Freelancers swear by social networking. They’ll be the first to tell you how their freelance business has benefitted from it, that it has helped them build trust, relationships and spread the word about their work.

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Freelancers use social media for two purposes: to socialize with their peers and to market their business, blog or product. As is the case with every niche, there’s a ton of advice out there for freelancers looking to use social media for networking. Run a generic Google search and you’ll see the same things repeated on every blog, article and ebook.

Just as there are popular blogging and freelancing advice that doesn’t always work, there’s also popular social networking advice that is sound in theory but doesn’t always work. Now I’m not saying that the advice is downright unusable; in the right circumstances, the advice is worth gold.

The only problem is not everyone will find themselves in the same sets of circumstances. So if you’re following the popular social networking advice stated below and wondering why it isn’t working, it could be because that advice doesn’t suit your set of circumstances.

Recommended Reading: Interesting Social Media Infographics

Automate your updates

A lot of social media power users support automating a part of your social network updates so that it seems like you’re around and active all the time. It’s handy for those who don’t have any time to spend on your favoured social network. Let’s run a little test. Open up Twitter and take a few seconds to go through your stream. You’ll likely see automated updates from blogs, quotes and plenty of links being shared by people via buffer and related services.

The trouble with automation is that after a while, it starts to feel mechanical. Let’s say you haven’t found the time to spend on social networks all week. If folks go through your stream, they’ll see you sharing links from your blog, quotes and marketing tweets about your own products. They won’t see you interacting with your followers – and that’s the biggest issue with automating updates

How to make it work for you

There’s no doubt that automating updates does take care of a big part of our social networking. But too much of it can backfire. Instead of coming off sounding like a bot, automate a small part of your updates. If you blog regularly, use plugins like Tweet Old Post and set up a 4-8 hours of intervals between post updates. If you’re really busy, schedule some of your updates. Use a web app like Hootsuite or Buffer. If you’re sharing a link, add your own commentary to it.

If you know you won’t be around for a few hours, schedule a tweet letting your followers know. Everyone knows you can’t be there all the time. Your followers give you allowance for that and will like you more if you’re upfront about not being there instead of automating updates and trying to fool folks into thinking you’re there all the time.

Be active Everywhere

Every time a new social network crops up, everyone signs up and starts spending tons of time on it to make the most of the new medium. After all, that’s what popular advice recommends, "You gotta be active on social media!" By all means, be active but take this advice with a pinch of salt. You’re spreading yourself thin by being active on every social network out there.

As a freelancer, you’re strapped for time. If you keep alternating between the different social networks out there, you won’t be able to use any of them effectively. Being active on social media doesn’t mean you have to be active on every social network out there.

How to make it work for you

By all means have a presence on every social network that’s out there. Claim your account and custom URL. Then, only concentrate on the ones that are most relevant to your marketing. Do an inventory of your freelance business marketing and choose 3 social networks you’ll have the most success with.

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For me, it’s Twitter, LinkedIn and G+. On a side note, these days I’m experimenting with Pinterest. It’s always good to experiment with new networks that come up. Play with all your favorite social network sites for a bit every weekend or after working hours. Figure out whether they’ll be able to help your business, before jumping in and investing time you don’t have into it.

Share, share and share!

Your presence on a social network isn’t worth much if you’re not sharing content with your followers. But, often times, freelancers make the mistake of sharing everything they come across or read, that is related to their topic of ‘personal’ interest.

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If your profile is about your freelance business and you’re regularly sharing stuff about bird watching – you’re confusing your audience and giving them the wrong impression. Before long, they won’t consider you an authentic source of information and will either unfollow you or ignore you.

How to make it work for you

Share content that is relevant to your industry or target audience. If you’re a freelancer and your target market is fellow freelancers and prospective clients, then share content that relates to them.

Better yet, add your thoughts to the content you share. Let them know you have an opinion. The content you share can make you a go to source for information about your freelance speciality and establish you as an expert.

