The COVID-19 pandemic noticed a major improve within the progress of the freelance business. In response to Web site Planet, there have been about 1.1 billion freelancers worldwide in 2021.
So, what’s driving these professionals to undertake freelancing?
In addition to higher monetary prospects, freedom and suppleness to decide on the kind of work are the primary explanation why professionals swap to freelancing.
Nevertheless, freelancers face their very own share of challenges.
What Are the Challenges Freelancers Face?
Listed below are just a few obstacles freelancers face when managing their work lives.
- Improper time administration – Freelancing requires an individual to put on a number of hats. They need to juggle numerous duties and features, from gross sales and advertising and marketing to accounting and mission administration. Juggling a number of duties can eat lots of effort and time, supplied they manage themselves. That’s the reason having glorious time administration expertise is a necessary ability within the freelancing world.
- Lack of focus – The thought of multitasking numerous tasks concurrently is thrilling due to the publicity and expertise one will get. Nevertheless, the downside right here is that the freelancer finds it robust to focus or delve deep right into a job assigned. This finally impacts their high quality of labor.
- No motivation – In a office atmosphere, we frequently have colleagues and seniors to problem and push us to realize extra. Nevertheless, freelancers need to go on from one job to a different by themselves. Due to this fact, they should encourage themselves to realize goals. Sadly, that’s not at all times potential. As a rule, freelancers face a dip of their motivation ranges, inflicting their work to endure.
In addition to the factors talked about above, the absence of an organized workflow considerably impacts a freelancer’s motivation and productiveness.
However the gig financial system is right here to remain! Freelancers targeted on enhancing their working fashion and boosting their productiveness have perennially trusted technologically superior instruments.
Instruments like buyer relationship administration (CRM) platforms, communication instruments, mission administration platforms, and time trackers have helped freelancers overcome numerous challenges they face.
For example, know-how has introduced individuals throughout all areas nearer. This implies freelancers can collaborate with prospects and different stakeholders anyplace across the globe and have simpler entry to alternatives than earlier than.
This globalization is triggered by digital transformation that has enabled freelancers to go for versatile engagement fashions at their comfort. Consequently, freelancers are getting a possibility to choose desired tasks primarily based on their experience and no matter the demographics.
Amongst all of the digital developments which have helped freelancers keep organized, the function of the Kanban method has been phenomenal.
Let’s perceive the Kanban method and the way it will help freelancers enhance their efficiency.
How Kanban Method Can Assist Streamline Your Freelance Enterprise
Kanban method is a workflow administration method for outlining, managing and enhancing your processes to ship the most effective to your shoppers. It helps you visualize your processes and your work to maximise its effectivity.
This method to mission administration helps you establish the potential bottlenecks in your workflow processes and repair them to yield desired outcomes sooner and cost-effectively.
Allow us to now perceive how the Kanban method will help you manage your enterprise processes successfully.
1. Monitor and Handle Consumer Tasks
Kanban is the most-used mission administration method for managing consumer tasks. Kanban board offers a superb overview of your tasks. It helps you create and handle duties, set deadlines, and hold monitor of the mission’s progress.
Along with managing duties, you too can set priorities and deadlines on your duties to make sure their well timed completion.
You may as well use Kanban boards to maintain tabs in your consumer conferences, cellphone calls, and different particulars. Utilizing Kanban for consumer work eliminates the necessity for added software program apps as you’ll be able to manage a number of tasks and plan out the supply of duties at your comfort.
With the Kanban method, you’ll be able to invite your consumer to collaborate with you in your board. As well as, some mission administration boards like Jira supply role-based permissions to the customers for seamless mission administration.
Basecamp, a mission administration instrument, affords a superb chat function (campfire) to talk with shoppers in real-time.
Picture Credit score: 3.basecamp-help.com; supplied by the creator; thanks!
Equally, the Jira-Slack integration permits customers to talk with their shoppers through Slack.
Picture Credit score: img.polontech.com; supplied by the creator; thanks!
Listed below are some ideas which you could observe to expedite your processes.
- Write a fast mission scope doc for each mission and share the identical together with your consumer.
- Create e-mail templates for outreach, gross sales pitch, and different marketing-related duties.
- Use invoicing software program like FreshBooks or Invoicely. Jira additionally comes with a module to create, save, and ship invoices to your shoppers in just a few clicks.
2. Collect Content material Concepts
The Kanban method could be a good medium to brainstorm, affirm, and plan your content material earlier than they’re despatched to your editorial calendar. Accumulate content material concepts on your freelance enterprise by conducting devoted brainstorming periods, doing market analysis, and holding monitor of content material requests out of your viewers.
