Category: FEU Training Blog

Twitter Foundations

Many people are not maximising the potential of Twitter to market their work because they don’t understand how to identify and engage their audience/s and then create two-way communication.

This series of four posts aims to help you do this with Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and email - to identify your audience/s and encourage it/them to look at what you are communicating and to actively respond.

This first post is about untangling and quantifying your Twitter network. Whether you are an Equity, NUJ, Writers’ Guild or MU member, your networks and audiences will have a similar makeup including:

• Friends
• Fellow Professionals
• Previous employers
• Potential employers
• Influencing Professionals
• Venues
• Companies
• Festivals
• Events

As we're talking about using Twitter for professional purposes here, I'll deal with 'family' using Facebook, which I'll talk about in the next post.

In any relationship reciprocal sentiment or potential mutual benefit is essential, e.g., do we have something in common/is there something that we need from each other? So, when you’re developing your Twitter audience, consider:

• What is the nature of the relationship being cultured?
• What is the expectation of the relationship, e.g., obtaining paid work?
• What do you need to say that’s of interest to the audience?

What makes up your twitter network?

Apart from the cascading stream of updates that make up your timeline, your Twitter profile provides several metrics to help evaluate and develop your account. Twitter gives the number of ‘Tweets’ (messages you have posted to date), the number 'Following' (the people you’re following) and the number of Followers (people who are following you).

In audience and engagement terms, the accounts you are ‘Following’ are those posting Twitter updates you can see in your timeline and Followers are accounts receiving your updates and hopefully listening to what you have to say.

Is the feeling mutual?

So how can you culture an active presence with realistic results to help you professionally? The count Twitter fails to provide is 'mutual friends' or 'reciprocal followers', i.e., who do you follow who also follows you in return? This is the foundation of Direct Messaging. The ability to message another Twitter account directly is the key to creating and pursuing opportunities in the off-line world.

All projects even those in the seed phase are never harmed by a presence. It is a commitment to the idea once it takes shape. An avatar, web friendly name and a concise 160-character biography in the Twitter profile is a great foundation for a project. It's a manifestation of concept.

As an example, CansChat is one of my ideas from March 2012. It've only promoted it via Twitter. It has a small following (the 95 followers) and follows 109 in the hope of making mutual and information rich connections.

To build my CansChat Twitter networks, I use several tools to understand how these networks are developing and growing.

I started by following Twitter accounts mentioning "stage manager" “Stagemanagement” and "backstage" in their profiles and recent tweets using Twitter's native search facility.

Follow Tool shows me twitter audience counts which for me add meaning to my development decisions. This app answers the questions: who in my followers do I follow, who reciprocates and who doesn't follow me?

• Followers I don't follow = 19
• Users not following me back = 33
• Followers I follow back = 76

 

This tells me and shows me in isolated lists that there are 76 accounts where I see their tweets and they can see mine. I can also direct message these accounts. There are 19 accounts following CansChat who CansChat does not follow back. They receive CansChat tweets but CansChat does not see theirs.

Who do you follow?

How do you decide who to friend and who to follow and who to connect with and who to keep as audience? Not every follower is going have the potential to provide momentum to your projects or avenues to work. In general a low follow count with a high following count indicates a potential authority. For example, @BBCBreaking and @BBCNews:

These are trustworthy sources providing current affairs news updates. Both accounts are unlikely to follow you. @BBCNews is following correspondents, programmes and other BBC news content Twitter accounts. The people who @BBCNews follows (88) is worth a look and a source of developing your Twitter account for potentially more personal and informed news and media contacts to influence your off-line career. This is especially poignant for journalists and writers.

Evaluating sources of industry opportunity on Twitter

For example, Casting Call Pro (CPP) - which I think actors would do well to follow - has an audience of just over 18,800 and listens to around 9,500 accounts. The organisation tweets about acting jobs and there are lots of accounts listening. The figure we don't see however is the 'conversation potential' or engagement value, that is, how many of those following @castingcallpro are followed back.

I have discovered the following using friendorfollow.com that @CastingCallPro has 5,086 engaged followers. Who CastingCallPro is following is an insight in to who it wants to listen to and engage with. You may find accounts you want to follow too using this method.

This leaves 4,365 that don't engage with CCP tweets. It's important to be aware of this figure to use Twitter effectively as a professional tool that works for you.