Send out n updates daily

When I first started using social networks to market my business, I was stumped by how often I should send out updates. The general consensus seems to be to update less on Facebook and G+ (5-7 times a day) and more on Twitter (15-20 times) throughout the day. So I followed that pattern, then saw my efforts tank. In order to follow that advice, I spaced out my updates and ended up losing track of conversations and disrupting my work schedule.

The advice on posting a specific number of updates is sound – except when it’s not. Confused? I was too.

How to make it work for you

The only way to find out how many times you should update your status is by using the social network in question. When my updates were being ignored, I disregarded the advice on how many times I should be sending updates and instead concentrated on having conversations. Sometimes that resulted in a 100 tweets per day, some days only 5. Sometimes, a single post on Facebook would generate enough conversation with no need of additional updates.

It really depends on the conversation and the time you have available for it to work.

Reflection

The good thing about social media and social networking is that nothing is set in stone. What works for you might not work for another. Only you can tell what works for you and what feels right. Have you followed any particular social networking advice that didn’t work for you?

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iOS6 has just launched and one of the features users are looking forward to is Apple’s Passbook. As we mentioned before in our previous iOS6 new features list; Passbook is a place to store boarding passes, loyalty cards, store rewards cards, coupon codes and even movie tickets. Information of all those cards or coupon codes will be stored in the Passbook app, where retailers just have to scan the QR code to validate.

Using the power of Passbook, the obvious benefit is that businesses do not have to hand out royalty cards or printed coupons anymore. Instead, when creating a Passbook coupon, all they have to do is share the link with customers where it will then appear on their iPhone. Passbook also has a notification system within the iOS platform which means sending newsletters to customers about latest offerings and discounts will be in the past.

With locations enabled on the iPhone, Passbook can also show the exact location of your store/café/business for the benefit of your customers. Businesses also have the option to update customers about daily promotions as they walk past your store location.

Having given you so many reasons to start using Passbook, this article will also feature 5 best websites that are offering services to create and manage Passbook passes. These web services aim to help businesses implement Passbook with just a little knowledge of coding.

Read Also: Apple’s iOS6: 9 New Features You Should Know

1. PassSource

PassSource comes with many templates to choose from to begin the creation of your passes. Some templates are easier to use than others – some coding knowledge is required to fill in more advanced information to make the passes work with your business’s system.

For example the Starbucks Card template allows you to transfer the details of your current Starbucks card to Passbook by inputting your Starbucks card number, current balance and currency code. You can do this on your iPhone by accessing their website; after filling in your card details, you’ll be directed to the Passbook app and it’ll be ready for use.

PassSource is still very new and they are working on improving the user interface of their template editor and make it simpler to understand what each code jargon does. You’re able to create unlimited passes with their templates for now, but later on you’ll be able to manage the passes you’ve created with a monthly or annual fee which varies in price depending on personal or professional usage.

2. PassK.It

Passkit is another website which offers the creation, distribution and management of passes for your business. Their Pass Designer gives you the ability to fully design your pass by adding your own pictures, logos, descriptions and colour scheme. Not only that, you’ll be able to add text information like what a ‘free coupon’ pass entitles the customer to, the terms and conditions, or contact details.

There is also the option for dynamic text information which will be useful to update customer loyalty points. The pass preview is helpful when adding information in as it shows you how the front and ‘back’ of the pass looks like.

You can set the location of redeeming the coupon and have it notify the customer when they are nearby. To save your created pass, you’ll have to register with an email address. Details to distribute your pass will then be given to you – a QR code or a link can be used to distribute your pass. Check this video out on how to use Passkit which also showcases all their features.

3. PassTools

Passtools requires you to register before you can start designing with their Pass Builder. You start by choosing one of their 5 templates. You will then be taken to their pass builder where there is a preview of what the front (and only the front) of your pass will look like.

Their pass builder is very informative as you go through each step one at a time – every step has instructions and explanations. You can change the colour scheme, add your logo and icon, add text and location information with the ability to save changes so you can continue editing in the future. After you’ve finished, the pass will be sent to your email.

They have a nice and clean dashboard to manage how many passes you’ve created. You’ll get to use their Pass Builder for 30 days as a trial stage. After that, it’s a minimum cost of $99 a month to generate 1,000 passes. There are other monthly packages which they offer higher amount of generated passes per month which targets bigger businesses.

