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Community Q & A
Question: Bio Makeovers
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I want to acknowledge first the safety issue. I have blocked people that were taking mindspace. They get no notification and it can add a layer to your peace of mind. We can use some of our scheduled time where I can temporarily block you on LinkedIn and you can see what that experience looks like on the other end.
The big goal of blocking is limiting how she can interact with you. With any open platform, there is a limit to how much you can truly prevent someone from seeing what you post. I’m including a screenshot of where you can also edit your PUBLIC profile (the one people see when NOT logged in). If you block her AND limit what shows publicly, that helps add a layer of protection. It’s not foolproof.
I don’t know if you’ve had a restraining order for her in the past, but that may be something to circle back on if she becomes aggressive again. These can be very hard to obtain for cases like these. (Please do not feel like you need to respond to this section.)
I’m sure there’s others who can speak to other ways to manage online harassment. My experience is that the laws are generally weak here and most social media policies take a lot of effort to get much. Without a restraining order, I don’t think visits to a profile count as harassment, but I’ll defer to others if they’ve found otherwise.
People from past lives will find you – particularly in this day and age. If you’ve suffered in the past, it’s very easy for fear to immediately take hold and hinder growth. There are some names that we could go the rest of our lives and happily never see again. Unfortunately, social media makes this level of distance much harder to sustain, particularly if you have motive to be visible. Block her to give yourself peace, but also don’t forget how far you’ve come in these last few decades. Sometimes, being visible is the best defense against bullies.
“Thank you for this information. Are you open to providing feedback into (why you went a different direction, we were not selected, [whatever verbiage they used to tell you no])?”
Then close out with good luck, etc.
Sometimes, they will send out feedback as a group response: “you were too expensive for our budget” or “we selected provider X because of [reasons].” Sometimes, they will decline completely. Do not expect a long response or a point by point breakdown.
Also check the RFP – some note that ALL responses will be made public, so you can also do some digging if it’s worth your while – if you’re constantly losing RFPs, particularly to the same vendor.
It never hurts to ask. It’s better they say no than you to create a no on their behalf by not asking.
I’ll tack on some other notes here that I’ve gotten from LinkedIn coaches.
Engagement tends to be wildly low on LinkedIn. A lot of people are afraid to take any action on LinkedIn specifically because of fear. If you’re used to other mediums, this takes A LONG time to get used to. (I’ll hold on rants about fear-based work cultures.)
Ideally use about 5+ hashtags. LinkedIn used to help you populate these, but it seems they’ve backtracked on that. I don’t know what the future implications of this are, but it’s good to have on the radar. (If you’re newer, don’t stress about this point.)
You will make sales from posts without people ever interacting with a single one. If you are a data person (:waves:) this point is very frustrating. See above point about people seeing and not engaging.
Complete your profile. LinkedIn seems to favor profiles that are complete. You want to get to “All Star” on their profile helper.
Links out of the platform are penalized. This is why everyone is tucking them into comments. Sometimes, you’ll see the link completely hidden. (More rants about dark design patterns.)
If you pick at their AI articles, expect low engagement on these posts. (I’ve tested this.)
If you use AI on a post, it does seem to show that one slightly more – this is anecdata, so take this with a grain of salt. (Their AI editor is not great and flattens personality.)
I’ll also add, I pulled from a mix of Communications, Sociology, and other liberal arts majors. They got a mix of college credit and payment, a reference letter, and I also reviewed their resume.
These were time boxed to a semester and I had them build a certain amount of evergreen content that I could post when they weren’t around. At times, I was able to generate a good amount.
I had a weekly worksheet and had them dream up posts. I generally provided the long form and they built the microcontent off that.
The sheet had (daily) places for:
- Twitter (before X) – short
- Facebook – medium
- LinkedIn – mix
Not all channels needed to be daily. I had some examples they could use, so they could see how to adapt. I also had a full social media kit giving them the lay of the land: do’s and don’ts, celebrity to voice match to, common terms, common tags by channel, and anything we needed to plug. They could also create the visual assets using an approved library of icons and imagery. They worked in Word (could be Google docs), I would review and approve, THEN they would post on schedule.
