If you are a creative freelancer or agency, showing off your skills, your work and clients online is a great way to build your brand and find new customers. Over the years we have seen more and more portfolio websites with really unique and interesting designs show up everywhere. Freelancers and agencies tend to put a lot of extra effort into standing out from the crowd and for a good reason. Potential customers have many options today and browsing for the best matching and most skillful partner for a project is easier then ever.
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
How to Keep Your Creative Agency Growing in the Long Run
Building a creative agency is not a short-term effort. You may be able to get up and running fairly quickly, especially if you’ve got some great connections among other freelancers already. But getting enough work to keep all of you busy is only a first step.
Exactly how far you want to grow your agency is a question of your own goals. You may have modest ambitions, like building up enough business to be able to afford some great health insurance. You may have bigger plans, like being able to bring home six figures a year, beyond what you need to pay everyone working for you. No matter your goals, however, you’ll need to keep growing your business to meet them.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
The Differences Between Marketing Yourself Solo and Marketing an Agency
When you’re first marketing yourself as a freelancer, you have to make sure that your clients trust you. The entire point of your marketing is to convince each prospective client that you, personally, will do an awesome job on their project. But that approach doesn’t work when you won’t be personally doing every piece of work that passes through your agency. You’re going to have to make some major changes in how you handle marketing in order to get your agency’s name out there.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
How to Structure a Creative Agency
One of the key decisions in establishing a creative agency is how to structure it. When you’re working on your own, structure doesn’t matter very much. Dividing your workload, even just between administrative work and client work, doesn’t seem to matter overly much when you’re the person who will need to do all of it, no matter what divisions you come up with. But when you may wind up with several people working on client projects and perhaps even an assistant on the administrative side of things, you need to be very clear on who is responsible for what.
The danger of not clearly establishing structure is that you can easily wind up in situations where you need to pay someone for time in which they did no work or did the same work that another person had already completed. Putting a solid structure and clear workflow in place that shows how different tasks pass through your business processes are necessary for an agency to grow.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
How to Evolve from Freelancer to Agency
Most freelancers are ambitious. We have to be if we want to build up a solid client roster and bring home enough income to justify not getting a day job. But that’s not the end of the line — in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t take a freelancer all that long to build up a full-time income. Then we have to ask ourselves what we want to do next. There’s not a clear career path that we can follow, like one might climb up the corporate ladder.
One of the options that appeals to many freelancers is building an agency, which can allow you to keep working on the types of projects you like in a much larger quantity. Running an agency isn’t exactly something to jump into without prep work, but if that’s the direction your freelance career is evolving into, it’s a surprisingly practical option.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
9 Critical Questions to Ask When Hiring a Social Media Agency
A few months back, New York Times Bestseller, Gary Vaynerchuk said that 95% of Social Media consultants were “bozos”. Although Gary apologized for his hyperbole, on some level we agree that businesses would be better off if they asked their agencies better questions up-front.
Since social media has taken a front-seat role in many communications plans it pays to dig deep and really understand what your social media agency has “under the hood.” This isn’t new, the web is filled with helpful agency hiring checklists, but most of them ask the wrong questions.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
5 Rules for Working With an Agency
Hiring an agency (whether an ad agency, a PR group, a design firm or a general-purpose marcom outfit) can be fraught with peril—for the one doing the hiring and the one being hired. I’ve hired and worked with more than my share of agencies over the years and have learned many lessons the hard way.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Freelacing vs Agency Life
Few professions lend themselves to the activity of freelancing such as design and illustration. For many people the choice is determined by their behavior. For those who do not like risk, will less likely be attracted by the freelancing lifestyle. However, the irrepressible creative will find working in an agency limiting and oppressive. There are many ups and down to the paths you can take. In this article will go over the major factors of this decision.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
21 Excellent Portfolios and Design Agency Websites
It has been a while since we last showcased Design Related Websites here, so today we decided to check out how is it that design firms, designers, and other creative agencies are presenting their work. From design studios to brand firms and freelance designer’s portfolios, you will see a variety of ways to showcase one’s work. It’s always nice to browse sites like this to see the approach companies and individuals take to get the attention of potential clients. Check out the examples and let us know what do you think.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Freelacing vs Agency Life
Few professions lend themselves to the activity of freelancing such as design and illustration. For many people the choice is determined by their behavior. For those who do not like risk, will less likely be attracted by the freelancing lifestyle. However, the irrepressible creative will find working in an agency limiting and oppressive. There are many ups and down to the paths you can take. In this article will go over the major factors of this decision.