Time management can be one of the greatest challenges freelancers face. As architects of freelance engagements on behalf of our clients and customers, 10x Management always vets our talent to ensure excellent time management skills. Check out a few tips below from our guest writer today, Joan Selby, a content market guru.
As a freelancer, it’s important to minimize the time and effort you spend on remedial tasks and focus on what matters. Automation can help you achieve that goal. Below I’ll suggest 7 tasks you can automate in order to make a freelancer’s work more effective.
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Monitor Your Online Reputation
The most important automation tool for freelancers is Google Alerts. Alerts will send you an email when your name is mentioned on the web. Set them up to get informed whenever someone mentions your name or personal brand online.
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Scheduling Interviews
Automate scheduling. ScheduleOnce is a great tool that shares your availability with a client, so they can choose the time that works for them.
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Social Media Marketing
As a freelancer, you should be working on your personal brand. At 10x Management, we encourage our talent to regularly update their social media profiles. It makes a difference to customers!
Social media marketing is an important way to stay up-to-date on current events and current programming languages. Since social media can be time-consuming, Buffer is a great tool that automatically sends scheduled updates across platforms.
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Password Memorizing
Since you want to stay safe in the online world, you absolutely need a different password for each service you use. As a freelancer, you’re using several services and tools on a daily basis. How could you possibly memorize all those passwords? If you keep them as a note in your phone, you’re at risk. If someone finds your phone, they will have access to everything.
There’s a solution: LastPass. It’s a safe password manager that lets you apply the correct password for every website that requires login info.
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Tax Things
Unless you’re a freelance accountant, you don’t know much about taxes and the mere thought of them gives you the chills. No matter how you feel about self-employment tax filings, you have to take them seriously.
You can start saving money each month to get enough for covering the quarterly filings, or you can do something simpler: use Painless1099 – an automated tool that withholds the proper amount for tax season and gives you access to your remaining funds.
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Bookkeeping
You have to keep track of all your earnings and expenses. You don’t have to waste your time on learning how to do the books and tracking the time you spend working for each client. You can use a tool like QuickBooks to automate that process.
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Prospecting
Freelancers often work on temporary projects, so it’s important to make the process of getting work simpler and more effective. Searching for new opportunities is critical.
Remember Google Alerts? It’s time to use them again. Set them up for important keywords, which you usually use when searching for jobs in your niche. You’ll get notifications whenever a job ad with the relevant keywords appears.
You don’t have to use all these tools at once. Pick the ones you truly need. Try them. Get used to them and see what happens. Keep trying new tools that make you work more efficiently! If you have any suggestions, make sure to share them with other freelancers.
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If you liked this article, you might enjoy reading How to Improve Your Daily Workflow When Working Remotely