It’s an internship, so you are teaching upfront. I found I had about 2-3 weeks to get up to a reasonable speed, and by the end, edits were modest to moderate. The first 2 weeks, you budget double to triple the original time – but you’re developing and teaching. I personally found the teaching offset the misery of the other parts. With them drafting, it was FAR easier to edit, was one less task I had to do on regular, and these students went out with real skills and a reference letter, which satisfied my “doing good” goals.
Would you be faster? Maybe. I found it was a high cost to getting that ball rolling, which the internship completely took off my plate. Totally worth it for me.
My rule around payment is if most others are being paid, I should too. I learned from interpreting that service and helping jobs are horribly devalued and free work exacerbates that attitude. If you don’t pay the interpreter, you treat your Deaf client like crap. I paid for every asset in my book, by choice, because I valued the work of the creators. I was making money and they should too. Publicity is not payment, cash is.
I allow certain exemptions for charity, but those are few and far between. Stephanie has a module on this somewhere that discusses it well. The (paid) SOPs for the restaurant can help offset your costs/donation of services to the nonprofit.
Bionca, not related, but do you have a site yet or marketing materials for your services? I have line of sight on a project where, if I get it, I’d like to recommend your services. Happy to connect directly. Again, still preliminary on my side, but you were top of mind as this came up.
My hack when I’m really struggling is… ChatGTP.
Prompts you can use:
- Split the following post into 3 bite sized takeaways. Retain the original sentences as much as possible.
- Turn the following post into several tweets. Add in 3 relevant hashtags.
- Expand the following idea into a longer post.
Sometimes, this works perfectly. It uses your words, you fix some small things, and presto, decision fatigue goes away. Other times, I find it’s output is sometimes the fire I need to fix what it got wrong. Anger works and it’s another day that I can still punk the AI.
Other cheats include using the poll option. Ask people what they think. Reply. Rant. Then repeat.
Lastly, scheduling is better than real time. Stephanie has some amazing systems that she’s discussed in one of the lessons, a bonus module, and office hours. I keep a Google doc and instead of doom-scrolling, have been trying to vomit ideas so I can at least post something later.
You may never not loathe social media – I don’t love it, but I’ve found a way to at least let it hang around in the house and to intermittently get it working for me. (Side story: I was dragged onto LinkedIn because of doing marketing for a job. I turned it into an internship to get partially out of it. You’ll find your way, or hire someone else.)
Bionca,
I’ll agree this is probably one of the hardest and scariest parts. Shop around and find a benefits broker in your area to quote you. You can also look at Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs) that manage HR, payroll, and benefits. We use Insperity. Other options I’ve seen include JustWorks and TriNet.
Sometimes, your local Chamber of Commerce has options if you’re a member. It may be worth reaching out to understand what they offer.
If you want something like a traditional PPO, budget for between $800 – $2000 a month (assuming a fairly high quality plan ranging from individual to family).
There are a number of options if you’re open to a HDHP – this can save money and I’ve known a few people to optimize how they use these.
If salaries are under $56K a year, the SHOP program may also help.
Robin,
Usually when I have the BI / data viz tool discussion for folks, I have a whole host of questions, such as:
- What capabilities specifically look appealing?
- How does this tool fit into your org?
- Can you monetize the costs in your offering? (I do a LOT of consulting in this area)
- And, regardless of tool you pick, get a clear sense of all the areas your data lives – chances are this project will open up the floodgates in this area.
These questions are a start. The more time you spend understanding what you want and don’t want, the easier picking a tool will be.
I’m very biased towards Tableau and support organizations adopting and scaling it. The Tableau you used 9 years ago and the Tableau of today are very different. For starters, there’s greater emphasis on the cloud, pricing is cloud/server based generally, and there’s a lot more you can do. They generally license people as viewers (readers), Explorers (online editing only) or creators (this gets you Desktop, a data shaping tool [Prep] and access to one of their hosted servers [I’d recommend Cloud vs running your own server]).
