event.

4. Try to work out what measures you can put in place to stop the incident recurring. Ask for clearer briefs in future (in a polite way), mention that you prefer to be paid on delivery, request that they show you any changes that they make to your work before printing it with your byline.

5. Be very careful about involving others. As I mentioned earlier, company’s loyalties lie with their employees. If you really feel that you have been wronged in a way that reflects poorly on the professionalism of the publication and it needs to be brought to the attention of somebody more senior, by all means escalate it. Try to phrase it as a request for intervention or mediation rather than telling tales. And accept that while there’s the possibility that your transgressor will get a rap over the knuckles, there’s also a good chance that you’ll alienate everyone in the process.

6. Take clients out to lunch or coffee. Pay.

7. Drop occasional emails unrelated to work, but related to the relationship. “I remember you said you liked macramé. I saw this great site…”

8. Don’t get furious about missed payment deadlines if you always miss your copy deadline.

9. Don’t miss your copy deadline.

10. Accept that sometimes it is worth walking away. Even then, do so with good grace.
To try to head off any troubles before they arise, always:

• Sign a contract (even though you might not enforce the clauses later).

• Extract a clear brief and make sure you understand it.

• Deliver good work, that you have double checked, by deadline.

• Communicate any issues as they arise.

• Behave professionally at all times.

This all paints a pretty bleak picture of the client-freelancer relationship, and this is certainly not the case.

I have forged many fantastic professional relationships and even friendships in the three-and-a-half years that I have been a freelancer – some of them even in spite of the occasional quibble or spat. I wouldn’t change my freelancing situation for the world, but I am often confronted with hard choices, and have sometimes accepted a resolution that I see as unfair to preserve the greater relationship.

Oh, and join the South African Freelancers’ Association (Safrea) – http://www.safrea.co.za/ . The support and advice of a network of experienced professionals is worth its weight in membership fees.

Originally published on TheMediaOnline – http://www.themediaonline.co.za/ 

South African Freelancers' Association Executive Committee - http://www.safrea.co.za/ 
Email:  georgiwrites@icon.co.za

HTC EVO 4G: One of the Best Multimedia Handset

by Kusum Pugalia on May 21, 2010

HTC has recently launched its latest offering HTC EVO 4G (with Sprint). which is regarded as the second best smart phone available in the market after HTC Droid Incredible (Verizon). The all new EVO 4G showcases numbers of powerful specifications and a lot of features with all encapsulated in a sleek and stylish design. However, the fact which is proving a biggest drawback for the handset is the unavailability of 4G connectivity for all the users. Some of the prime features of the handset are 2.1 stereo Bluetooth, 8 MP built in camera with dual flash, Android 2.1 OS, 4.30 inches TFT screen etc. Here it is to be noted that the HTC EVO 4G is the first device launched in US which supports 4G network. […] [Article first published on Gadget Reviews. Click on the title to read full article]

Opening that digital door: 4 critical checkpoints for companies

By Andy Hadfield

Social media, digital engagement, online conversation – they’re not buzzwords as much as a deemed necessity these days. But where I used to encourage companies to jump in and get their toes wet, my thoughts on the space have changed slightly over the years.


Yes. Digital engagement can offer some incredible long-term rewards, but be prepared to do it properly. The first couple of years you’ll be fighting a continual battle to stop your engagement efforts turning into a “Guest Book” of nightmare proportions. Give an audience a voice, and the first thing you’ll hear are the complaints. But there are a couple of things you can be aware of as you go into the space.
Here are four digital checkpoints to examine before you open that first “Hi, welcome to our space! What can we do for you?” sentence in cyberspace.

1. Congregation and community – the expectance of engagement

In the increasingly fragmented world of brands and messaging, we’re going to see more and more people grouping themselves into niche communities around content and utility that is immediately relevant to them. The long tail of the Internet provides the perfect platform for small groups of people to share their interest in specific topics or services. Look at the growth path of any popular Facebook group to understand the trend: zero to hero overnight, and then wane away slowly as the “next thing” comes along.

Human beings have this strange need to be treated as individuals, more so in the digital age. They want to be heard, they expect you to listen and they want to feel invested in your brand. Otherwise, you may as well be competing with the vegetable aisle. Does that carrot look good? It looks OK. Buy it.

