More visibility = more money? Expert Forward #1

"It’s great to be good at what you do. But people need to know you’re good."

- Tom Hirst, web development consultant and freelancing mentor.

At the first day of each month, I'll publish a Linkedin article with what I'm learning about what helps experts move forward.

It's for freelancers, professionals and company founders who (want to) do good work and make people aware of it.

Is doing good work enough? I agree with Tom Hirst. I believe being good at what I do AND being visible about it will:

🔑 lead to more recognition of my work, faster.

🔑 make me leverage my skills and resources better,

🔑 differentiate me from my competitors

🔑increase my value and impact on the world,

🔑ultimately will get me better paid.

It will lead me to have more freedom to choose what I do with my time.

My mission is to help people get there, to that freedom. That is why I'm a big advocate for freelancing and networking. That is why I started this series of articles.

Follow the hashtag #expertforward to get notified of the next article.

I divide the practical tips and information into three chapters: Profiling, promotion and productivity

Profiling

Competitive advantage

I started compiling a list of factors that can help professionals to differentiate from and be better than their competitors.

• Capital
• Risk management
• Legal (Licences & Permits, Trade barriers, Regulations)
• Network
• Limited market, niche expertise
• Access to trustworthy suppliers - Operations & Supply chain
• Variety 
• Deep knowledge 
• Access to information
• Access to talent
• Learning curve 
• Team - Values 
• Know-how
• Loyalty 
• Service, personal, experience 
• Economics of scale - create once, use many times, templates 
• Independence 
• Socially and environmentally responsible
• Innovation
• Adaptability 
• Design 
• Speed 
• Technology
• Patents
• IP
• Location
• Pricing
• Customisation
• Customer switching costs 
• Reach
• Experience
• Brand loyalty 
• Reputation
• Quality 

If there is something missing from the list, please send me a message. I'm currently compiling a more in-depth article explaining all factors and how they can be applied to individual professionals.

Linkedin headline

The headline on your LinkedIn profile is crucial. I see many freelancers stating they are Owner/Founder/CEO of own business. Or professionals saying they are open for work. This doesn't say much to prospects and employers. It's better to state what you do. This will also then more likely show up in searches.

Promotion

The 30-day "put myself out there" challenge

When I was learning about LinkedIn I got reminded about the best way to learn is by doing. I set up a 30-day content plan and posted various content types about my life as a freelancer every day and made a report out of it.

By doing that I learned

• What my network liked to engage with and what types of content brings results.
• How to publish the content the right way (LinkedIn can still automatically crop images in a bad way)
• To ignore the inner voices saying: "Are you sure now that you are not full of yourself?", "Who would listen to you?", "There are others who know much more and are better at saying it"...

Now I will also do a 30-day sketch note challenge practising what I learned in a visual thinking workshop I followed last year.

Marketing for freelancers

Tom Hirst, whom I quoted at the start, has a great blog post about Marketing for freelancers on his website.

Productivity

Focus by a challenging question

I love variation and learning. But this makes it difficult to focus. One question I asked myself was "What if you could work only 2 hours a day, what would you do?".

Trying to answer this question brought me the urge to think about what I want to achieve and how to get there.

My answer would be to focus on increasing my value in the market, growing my network and share my expertise by creating and publishing content. This newsletter is a way to achieve that.

Online meetings

I participated in the "End meeting madness! A crash-course on how to run meetings that everyone loves"- session by Marina Lynch and Nil Roda during the Online Training Festival.

There I was reminded of how important it is to set a clear reason for a meeting and work on the agenda together with the participants.

I got a list of typical reasons for meeting listed by Visually from one of the participants, Linda Bücking:

• Status update meetings
• Information sharing meetings
• Decision-making meetings
• Problem-solving meetings
• Innovation meetings
• Team building meetings

Hint: The first two types of meetings can also be emails.

I thought this list was helpful for saying no to some meetings and plan the needed meetings better, by e.g providing some information upfront instead of presenting it during a meeting.

Hope you enjoyed this article! If you have feedback, ideas or questions, feel free to send me a message. If we aren't connected on LinkedIn already, do send me a request! I 💜 connecting.

🖤💛❤️ Making freelancers stronger is my mission with the Freelancers in Belgium community, Check: www.freelancersinbelgium.be. We connect freelancers and supporters with each other to share best practises, tips and resources for starting and running a freelance business better. Be part of it by joining our FB groups.

💜💜💜 I also help freelancers, professionals and companies to profile themselves as experts in their fields on LinkedIn.

• position themselves and their services;
• turn their LinkedIn profile into a compelling sales page;
• connect with the right people; and
• stay top of mind with engaging content.

Send me a connection request and a direct message to learn more! Or email me at jenny.bjorklof@gmail.com

🔗 What connects all my activities is my deep desire to help professionals move forward, have more control and freedom over how they spend their time and love the work they do.

☂️ I believe community, events, networking, freelancing and LinkedIn are awesome tools to achieve that. I post about these topics every weekday on LinkedIn. This is also why people call me Super Connector. When I'm not working I cook, walk or jog (often with a dog), read thrillers or business books or just spend time with loved ones.

🌍 I'm from Finland (where I'm a recent owner of a summer cabin), I've lived in Ireland. Now I'm living in probably the best city in the world: Ghent, Belgium. I speak Swedish, Finnish, English and Dutch.