You need to use a Kanban board to avoid wasting all concepts for future blogs, articles, eBooks, and different kinds of content material items with out disturbing your ongoing work. By following this method, you’ll by no means lose out on content material concepts in your head.
RescueTime, a productiveness and time monitoring app, makes use of the Kanban method for managing content material concepts for his or her weblog. This concept board is a centralized repository of content material concepts for his or her future weblog posts.
Picture Credit score: rescuetime.com; supplied by the creator; thanks!
3. Construct and Handle Your Editorial Calendar
Take out the struggles of content material publishing by having a devoted editorial calendar on your freelance enterprise. From matter concepts and drafts to completed content material, you’ll be able to monitor the whole lifecycle of your content material items and handle the whole lot seamlessly with the assistance of the Kanban method.
With the assistance of Kanban playing cards, you’ll be able to retailer content material particulars just like the key phrases, useful resource hyperlinks, reference hyperlinks, and different particulars in your job instantly. You may as well create customized checklists on your content material items to make sure you don’t miss any step of the content material creation course of.
Buffer, a social media put up scheduling instrument, makes use of Trello to handle their editorial calendar.
Picture Credit score: zapier.com; supplied by the creator; thanks!
Their easy workflow consists of six levels – Content material Concepts, Pipeline, In Progress, Enhancing, Able to Ship, and Shipped. The Buffer crew tracks the duty standing as they transfer throughout this workflow.
4. Handle a Social Media Calendar
Preserve a pulse in your social media advertising and marketing initiatives by following a Kanban method. Strategize, manage, and put up branded content material in your social media pages with out breaking a sweat.
You possibly can plan out your social media technique in small actionable steps. You possibly can create duties for –
- Brainstorming put up concepts
- Creating content material for the posts
- Designing belongings for the posts
- Submit scheduling
- Monitoring the efficiency of the posts
- Partaking together with your viewers
Listed below are some fast ideas for managing your social content material higher.
- Leverage design instruments like Canva for designing your social posts. Canva affords over 400K+ design templates for numerous social media channels.
- Use on-line cloud storage, comparable to Google Drive, OneDrive, or DropBox, to retailer media recordsdata, specifically photographs, movies, and infographics.
- Join a social media scheduling app like Hootsuite or Later and take away the pains of manually posting content material on each social web page.
Kanban for social media advertising and marketing can manage your social campaigns and guarantee posting on social accounts is completed promptly.
5. Monitor Outsourced Work
Managing and monitoring outsourced work is a trouble for many freelance companies. There’s usually a spot in collaboration, communication, and knowledge sharing. A Kanban method to such conditions can scale back this hole considerably.
A easy Kanban board will help you monitor the duties and hold an entire maintain over the mission progress. Share duties with a well-written description explaining the work expectations, set a precedence and deadline, and different data, if wanted. This may make sure the outsourced crew shall be in sync with you.
It is possible for you to to see who’s doing what and establish the challenges you can face. Kanban board additionally eliminates the necessity for a number of software program apps because it affords you the whole lot it’s essential to handle your outsourced work.
Listed below are efficient ways that may allow you to with outsourced crew administration.
- Signal your contracts, proposals, invoices, and paperwork utilizing a digital signature. This may considerably quicken the signing course of and assist save each time and price.
- Talk with the outsourced crew regularly. Conduct common standups and weekly conferences to debate the progress of your tasks.
- Share the required belongings – writing pointers, design pointers, mission scope, and different details about your organization and the tasks with the crew earlier than beginning the work.
6. Share a Public Roadmap
Listening to your audiences and offering an answer to their ache factors contributes considerably to strengthening your model picture. Likewise, viewers suggestions can be a powerful issue that shouldn’t be ignored.
Having a Kanban board to seize your buyer’s suggestions and requests is essentially the most helpful method. You possibly can additional make this board public and provides your prospects entry to allow them to drop of their feedback or ideas seamlessly.
Trello, the well-known mission administration software program, has a devoted board for managing function requests from its prospects.
Conclusion
To enhance productiveness and streamline their processes, freelancers ought to concentrate on making their workflow seamless. A method of attaining that is by utilizing the Kanban method.
If you’re a freelancer seeking to streamline your enterprise, this method will allow you to velocity up your work supply. It can set the correct stability between precedence and deliverables at hand. So, go forward and use the Kanban method to remain organized and increase your productiveness and income. Joyful freelancing!
High Picture Credit score: Pexels; Thanks!