Usually, business has tried to satisfy this need by providing friendly telephone touchpoints (or the beloved old Contact Us form) where traditional engagement can occur. It’s becoming expensive, and we’re starting to realise that when a greater cost is incurred – there damn well better be a bigger bang-for-buck on the horizon.
For example, you have a problem with a brand, you phone its call centre, you happen to get a delightful call centre agent who sorts your problem out. It costs the company a fortune in infrastructure and creates a warm, fuzzy feeling between customer and call centre agent. No one else knows about it. No one else will. Digital Rands not working quite as hard as they should?

The true allure of digital engagement (and the most frightening component) is the ability to turn these negative customer experiences into positives ones – in front of the entire world. Target the niche communities and engage with your customers on their level. The carrot-loving people with red hats and two cellphones? Yup, there’s a niche community out there waiting for your vegetable brand.

Opening the doors of your brand to transparent community engagement enables a company to create a multitude of additional, relevant touchpoints. Now you’re looking at a brick-and-mortar office, call centre, online chat room, niche forum presence, social media presence and more, with the digital components of these touchpoints costing a fraction of the traditional ones. If there’s one way to cut through the clutter of modern life, it’s to build the infrastructure to have those niche conversations. Not only with your current customers, but with the customers of the future.

If you can do that while wearing a red hat? All the better! And of course, the niche conversations are immediately more relevant and therefore present slightly less risk than broad-based engagement.

2. Bricks to clicks (without losing the human touch)

Sigh. Bricks to clicks. Who else is bored of that buzz term? Has it happened? Not really. Blame technology infrastructure, communications infrastructure, the education system or whatever you like… we’re still going to be reliant on traditional structures for a while to come. That doesn’t mean we have to stop trying. There is something quite special about building up the confidence to purchase a product or service online, entering those credit card details and having the whole process play out as smoothly as possible. We don’t really use travel agents to book local air tickets anymore, do we?

Why aren’t we moving as fast as expected? In my opinion, the biggest problem is that digital channels have lost the human touch. In an immature Internet democracy like South Africa, if anything goes wrong, customers crave the warm body to fall back onto – or shout at, if you like!.

That could be a call centre, a one-hour turnaround email assistant or even “live help” on the digital property. Whatever it is, when we feel unsure, we need another human to reassure us. Until our digital services can get that human touch back, sales will remain small and targeted to the “digital native” space – those geeks and technology adopters who will always be ahead of the pack, but unfortunately don’t pack enough volume to make up good business numbers.

Has your business got its “warm body backup”?
3. The art of simplicity: complex is no longer cool

A billion websites, a million media messages, thousands of magazines, hundreds of TV channels, a couple of social networks, a plethora of flashing banners, one times partridge… and a pear tree.

The digital world we live in is becoming increasingly complex and cluttered. In space, as they say, no-one can hear you scream. Isn’t it amazing that technology was invented to streamline our lives, making things easier to cope with. In effect, it has achieved the opposite – making communication and information so easy that we’ve become flooded by the very channels we created. In this media mess, the modern digital customer strives for simplicity.

Task-focused browsing is the name of the game. If a customer comes to you to buy a widget, move everything else aside, leaving only the simplest and easiest way for them to purchase that widget. Lifestyle, brand, content, added value – these all sits in the engagement space now. Those who want to engage, will. But to keep the sales ticking over, remember what you sell or provide in the first place. And provide that service above all else.

If you’re battling to see how this fits in, take yourself through the Amazon purchase process, and compare it to yours. There’s room for improvement, but Amazon make a pretty good benchmark for online acquisition. And while you’re soaking that in, go challenge your web forms. Do you really need that ID number and the date of birth?

Brave companies will start allowing registration into their services (and eventually product purchase) using existing social profiles such as Facebook and Twitter. Why have two usernames when you could have one? All in the name of simplicity!

4. Life on demand: the rise of mobile

Marketers in South Africa are only beginning to scratch the strategic surface of what can be accomplished on our most pervasive digital channel. In 2009, I attended a fascinating conference, Mobile Web Africa, in which I was struck by the unexpected, yet pioneering “we don’t really know but we’re trying” attitude of SA’s mobile experts.

