FREELANCE BUSINESS

Join Kathryn Strachan as she shares with you her journey in building and managing a successful UK based content marketing agency, Copy House Ltd. Kathryn started her career as a content marketing freelancer, working with a small group of clients across various industries.

Within 15 months, Kathryn has decided to grow and scale up her business by opening Copy House. Now, Copy House is a successful content marketing agency working with FinTech and technology giants like Klarna and Travelex. Helping technology companies boost their brand awareness with the use of cleverly crafted and engaging copy.

In this session Kathryn will discuss: The factors that led her to decide to end her freelance journey as she chose to hire her first team whilst launching Copy House. Pieces of advice she wished she knew as she started her entrepreneurial journey and how to spot the best talent to complement your business. The most significant challenges and opportunities of building and running a successful content marketing agency. How she managed to overcome the challenges of owning a business during the pandemic and her decision to embrace remote working for her team.

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Bavo is a freelance copywriter and translator and the owner of the freelance platform Opdrachten.be - this puts him in a unique position to judge how freelance copywriters and translators present themselves to potential clients. In this presentation Bavo would like to give some tips and tricks to improve that process.

When you first start freelancing you're biggest concern is finding clients. As your freelancing career progresses you realise that it should be about finding the right clients. Some of the clients you start out with may no longer be clients that you want! How can you find, qualify, keep and fire clients so that you develop the income you want without sacrificing your mental health or professional reputation? Meadhbh will give tips to help you figure out which clients are keepers and which ones to run from.

Meadhbh Hand is a freelance copywriter based in Dublin. She has worked with clients in Europe and North America and most of them have been dream clients. Meadhbh began freelancing after completing a PhD in English. She has worked as a teaching assistant, project manager in an NGO and in finance. Her favourite thing about freelancing is have autonomy over her own time so she can have the occasional sneaky daytime nap. Meadhbh blames her PhD for starting her on the freelance career path but six years later couldn't imagine going back to being an employee.

Gordon Glenister is the author of influencer marketing strategy, host of Influence the global podcast on influencer marketing and the founder of the first association to represent the influencer marketing industry globally.

What makes someone truly influential and affect the behaviour of others? Gordon will share in this session some of the key ingredients of influence; how to work with influential people; what the key attributes of influence and engaging content as well as review some case study examples of successful influencers.

The toughest, most laborious part of any project just got easier. Quickly get your hands on simple concepts and formulas that make pricing your projects a thousand times easier. Built on experience in the copywriting industry, these ideas can be applied to any creative industry.

Helen Dibble is the founder of Incredibble, a copywriting agency in the UK. She still can't believe she gets paid to write and her mission is to help more people do what they love.

Main take-aways:
1. Find confidence in YOUR pricing and build brilliant relationships
2. Get your hands on a script for asking the budget (that really works)
3. Discover how to build a simple calculators that guarantee project profitability every time.

As a hired writer, we're asked to find words and sentences that make the ideas and intentions of our customers shine. But sometimes what we write goes against our own convictions or feelings. And during research, we may find that our customers' ideas don't match with reality or where society should be going. But do we have the right to challenge, to choose, to refuse? Is it worth it? Does it make a difference? In this talk, Jan would like to challenge you all to say yes and take a stance. Rational, considerate, but also resolute.

Jan Provoost is - foremost - a freelance science and technology writer. His customers hire him because he can handle complex subjects, talk to experts, do research, and deliver a crystal-clear text for a specific audience. He's also a writing coach, giving workshops on how to make business writing more powerful and readworthy. Jan prefers customers that really care for the environment and the climate, so no greenwashing for him. Before turning to the freelance life Jan worked as a science editor at imec, turning science into copy for the international press. Jan has an M.A. in Languages and an M.Sc. in Computer Science.

As a copywriter, journalist, storyteller, content strategist, columnist, editor or even a marketeer you probably have one or two questions that haunt you more than you like. What about discussing this professional issue with a small but eclectic international group of writing colleagues? Yes, this time you can use the wisdom of a small crowd. The aim of this 60 minutes networking workshop is none other than to discuss 5 great writer questions with the 5 writers that are struggling with that question. Let's help each other out! If you join this session, you need to send your questions in advance.

Adriann has an idea to start a Vlog about Freelancing. With this session you will help him to shape and design the first edition of the Vlog and perhaps you will become his first Vlog guest?

The goal of this session is to design and test a new vlog concept for freelancers to show your know-how. During a single session, we focus on the storyline, the mechanics of the vlog, as well as the underlying showcase potential for each participating freelancer.

The idea is to experience the creation of a vlog concept in a lean and agile way.

Embracing the time limit of the session, the approach will be a rapid-fire and hands-on
workshop.As a result, in 1 hour we demonstrate the potential starting point of a solid vlog format.

In any case, you walk away with a set of lessons learned in a vlog setup.