Out of all the tools I’ve used, I still find Tableau to be the fastest by a LOT for visual analysis. It’s great for exploration and putting together something cohesive to share with others (dashboards, infographics, etc). There’s a lot of community support you can get (my blog being one). I’ve been able to solve some really hard problems in Tableau: everything from improving hospice to complex linguistic analysis to highly detailed spatial analysis.
For smaller orgs, Tableau can be VERY expensive and a high number of features may not be very useful. There’s also a paradigm shift with Tableau you have to do – you draw charts in Tableau, rather than selecting them from a library of charts. This gives you the ability to theoretically make any chart, but requires thinking VERY differently about how to get there. For some people (like me), this is exciting, but for others, this can absolutely be a downside when you just want a specific chart.
With Tableau, you’d get a reasonable mix of automation with high quality design. Some people mix Tableau with Figma to liven it up (another alternative to Adobe and reasonably priced). I have used Affinity before on both my Mac and the iPad – it was how I cleaned up images for my book and like it. It’s definitely a LOT more affordable and covers some key bases. If you’re a heavy Adobe user, you’ll definitely find it’s missing some features.
The Adobe / Affinity path gives you more control over finishing and putting together reports. It may add more time to your work path or it may only slightly reduce it. Tableau could reduce it by a LOT but there will be a longer learning curve.
I need to add my book to this, but:
Interpreter turned analyst, Bridget Cogley brings an interdisciplinary approach to data analytics. As Chief Visualization Officer at Versalytix, her role uplifts data visualization within the org and helps shape the vision. Her dynamic, engaging presentation style is paired with thought-provoking content, including ethics and data visualization linguistics. She has a deep interest in the nuances of communication, having been an American Sign Language Interpreter for nine years. She is currently a Tableau Hall of Fame Visionary. Her work incorporates human-centric dashboard design, an anthropological take on design, ethics, and language. She extensively covers speech analytics and open text. Prior to consulting, Bridget managed an analytics department, which included vetting and selecting Tableau, creating views in the database, and building comprehensive reporting. She also has experience in training, HR, managing, and sales support.
Kateri,
For me, it highly varies by time of year, length in business, broad economic conditions, and the type of work you do. Doing amazing work is definitely a part of getting repeat work, but so is the impact and scope of the work. For me, I spend a lot of time building the relationship, understanding the client’s world, and also how much actual “right to design” authority they have. The more you can understand how their organization earns money and how your sponsor / project plays into that, then that helps you understand what – if any – repeat work there is.
Currently, I have one client on their 5th statement of work, another on their first with a phase 2 on the roadmap, a 3rd on their first exploring budget for more work, and 1 that is likely a single SOW. I have one that I just closed out that found me from work done in 2019 and some open leads from existing relationships from other places. I’ve had relationships from as far back as 2013 find me today.
Generally, I look at mixes of clients – I like some longer term steady ones with some quick burst (sub 40 hours) engagements scattered in. The long haul ones require a LOT of care and feeding on the relationship, a lot of management, and a regular cadence of evaluating work load and pace. The quick burst ones can bring in fast cash with less overhead, but then you have to find more. As Stephanie shows, the more structured you have your product ladder, the easier is it to get people in and helped. I’ve had times where it’s ALL new clients, ALL repeat and everywhere in between. The key to continue to nurture that relationship in a variety of ways (this program has TONS of stuff to help with this and Stephanie is BY FAR one of the best to learn from).
I generally identify one-offs a few ways:
– Typically shorter engagement focused on a very specific problem
– Usually from direct contributor with limited budget
– General lack of transparency around a broader strategy – it may exist, but you are a small piece of the puzzle.
Things I try to do for all clients:
– Include a testimonial in the contract – some places refuse to give these without it in the contract, even if they’re happy with the work
– Find ways to get them into the nurturing pipeline, but especially LinkedIn (this is how many find me years later)
– Build rapport – as an introvert, this is absolutely exhausting, but well worth it. People will forget your words and even your work, but they will never forget how you make them feel.