Summary

Referring to the list I gave earlier in the post (i.e., friends, fellow professionals, previous employers etc), consider your engagement potential:

• Who are you following?
• Who is following you?
• Identify your 'not following you back' count using friendorfollow.com and assess whether you should unfollow them by asking yourself if they are a source of useful or interesting information. Quality rather than quantity of following and followed by is the key (post 4 will look into listening and filtering Twitter).

Also, if you want to look further into the Twitter audience, I use:

Social Bro, Tweetreach, FlockofBirds and Twitter itself.

Post 2 will look at Facebook (audiences engagement) and LinkedIn (professional development) – two ends of the social networking scale in my opinion.

“I keep jumping from one task to the next and just can’t finish anything.” Sound familiar?

We all put things off (procrastinate) sometimes and it’s not always a problem. However, procrastination can creep up on you. You defer one thing (“Oh, I’m not sure how to do that so I’ll do it later”). Then, it happens again and again. Before you know it, you feel like a ‘rabbit in the headlights' - frozen into inactivity with tasks pilling up all around you.

If you are worried that procrastination is having a negative impact on your efficiency and productivity along with your morale, motivation and stress levels, it’s important to do something about it before it gets out of control. Also, it's crucial to take some positive steps now rather than say you’ll do it later!

Be honest with yourself

The main thing is to recognise that you’re procrastinating and it’s becoming a problem. Classic signs include:

• Vacillating over and re-jigging ‘to do’ lists and priorities
• Working half-heartedly on bits of work
• Inability to concentrate on pieces of work and see them through to the end
• Having to cram everything in at the last minute because you’ve delayed starting
• Jumping from task to task without completing important ones
• Avoiding certain types of work.

Once you’ve recognised that you’re getting into bad habits, you now need to uncover the reasons as to why you are procrastinating and work out what you can do to get yourself into motion again (you might want to ask a confidant to help you to do this). For example:

Are you bored?

If you rely on a mix of interesting core work and other less interesting 'bread and butter’ work as many freelances do, then, yes, not all work will be great fun. But you need to get on with it.

Try building in small chunks of the boring stuff around the work you enjoy. Also, reward yourself when you finish something that you don’t like doing – remind yourself of all the positive reasons of why you are doing it.

If you decide that you are bored with a high percentage of your work, it might be time to seriously think about where your career is heading and what you could do that would be more interesting.

Do you lack the ability to prioritise?

Learning to prioritise is important. Do you have ongoing lists and deadlines? If a deadline is too 'fluid’/distant, try to do some work on it on a regular basis rather than leave it to the last minute. Here are some tips to help you prioritise and get organised:

• If everything seems overwhelming, break the tasks down into smaller ‘bite size’ chunks
• Feel the sense of achievement as you tick off each task
• Pinpoint how you work best. For example, if you know that you are more creative in the morning leave the admin side of your work (invoicing, etc) until later in the day. One of the upsides of being freelance is that we can, to some extent, choose how we work. Take a long look at yourself and how you work and try and carve out the best way to do it for you that leaves you feeling as happy and balanced about work as possible
• Plan in ‘playtime’ to help with your psychological and emotional well-being. By allowing yourself this kind of reward, you may be able to be more focused and less distracted in your work time.

Do you lack confidence?

If so, think of ways to improve that. For example, list down all your achievements to help you remember how talented you are.

Also, assess your weaknesses. Are there new skills you need to learn that will make you more confident? Do you have a colleague who is good at this type of work who you could talk to or learn from?

Are you using avoidance techniques?

'Displacement’ activity is used to avoid doing what we need to but don’t like/want to do - especially if it’s because we have a negative emotion or perception related to that work. Discipline and motivation are vital. Remind yourself of what you’ll gain by completing each task. Timetable your working day. You might event want to do a time management audit. To help you do this, try the time management exercise in the 'Quick Tips' section of our digital learning centre.

You can do it!

Think again about your best working experiences when you have just got on with the job. Think about why and how to recapture that and take your first small step to stopping the rot and moving forward.

 

So What's Good About Rejection?

Who doesn’t love that scene in Pretty Woman, after Julia Roberts, while ‘escorting’ rich businessman Richard Gere, takes his credit card shopping, but is patronised by the shop assistants and buys nothing.

Then shops again, this time with Gere, and pops her head into the shop where she was made unwelcome, carrying several, expensive shopping bags to say: “Big mistake, BIG, HUGE!”

Who wouldn’t love to be able to do that after a hurtful rejection?