Obinna helps inspiring brands upscale their marketing and client experience wherever their dreams take them. He's invested the last two decades marketing, supporting and managing assets, events and people.

Currently serving as a Software Asset Analyst at IBM, Obinna's presentation would explore the developments in the area of AI, how these trends can affect the work of writers and copywriters, and interesting future perspective on AI development including how to leverage co-authorship for prompt reporting, automating routine tasks and gaining time for complex tasks like investigative reporting and in-depth event analysis.

Working Smarter not Harder by creating a productivity workflow that works for you! Let's face it, we humans are easily distracted. By our phones, our notifications, co-workers, our children or our pets. Unfortunately, those distractions are productivity killers. Not all of our distractions can be avoided off course, but in this presentation we are going to look into some practical ways to get the most out of your day.

Renske Ensing is a Virtual, Personal and Executive Assistant, but first and foremost I'm a Solutions Collector and Dot-Connector!

Personal Branding: we know it is important in order to stand out from the crowd, share our message and content, attract more and better clients and build a profitable business. However many of us prefer not to think about Personal Branding, let alone DO something with it. We're convinced that there are many myths out there that keep freelancers from building their Personal Brand and we will tackle these in this session.

Greet has founded several companies (HR-Vibe, YouBrandBuilder, BusinessBoostEvent) and she knows what it's like to start and grow a business. She is well familiar with what it's like to sell from the stage, face2face and online and growing your network online and in person.

As a former Digital Editor of a national newspaper and PR account manager for some of Ireland's biggest companies, Sean has been on both sides of the PR call. Journalists have less time to deal with PR, but that does not mean that opportunity is not there - its our approach that must adapt.

Sean Fahey runs Fahey Media, a communications agency based in Dublin. He is the former Digital Editor of the Irish Daily Star and Account Manager/Head of Digital at Gibney Communications, representing companies like Aldi, BAM and Huawei.

As a communication freelance, you might be asked to attend online events and to cover them. You then juggle between promoting, listening, tweeting live, making screenshots, taking notes and writing a summary. How do you make the most of an online event when you are all alone in front of your laptop? By being prepared, organised and efficient.

Loyola Ranarison-Schäfer is a communications consultant based in Geneva, Switzerland. She works mainly for charities and international NGOs, bringing her strategic and operational expertise to support their objectives. She produces communication strategies, implements communication plans and sets up policies and guidelines. She also provides training to ensure organisations make the most of their digital tools. She has a passion for storytelling and is always looking for the next innovative way to disseminate content and spread messages.

Jon Younger is a HR thought-leader, author, advisor, board member, and early stage investor in HR tech startups. Currently writing about agile talent, the freelance revolution and the future of work. Jon is the author of Agile Talent (Harvard, 2016), HR From the Outside In (McGraw Hill, 2012), HR Transformation (McGraw-Hill, 2009), many articles in HBR.org, Talent Quarterly, and other journals, and author of Forbes Careers blog "Freelance Revolution".

He is an occasional lecturer: University of Michigan, Indian School of Business, and Copenhagen School of Business. Former lead HR partner: RBL Group and Novations Group, and former SVP HR and Chief Learning/Talent Officer at National City Corp, a top 5 U.S. bank. Former advisory board member, HR Transformation, Government of Singapore. PhD from the University of Toronto.

Join Jon as he will share his main lessons learned throughout his vibrant independent career as a writer and journalist

Content marketing is the art of developing engaging and relevant content that communicates information to a specific target audience in a non-salesy way.
In today's hyper-competitive business environment, creating search engine optimised content is no longer an option; it's a MUST. Yet, many businesses out there fail at it. Why?

Developing search engine optimised content takes time, resources, and knowledge, which seems to be too much of a burden to handle for many companies out there. As businesses around the globe continue to struggle with their content marketing efforts, freelance writers who also master search engine optimisation (SEO) are in high demand. Yet, hard to find.

In this 60-minute workshop, attendees will learn proven and tested content marketing and SEO strategies that will help them become sought-after resources who can ask a premium for their services.

Chris Raulf, a globally recognised content, and digital marketing expert, will cover a wealth of ready-to-put-to work information, including:

• How SEO works fundamentally
• Walk before you run: The importance of developing buyer-person profiles before starting to write content
• How to build a keyword-cluster driven content marketing strategy
• Keyword research for SEO: Learn how to create content that people are actually searching for
• Powerful on-page SEO best practices
• The importance of monitoring and measuring the success of your efforts

Ready to be in high demand? Don't miss this opportunity to learn from one of today's top SEO and content marketing experts.

Chris is the founder of Boulder SEO Marketing, a top-rated digital marketing agency. He and his team assist local, national, and international customers with all of their online marketing needs. Chris is also an international keynote speaker and lecturer in online marketing for the University of Strasbourg, France.