4. Passdock

Passdock requires you to register before you can use the features on their website. What’s good about Passdock is that it has many templates of big companies where you can get a rough idea on how you can design your own passes. You can create your own template and then save it for future use. Your personal template can then be used multiple times where each pass has a unique serial number.

You’re able to view the design of the front and ‘back’ of your passes by pressing the info button at the bottom right corner of the pass preview. There are 2 modes to choose from while designing your pass – Simple and Advanced – which can be changed at the right side of the top menu bar. Selecting Advanced is much better with more useful tools not found in Simple mode.

After you’ve created your unique pass, you can either scan the QR code or share it through social network websites like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest or share the direct link.

5. PassPages

As of now, Passpages only has 2 types of passes you can create with – Coupon and Store Card. You do not have to register to design a pass; however the designing features are very basic.

Registering an account only lets you use their full featured pass builder for 30 days. Its designing user interface does not feature as much compared to other websites featured in this article; but covers all the necessities in creating a pass.

After you’ve created a pass, you’ll be given a unique link to share the pass. What’s unique is they are able to track the amount of downloads the pass has encountered. You’re also able to make the sharing link private or public; without the need to delete your template. It is still working on improving to support more pass types as the site is relatively new.

Bonus

In this Bonus section, we’ll feature one final site that we feel deserves a mention.

Passify

Passify looks like it is still in closed beta as you cannot create an account without an invitation code. Although you cannot manage your passes with this website, their pass builder is very simple to use and unique in a way different than all of the featured sites in this article. You navigate their builder by clicking on areas of the pass preview to edit text and image information.

With this style of pass builder, it is easy for the user to understand what text goes where. However, it is stated that the preview might look different on the iPhone which means you’ll need to practice trial and error before getting the pass to look perfect.

Once you’ve completed inserting all the pass information, you can download the pass, send it by email or scan a QR code on screen with your iPhone.

Conclusion

Passbook is new to the market but there is no harm in getting ahead of your competition through the services these websites provide. These web services offer businesses the ability to bypass the difficult bit as they handle the Apple side of things for you

However at this point of time, there is no official word by Apple if these services are allowed to do so but why not try out Passbook right now within your employees to find out if it integrates well with your business.

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Everyone loves a good ringtone, but sometimes there are some parts of a song that we prefer over other parts. Ready-made ringtones may not give us the melodies or snippets that we want; sometimes they are too short, others are too long, and unless a song is popular enough, you won’t find ringtones for it.

Thus, self-customization over your ringtones maybe the best solution to hear the certain part of your favourite song when you phone rings. To trim your ringtone, you can try Ringtone Maker, an Android app that allows you to cut songs down to the ringtone you want then put it to good use. Let’s see how it works.

Read Also: Custom Video As Ringtone For Incoming Calls (Android)

Snip that Ringtone

To get started, download Ringtone Maker from Google Play and install it to your Android smartphone. Once Installation is done, launch the app and you will see a list of song collections from your phone. Click on any song to play, or click on the ‘green arrow‘ on the right to see edit options. Click ‘Edit‘ to cut the music.

In the edit window are two sections, first is the wave file of the song track, and the second are the details with preview, volume and saving options.

Lets start cutting your first ringtone:

1. Adjust the part of the song you want as your ringtone by dragging the ‘Start‘ and ‘End‘ markers. The selected tone will be within the two markers.

   

2. Use the Play button to preview the ringtone, and the Magnifier button to zoom in/out the track wave so you can cut into details.

   

3. Press the speaker button to adjust the ringtone volume, also set the ‘fade-in’ and and ‘fade-out’ timing if you prefer to have it, then click OK.

   

4. Press the save‘ button to save your final cut as your ringtone, select ‘Type’ to Ringtone, name the ringtone, and click Save. Other options you can set for ‘Type’ is music (a clip), alarm or notification alert.

   

Conclusion

It’s a simple app with the exact functions you need to trim any song and make your very own personal ringtone right from your Android! Why not give it a try and let us know if you like it.

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