There have been some pretty spectacular rejections over the years, which must have had the rejectors kicking themselves for a long time afterward. For example:

• JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was turned down by 12 publishing houses before Bloomsbury took it up after Chairman Nigel Newton’s eight year old read it, loved it and nagged him to publish it.
• Fred Astaire was told after his first screen test: “Can’t act. Can’t sing. Can dance a little.
• ”Walt Disney was fired because he “lacked imagination.”
• The Beatles were rejected by Decca Recording Co. in 1962 because: “We don’t like their sound and guitar music is on the way out.”

So if you are experiencing some challenging rejections at the moment, just remember what good company you are in! Did any of them just throw the towel in? Obviously not!

So, how do we make rejection into a good thing? Basically, we need to view it as a learning experience that gives us something to work with so that we can grow, develop and achieve what we want next time.

People don’t learn half as much when things go well as they do when things are tough. When you read autobiographies of successful people, they pretty much all have their crisis years, which they use as a platform for their later success. For example:

• Apple Inc founder Steve Jobs was a college drop out and was sacked from his own company;
• Tony Robbins, self help author and inspirational speaker, experienced financial ruin;
• Kentucky Fried Chicken’s Colonel Saunders owned nothing but his recipe after the depression
• Einstein was considered slow because he didn’t speak until he was four or read until he was seven!

I’m sure it is less common for people who never experience truly difficult times to find the incentive and motivation to go the extra mile and to achieve exceptional successful.

Rejection is an experience from which you can learn. It is feedback through which you have the opportunity to extract all its informative goodness before you throw the husks of it away.

However, you need to develop the right mindset. It doesn’t do anyone any good to keep sifting through their near misses. Once you have taken all that is worth learning from that experience, then it should be filed and forgotten. Combing over past rejections is an unnecessary form of masochism and should not be indulged!

There are many occasions in life where people are trying to connect a need with someone who can fulfil it. They have to consider several people until they find the right fit. It’s not a process of separating good people from bad, it’s just about finding appropriate links!

I can think of many occasions where I am grateful, with hindsight, that I was rejected. Jobs that wouldn’t have suited me, flats I wouldn’t have been happy in, partners I wouldn’t have thrived with. As I look back I am grateful for all of those rejections, which really worked out for the best for me. I’m sure we all have examples of those.

Trite sayings like: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, exist because there is truth in them. And, one of the most powerful ways to assist this process is to develop a sense of humour about rejection. First find out what was good about it and then why it is funny! People often say: “Someday I will laugh at all this,” but as NLP co-creator Richard Bandler says: “Why wait?!”

Check out these spoof rejection letters created by Andy Ross a literary agent who was a bit frustrated by some of the rejections he was receiving on behalf of his writers. He guesses how these same publishers would receive books by Shakespeare and Hitler.

So, next time you experience rejection, remember, ask what can you learn from it? Then in the words of the song sung by Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in Swing Time: “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again!”

Who’s driving the bus?

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” William Shakespeare

Rejection for a freelance is something that happens when you apply for a piece of work and someone else gets it, and that’s all it is. A creative freelance generally has to apply for every single piece of work via an audition, pitch or short contract. Rejections are just normal.

What makes it a positive or negative experience depends on what meaning you apply to it.  Or to paraphrase the great bard, rejection is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so!

Take a recent situation I was involved in, where a group of journalists were being made redundant from a national daily newspaper. All were initially shocked and needed to take a bit of time to process the news, but the reactions from all those people were startlingly different, two in particular stood out, I’ll call them Jack and George. Both were in their early 50’s, good pensions, due a respectable redundancy payment, and reasonably financially stable.

Jack, once he got over the initial shock, was really happy, he had plans for travelling with his partner, which he had never had the opportunity to do, so he very quickly saw this event as freedom and an opportunity to catch up on his dreams.

George, however, didn’t seem to get over the shock, he only seemed able to focus on what he saw as the underlying message that he was not needed, and therefore useless and worthless. He couldn’t initially see how his life could ever improve from this, as he saw it, condemnation of him.

The rejection was the same, the consequences were similar, but the meaning, freedom, versus condemnation, made all the difference to the experience.

As Eleanor Roosevelt said “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

The truth is, no one can make you feel anything without your consent!

What people often don’t recognise is how much choice they have in how they react to events in life, even seemingly tough ones like rejection. When we are tied up in the moment, it is easy to feel like we are at the mercy of our thought processes, but we can learn to steer our reactions in a more useful direction, it just takes awareness and practice.