Our digital attention hasn’t been fully focused on the mobile channel, but don’t worry, we’re a nation that catches on fast! The always-on, information-on-demand nature of the mobile device is changing the digital scene in ways we have yet to imagine. If I can “Google” an answer to my question in 0.5 seconds, why does your call centre take two days to get back to me? These are the questions the mobile youth are going to start asking as they enter the consumer force. And these are the questions your businesses are going to have to answer as we move into the next era of connectivity.
You’ve heard the back-of-cigarette-box stats? Ten million mobile Internet users in SA. Five million Internet users in SA. One in six Google searches in SA originate off a mobile device. MXit has 15 million+ users. They go on. All pointing to the fact that the appetising numbers, the glimmer of some real digital “volume” on the horizon, all sit in the mobile space.

What makes it harder is that we’ll need to design mobile content, services and applications to the most fragmented market of all. The base-level user with SMS. The mid-level user with MMS and rudimentary WAP. The high-level user with a feature phone (camera and perhaps 3G). The smartphone user with a mobile computer in his/her pocket. And you thought you just needed one website?

Just remember, the reward meets the effort required. Mobile phones are the payment devices of tomorrow – and if you can sell, and sell easily on them, those 35 million active SIM cards might just become your customers.

As a pilot for engagement, mobile devices are tantalising. How about a customer feedback mechanism through short code SMS? You then have the choice of getting back to them or not (it’s a reality) – but at least you’ve opened that door.

* Article first published on http://www.memeburn.com/

Not all traffic is created equal – a guide to ecommerce

By Conrad Owens


While recently preparing a report on the annual traffic to a large corporate website, I had many opportunities to pause and reflect on the nature of Internet traffic and the difficult job businesses have in procuring this traffic, holding on to it, channelling it in the right ways, and turning browsing into the business that will help the company increase profits and improve its bottom line.


A successful online business transaction has so many variables — some technological, but most human, that make the process of conversion less than an exact science. Web metrics have gone some way towards providing answers for measurables like click-through rates, attrition rates, cost per acquisition and return-on-investment (ROI), but they tend to address the what of browsing behaviour, and not the why.

The understanding of real user behaviour on websites is often based on broad assumptions made from analytics and user feedback, or information from small usability testing groups that could never hope to replicate the nature and complexity of traffic coming to the site.

I often draw the analogy of trying to understand the myriad of ways that shoppers interact with a bricks and mortar shopping mall. Could one possibly track in which entrance they came, the paths they followed from store to store, where they window shopped, paused to interact with promotional material, looked at products they didn’t buy, the time they spent on each activity, money spent or frequency of return visits? It’s virtually impossible. The reality is that the number of permutations are endless, and this reality also applies to web shoppers in many instances.

We also need to understand that the more sophisticated and intangible your product and brand experience is, the more ways people will find to interact with it online. Fast moving consumer goods have simpler paths to conversion and higher conversion rates than products like training courses, retirement annuities or online legal advice. Your job as an online business architect is to understand the ways that your products, the interface and your audience work together most effectively, and optimise the entire experience to take advantage of that.

So what should you be thinking about when trying to understand your traffic and the way it converts online?

Measure with analytics

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Although many webmasters have analytics solutions in place, it’s often the reporting and interpretation of these analytics that don’t go far enough in adding any real business value. It is no longer enough to be looking at the number of visits, unique visitors, page impressions or form submissions.

With a little learning, Google Analytic’s (free) Advanced Segmentation tools allow you to dig deeper into user behaviour by segmenting user types based on diverse variables ranging from geographic location to entrance page. It’s easy to build up multiple segments and test these against your conversion events to see which user groups are your most profitable. Thinking about these groups allows you to take programmatic steps to recognise users from those groups when they enter your site, and direct them more swiftly to conversion scenarios.

Analytics can also tell you about bounce rates, page depth, time on the site and entrance and exit pages, all of which provide important clues to how users are engaging, or not engaging, with your content and products.

Another useful tool in Google Analytics is the Goals and Funnels feature. This allows you to configure up to ten pages in a defined conversion path through the site, as well as to assign a monetary value to the completion of each goal. The interface provides clear representations of attrition rates through page sequences and can assist greatly in optimising pages and also your calculations of cost per acquisition or ROI.

If you are running paid display or search campaigns, event and campaign tracking will give valuable insights into the performance of particular ads or creative executions and how they convert. You should be making retention decisions about these ads as your campaigns progress, but even if your team is not agile enough to juggle creative material quickly during shorter campaigns, the data can be analysed afterwards to optimise your next one.

Using and understanding analytics can be time consuming and resource intensive, but there is no doubt about the value these metrics can bring if they are used consistently in providing ongoing feedback into design and execution.[...]

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