Some ways to achieve this are:

• See this experience in context, whatever is happening is only happening in part of your life, it does not define you, and it does not change who you are. You are so much more than whatever is happening in your life right now. Take some time to think about other areas in your life that are good, family, friends or your health for example.
• Step back from the experience, physically take a step back and imagine stepping out of your upset self, and see yourself standing where you were. Giving yourself space in this way, can allow you to take a break from the feelings and let you gather good quality information about the situation, from a more analytical position, rather than an emotional one. This can be a great source of new insights and an alternative perspective to any stressful situation.
• Step across into your best friends shoes, and offer yourself some advice and support from their position. We often talk to ourselves in ways that we would never talk to another living being, learn to talk to yourself in a more positive supportive way, learn to be your own best friend.
• You may not be able to control the situation that is upsetting you, but there are many things in life that you can control. Take a walk if it’s a nice day, go meet a friend, do something you enjoy. Do something constructive about another work opportunity. This will not only take your mind off the thing that is bothering you, it will remind you that there is so much more to you and your life, than this single event.

You don’t have to be a passenger in your own life, grab the steering wheel and start driving yourself!

Rejection for freelances is as much a part of that lifestyle, as accumulating manure is if you keep horses! Do horse owners buy bigger premises so they can keep collecting all the horse manure that is deposited around them, combing through it regularly to see if it has changed? No. They recognise that this is an inevitable by-product, and sell it to local gardeners?

In exactly the same way, there is nothing to be gained by any of us sifting through the minutiae of our rejections solely for purposes of self torture! We need only sort through them once, make sure we benefit from anything that can be learned from the experience. Then we need to spread them out on our metaphorical roses and let the sun and rain rot them down, so we can benefit and grow from the experience.

So, who’s driving the bus? You are! So go pick the nicest possible route for yourself!

Platforms and Portals

By Caron Lyon from PCM Creative

Five blog posts can't miraculously turn you in to a crowd powerhouse and fund all those projects simmering on the back burner. Looking at the landscape of crowd power and focusing on aspects to consider may inspire you to take the plunge.

My understanding of crowdfunding was helped enormously by my understanding of the networks and audience needed to make it work. Following the projects of singer/ songwriter, Allison Weiss (mentioned in post 2) and independent audience developer, Sally Hodgeson who works with projects to develop crowd funding strategy and campaigns. There are professional crowdfunders.

 

Setting the goal, reaching the target, collecting the funds and delivering the project

This classic model uses social networked connections, leveraging Facebook and Twitter, interconnecting audiences and outreach to maintain existing fans/audience members.

All of the platforms demand a good set up. Intricate planning is also necessary as there is no money for the project without a successful campaign outcome. So before concluding to leave you to discover your crowdfunding route, getting your money at the end is important to consider.

 

Money matters - getting to your cash

Here are the main platforms commission or fee policies on campaign completion. Looking at the projects running is the best way to decide which platform to choose.

Indiegogo
It’s free to sign up, to create a campaign, and to contribute to a campaign. When your campaign raises funds, Grunder Garage charges a 9.0% fee on the funds you raise. If you reach your goal, you get 5.0% back, for an overall fee of 4.0%.
http://www.indiegogo.com/how-pricing-works-on-indiegogo

 

Kickstarter
UK projects: If funding succeeds, funds are debited directly from backers' cards. There is a 14-day window for collecting and processing pledges. After that, funds will be transferred directly to your bank account.
http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/creator%20questions#PaymUk

 

WeFund
WEFUND does not charge anyone anything if a project does not meet its funding target. If it does, WEFUND charges the project creator a 5% fee. Paypal charge 3.4% and 20 pence per transaction. So, (if successful) at the end of your campaign, every time you receive a payment Paypal will send it to you minus 3.4% and a 20p fee.
http://wefund.com/frequently-asked-questions/

 

For Photojournalists

Whilst researching this blog series I discovered a sector specific crowd funding platform for photojournalists which also charges a commission on money generated by your efforts.

Emphas.is
On Emphas.is photojournalists pitch their projects directly to the public. By agreeing to back a story, for a minimum contribution of $10 the public are making sure that the issues they care about receive the in-depth coverage they deserve. This is the one and only 'perk' - "In exchange you are invited along on the journey."

If a project is fully funded Emphas.is takes a 15% fee towards operational costs. The 15% fee goes towards paying a small staff to run daily operations and maintaining and developing the platform.

Fundraising is an older and probably more familiar term associated with raising money and this final example to explore encompasses collection methods to suit all projects.

GoFundMe
Personal online fundraising websites are perfect for individuals, groups & organisations!

GoFundMe will automatically deduct a 5% fee from each donation you receive. If you don't receive any donations, then you won't pay anything at all. You'll be ask to connect or create a PayPal account inside of GoFundMe during the sign up process. PayPal charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.

GoFundMe users can select between 3 different campaign types.

Personal Donation Campaigns
'Personal Donation' campaigns receive their money immediately - there’s no time-limits or collection requirements. Each and every payment you receive is yours! Your GoFundMe page will continue to accept donations even after your goal is met.

Charity Fundraising Campaigns
Money raised for 'Charity Fundraising' campaigns will be sent to the selected charity on a monthly basis. All donations received will be sent via check to the charity or non-profit you select from our certified list.

All-or-Nothing Crowdfunding Campaigns
Select this option if your project or idea requires a certain amount of money. Your supporters will only be charged if you're able to reach your funding goal before your deadline arrives. If your goal is reached, then your supporters will be charged and you'll receive your money. If you don't reach your goal prior to your deadline, then your supporters will not be charged. Learn more about crowdfunding.

Practical guides, tips, resources

How to get crowdfunding
By: Emily Speed
http://www.a-n.co.uk/knowledge_bank/article/1002915/77173

Crowdfunding Resource
Artquest provides everything a visual artist needs to know by encouraging critical engagement and providing practical support.
http://www.artquest.org.uk/articles/view/crowdfunding

Taleist Article
Crowdfunding for self-publishing authors: How passionate fans can make your book a reality. http://blog.taleist.com/2012/02/21/crowdfunding-for-self-publishing-authors-how-passionate-fans-can-make-your-book-a-reality/

Arts channel is brought to you by WeDidThis - Part of Peoplefund.it
WeDidThis continues to grow a new movement of arts micro-philanthropists, dedicated to supporting UK artists and organisations in a new and exciting way.  A UK based leading arts crowdfunding platform, dedicated to making great fan-funded art happen.

In its first year WeDidThis funded over 40 projects from over 1,600 donations. This included everything from an Orchestra pub tour, to a selection of shows at the Brighton fringe and a project teaching street dance to children in Rwanda.
http://www.peoplefund.it/tips/

 

My closing tips…

• Don’t forget which audience you are part of and explore both
• Working the crowd can be a time consuming job
• Factor in the platform commission and paypal fees
• Experience being part of a crowdfunded project.

By Caron Lyon from PCM Creative

Making money

In Crowdfunding (1) we looked at the potential in (2) and (3) we looked at PERKS, identifying what's in it for your crowd. In this post we will look at the crowd. The Audience, your audience and most surprisingly who's audience you are in.

This is the most unexpected twist for me. When I started looking in to crowdfunding it was with full projects in mind. As a stage manager propping shows the free ticket and credit in the programme was the perk. With a little imagination a whole raft of perks can be dreamed up from signed programmes to dinner with the company. But as you will have gathered the platform you pick to crowd fund whether it features successful campaigns does not mean automatic success for you.

Where is my crowd?

The audience you have now - the network existing around you is where you need to begin. For example:

• Email contacts database
• Twitter followers
• Facebook fans
• Eventbrite audience

 

 

 

 

Platforms such as WeFund, Pozible and Sponsume are specifically tailored for media and culture projects. This is what many think of with Crowdfunding. One idea shared with an audience or fan base that stay with you through out the entire project and beyond.

Whose crowd am I in?

This is the twist. I have recently worked on a project where two of the team came directly from crowd talent platform eLace a crowd of skilled workers. Identifying your own skills is key to making money using these services.

‘PeoplePerHour’ is a community marketplace that connects small businesses with talent working remotely online. Whether it’s creating a logo, designing a website, writing some copy or a quick translation, PeoplePerHour aims to allow small businesses to keep their core lean and get their job done easily, quickly and reliably.

For example:
Journalism freelances on PeoplePerHour
Voice over artists on PeoplePerHour

At PeoplePerHour you set your hourly rate and the service you can provide. Writers, voice over artists, copywriters and presenters are popular 'hourlies'.

So funding from the crowd has two sides. Tapping in to a pre-existing audience and one where the crowd taps in to your resources and skills, i.e., what you have to offer.

Next time – Crowdfunding Platforms and Portals.

By Caron Lyon from PCM Creative

PERKS are the corner stone of crowdfunding

• Credits or logos in promotional literature.
• Entry to your event or a ticket for a performance
• Special edition promotional literature
• VIP attention at your event or performance
• Experience days - A day with the company.
• Experience - Diner with the company
• First edition publications to funders
• Signed first editions…

I hope you get the idea.

A closer look

As an example and to finish I want to introduce you to Alison Weiss a singer, musician and songwriter. Alison has an established fan base that is her 'crowd' and she harnesses the power of that crowd to produce albums using crowd funding platform Kickstarter.

These are her campaigns:

Allison Weiss makes a full-length record! by Allison Weiss
http://kck.st/vJgXxG

Allison Weiss does it again (with your help) by Allison Weiss
http://kck.st/vhzPLY

A selection of the Perks from her Dec 2011 campaign to raise the funds for her next album.

• Pledge $5 or more - THANKS - Access to exclusive updates right here on Kickstarter, plus your name and link listed on my website with a big THANKS!
• Pledge $10 or more - JUST A TASTE - Get everything above, plus 1 track emailed to you the day of the release. JUST A TASTE, you know?!
• Pledge $15 or more - DIGITAL PREORDER - Get everything above, plus a digital copy of the record complete with album artwork, liner notes, and a secret thank-you video.
• Pledge $30 or more - PREORDER + PARTY FAVORS - Get everything above, plus a signed physical copy of the record, a digital goodie bag of extra videos and songs, PLUS I'll put you on the guest list for a real-life listening party to be held in NYC before the record comes out.
• Pledge $40 or more - PAJAMA PARTY - Get everything above + a ticket to my celebratory internet show where I will play the whole record start to finish while wearing an adult-sized onesie. We'll drink, we'll laugh, we'll sing, we'll never forget. Everyone will wear pajamas including myself. It will be the greatest night of your life and you don't even have to put pants on.
• Pledge $50 or more - DVD EXTRAS - Get everything above, plus a 'directors commentary' style DVD where producer Chris Kuffner and I talk about each song as they happen. Hear about the making-of, our favorite parts, backstories on specific songs, and how much we love each other!
• Pledge $75 or more - HANDMADE SONGZINE - Get everything above, plus a limited edition zine-style songbook with chords, lyrics, photos, and stories about every song I've released since 2008, handmade, designed, and signed by yours truly!
• Pledge $100 or more - REMEMBERED FOREVER - Get everything above, plus I'll list your name in the liner notes however you want it. It could be your real name (i.e. John Smith) or it could be a nickname (i.e. Bones). You could even put someone else's name in there (i.e. Grandma, Jessica Alba, The Pope). I'll also include a special note to you when I sign your copy of the record.

There were 19 Perks in total offering opportunities in exchange for up to $10,000

The anatomy of a successful crowdfunding campaign and of course its resulting project.

Mission Statement, your appeal to your crowd.

• The mission video
• The perks for support
• The conversation
• The target
• The goal
• The delivery

As well as accomplishing and smashing her funding targets (see pictures above), Alison now has an engaged audience of 'backers'. The crowdfunding platforms provide engagement tools to personalise the process. The most fundamental statistic illustrated well by Alison is how many projects she herself has contributed to.

So what do you have to offer? Blogging and sharing your journey makes for good content. Getting in to the habit of capturing and evaluating how your creative output can be seen as a perk for your audience is the challenge. Some specialist arts crowd funding platforms (not all) will assist you in compiling your campaign.

I will look at platforms and resources to get you started in post 4.

To do:
Write a list of the PERKs you can offer. Crowdfunding for the arts can work.

By Caron Lyon from PCM Creative

Show me the landscape

Perks, What do I have to offer?

On reflection and the discovery of this graphic (see below), crowd sourcing can be seen as an umbrella term. I often talk about the landscape of social media and its associated technologies but the analogy of sheltering your crowd beneath a brolly has a nice resonance.

Four major sectors constitute the current thinking surrounding crowd sourcing

• Microtasks
• Macrotasks
• Crowdfunding
• Contests

Microtasking is in essence the collection of or processing of small tasks to complete a larger task or aggregate data.

An excellent example of this is the UK Snow Map – http://uksnowmap.com created by @benmarsh

This site searches Twitter for real-time snow reports and displays them on the map. Tweet the hashtag #uksnow, your location (postcode, town name or geotag your tweet), and rate the snow that is falling out of ten (0/10 for nothing - 10/10 for a blizzard). You can also include the depth of snow (cm or inches), attach a photo and add a description to your tweet.

Story – I was due to attend a meeting in London but literally overnight a massive bout of snow fell. The rail line's website was not updated and was clearing overloaded as it continually crashed.

I had to get on the train before it was polite to call mobiles, it was early. Was it snowing in London? Was there any point in venturing out? I asked my twitter network and this was the service I was directed to. The more data contributed the more reliable the resulting output.

I did not travel to London that day partly because of the responses I received from my Twitter network but also because the Snow Map reflected the snow outside my window and the reports coming out of London were worse. Seeing the news I know I made the right desicion.

Macrotasking in essence is the collection of knowledge and ideas. Old style forums and buletin boards would fall under this category. Collaboration on research and development for projects, programs or articles is a valuable use of Macrotask based platforms. A simplistic example is the Question and Answer forum platform Quora. This crowd sourcing tactic often follows a supply and demand perspective I'll look at this further in post 3.

A fully-fledged ideas crowd sourcing platform if you want to take a look is Crowdicity. But this series of posts are about understanding crowd sourcing and its application to generate income.

So remains Crowdfunding and Contests.

At this point a word of warning. As creatives we are in danger of finding ourselves in "profit share" or "good for your portfolio" projects none of which feed, clothe or put a roof over our head.

Contests can have you submitting work you design to a brief where only one design wins or less ethically where the organiser takes the best elements from all the entries and commissions a designer. Tread carefully. I am going to concentrate on making money and funding to bring money in without outgoing speculation. With contest crowdsourcing you are the crowd. Writers and designers are particularly vulnerable to this crowd source mechanism.

I have reserved crowd funding until last as it’s important to understand the crowd sourcing landscape or umbrella. In the next post of this series I will reflect on audience and where you are in respect of audience.

To close this post I want to ask you:

Where is your existing audience/community? What relationship do they have with you, your company, organisation or freelance practice? What do you have to offer?

By Caron Lyon from PCM Creative

I first recognised the potential of crowd sourcing and crowd funding during the 2011 British Arts Festival roadshow. I attended a one-day conference at Theatre's Trust. The power of the crowd and it's prominence as a viable means of raising money for projects to develop working prototyped concepts in to salable product is the most prominent form of CrowdFunding. But for the very first time I saw arts based platforms being profiled. Crowd translated directly to Audience when it comes to Arts and culture based funding.

CrowdFunding - Show me the money?

What is Crowd Sourcing?

The term, coined by Wired magazine writer Jeff Howe in 2006, is found rooted in the analogy with the term outsourcing.

Harnesses Web 2.0 (reactive web environments) and communities of wisdom gathered through social networks leveraging the crowds’ wisdom to achieve business objectives.

A NTU research project for PCM in 2011 concluded that CrowdSourcing was ‘a process by which organisations or individuals outsource their unsolved problems to an online external group of people so as to gain innovative ideas or solutions for solving their problems.’

Crowdsourcing as a way to implement outside-in-knowledge flows with the crowd as a particular knowledge provider.

Crowdsourcing is a way to engage consumers in social networks and virtual communities and to stimulate their financial participation in projects proposed by someone else.

I want to introduce you to arts, media and writing platforms but before then I think a perspective on the trend is important. I also want to flip the crowd concept on its head and take a look at being the crowd and how that can benefit creative arts and media practitioners.

First lets look at product crowdfunding as it is the easiest, most successful and established model to demonstrate.

Take a look at a gadget development example – stimulating your online community to fund, promote, buy and further develop a product. (This can be applied to build your own crowdfunding network)

Glif iPhone stand

http://kck.st/uKySku

With a funding target of $10,000 the campaign attracted 2,573 backers raising a total of $137,417

Glif is a simple iPhone 4 / 5 accessory with two primary functions: mounting your iPhone to a standard tripod, and acting as a kickstand to prop your iPhone up at an angle. From these two functions emerge numerous uses: hands-free FaceTiming, watching videos, making movies, using your iPhone as an alarm clock, and many others.

I am the proud owner of a Glif so to are all of my social media collaborators. You can find them now in PC World and High Street geek gadget stores. But it started with a $10,000 crowd funding campaign on Kickstarter.

Ask yourself who is their audience?

Another example:

An Inflatable Solar Light

http://www.indiegogo.com/LuminAID

With a funding target of $10,000 the campaign attracted 1,168 backers raising a total of $51,829

LuminAID Lab is proud to introduce the LuminAID light: a solar-rechargeable, inflatable lamp that packs flat and inflates to create a lightweight, waterproof lantern. Safe, sustainable, and portable, the LuminAID light provides up to six hours of LED light, ideal for disaster relief situations, recreational use outdoors, or in the home as an extra light source. Our mission: make light more affordable, sustainable, and available for everyone.

Again, who is their audience?

These are just 2 projects funded through Crowd-sourcing. The driving concept is to develop an audience who fund your project in return for the first items off the production line. This approach of engagement rewards for grass roots support is common across many crowdfunding platforms called 'perks'.

Next blog - perks and more perspective on funding projects using a “crowd”.

By Tutor and Life Coach Muriel McClymont

I’ve just watched a most interesting TED talk, ‘The Art of Stress Free Productivity’. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design and is a not for profit organisation that aims to spread 'Ideas Worth Sharing'. If you have not yet explored this resource, dip in a toe.

(One of the most amazing TED talks I ever watched is Jill Bolte Taylor talking about how it feels to have a stroke - fascinating insights into our creative brains.)

Stress at this time of year comes in all shapes and sizes. Some people feel stressed just now because they are not going to be with their family for Christmas others because they are going to be with their family for Christmas!

Freelances can be stressed because many of them will have very little work from about now until mid January, which can leave a substantial dent in the coffers. Some will have more work than they feel they can handle.

Whatever the causes, how can we deal with it?

David Allen in ‘The Art of Stress Free Productivity’ offers a deceptively simple three step plan.

• carry a notebook with you and write everything down as it comes into your head
• decide outcomes and then a first action step for every area of your life
• create an overall map of all areas of your life on one sheet of paper

At first I thought this was too simple, then I tried it out. I got a bit carried away with the writing down all the things I was holding in my head and what became my brain dump list got a bit scary in itself. The funny thing was though that I did feel lighter from putting it all down on a piece of paper.

I then grouped my list into specific key areas - work, family, commitments etc. and considered what I wanted to happen short, medium and long term in each area. Then I created a new to do list with specific first step actions to achieve all this.

What was interesting was that at this point many things just dropped off my list because, once I started to think in terms of outcomes, things either became lumped in with others or simply got dropped as no longer relevant.

Then I produced my overall map. I did this by producing a mind map with me in the middle and lines coming off for each area of my life, with sub branches coming off that, which I colour coded it to make it even clearer to read. If you prefer lists, you could make as many headings as you need, and do lists underneath - again you could colour code this to make it more striking visually. If you like drawing, you could make a picture of your life using symbols or pictures that represent all the areas that are important for you. How you create this map doesn’t matter as long as it is meaningful to you.

I have to say this was the most powerful step because I now have that map in my head and this has helped me make better decisions. When I am feeling particularly pressured in one area, I can see at a glance of my map, how any action I take will impact everything else, so, I can avoid being purely reactive and can manage issues in a more proactive, constructive and productive way. All without any angst ridden worry or stress!

I love to find new things that work and before I use it on clients, I like to try it out and work out why it works. This is my take on it:

Writing it Down

The reason this is effective is that once we write things down, not only do we give ourselves space to think, without trying to keep 30 plates spinning in our heads, but we give ourselves an alternative perspective.

By which I mean, when we hold all the information in our head, some of it we will see as vivid pictures, some will be words we hear, many things will have feelings attached. Putting it all down on paper lets you take a step back from any emotions, puts everything on the same footing and gives you some distance to think and a new viewpoint to think from.

Decide Outcomes and First Action Steps

Deciding on the outcome and identifying actions works because it gives us a positive direction, something that no amount of stressing or mulling over a problem, or trying to decide what to do next, can. Nothing is more stress inducing than sitting reviewing a list of problems and getting increasingly overwhelmed by their volume or complexity. Focusing exclusively on the problem gets you nowhere new.

I particularly liked the point made in the video that lack of time is not the problem but a symptom. Einstein, Mozart, and every other genius you might like to mention, only ever had 24 hours in a day!

Creating an Overall Map

Finally, making an overall map of everything in your life that you need to pay attention to allows you to put your whole life and what is important to you in one place which you then have a visual representation for, so you can see each component in context and prioritise effectively.

More information and questions

I highly recommend that you take 20 minutes to watch The Art of Stress Free Productivity and try out these steps for yourself. You may discover something amazing. I’d love to know how you get on. So, let me know or ask questions at our ‘Freelance Challenges’ forum.

For additional tips David Allen provides access to a great range of free articles, see this link.

Wishing you a very merry and stress free Christmas.