You have it clear, you want to be a digital marketing consultant, and probably for this reason you follow our blog and/or have signed up for the Consultants Academy in order to have a lot of resources and training available at all times. Without a doubt, the best way to stay updated! However, beyond everything you can learn in training at the academy, such as Land and manage your consulting business or How to manage consultancies and mentoring, today I bring you a post full of advice and based on my experience as a consultant. of independent digital marketing, having clients on the other side of the world and managing practically all my business through the Internet. Discover how to provide online consulting services with the peace of mind of being able to work from home and with flexible hours!
Get organized or you will dedicate more hours than you should
Have a schedule and organize the timing on a monthly, weekly and daily level, It’s fundamental! It is clear that providing online consultancy services has the great advantage of having great flexibility in schedules, but you cannot leave everything to the end… or you will spend the nights before deliveries awake (yes, as some of you will already have past in college). Set yourself some schedules depending on the type of work you have to do, the moments you think your mind is most active and the amount of work you have at that time. And apply the saying: “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”
I still remember when I started working from home and many people asked me if I was able to organize myself. I explained to them that I got up at the same time as when I went to the office and followed the same morning routine (showering, having breakfast, getting dressed…). The only difference is that I spent fewer hours in front of the mirror preparing myself, and when it was time to go to work, I would change the subway or the bus to enter my office, something that saved me a lot of time every day. Once I sit in my chair, I follow the same routine as if I were in the office.leaving personal topics (such as shopping, social networks or reading the news) for breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack time.
There is no doubt that WhatsApp or email are still a big distractionsWell, you never know if the person writing to you is a client with a professional urgency or a friend to propose a great weekend plan. My rule of thumb is to try to cut out social media and these kinds of distractions, and only check professional email once in a while to see if there’s any urgency. Many of my clients have already realized that during working hours I am faster if they write to me by email than by WhatsApp.
It is clear that sometimes unforeseen events can arise, such as clients in a hurry that make you leave a project on hold to start another, or personal issues such as illness or the man from the gas inspection coming and taking up 2 precious hours of your morning . In those cases, we will have to spend more hours before or after and reorganize ourselves. But if we weren’t already organized… it can be chaos!
Learn how to prioritize tasks
Depending on the projects and clients, analyze the steps to follow, Write down the tasks that you will carry out each day and prioritize. When it comes to choosing how to get started, there are many ways to get organized. For example, I am more motivated to start with the things that I know I can do well and quickly, than those that may cost me more time and effort. Thus, when I start crossing things off my to-do list, I get motivated, and I really want to when I take on the last task, which is usually the most difficult for me.
However, sometimes this means that I can be late with these tasks, especially if I have not been able to estimate the times well. For this reason, if I see that some of them are lagging behind, I make a change of strategy and the next day I start with those tasks that make me laziest. And so I get the rhythm back!
However, the most important thing of all when providing online consulting services is learning to estimate time. It is essential for us to know how to correctly raise the budgets to the client, and that the investment of time that we dedicate to a job pays off. He time is goldas consultants we sell our time and knowledge, and therefore, we must know how to value and manage it properly.
Learn to value yourself and your work
Intimately linked to this last sentence of the previous point, we find ourselves with the typical problems when it comes to valuing your work and your time. I think that it is one of the biggest mistakes that beginners usually make and that not only affects them, but also the rest of the professionals in the sector, since they see how the rates go down since others do “the same job” for less. It is important that you assume the analogy between life and time. Life is nothing more than that, the time that elapses between your birth and the arrival of your last day, therefore, each month, week, day, hour and minute, is part of your life and has a unique value that you must know how to give
It is clear that to live we need money, but we must know how to sell our work time to the highest bidder and with the appropriate value. Selling our time “for four dollars” will mean that we spend our lives working, for very little money, and also that we will not have time to really enjoy life. It is important that we internalize this philosophy, that we learn to value our time properly and that we avoid those typical relapses when we are offered fascinating and motivating projects or when “we couldn’t find anything else” and we settle for the first online consulting job that we are offered. In this, you have to stand firm.
Create a comfortable and inspiring workspace
A desk, a computer that does not give us problems, a comfortable chair, order, elements that inspire us and everything we need within our reach, are the ingredients that will make us work at ease, without distractions or discomfort with space. Although for some it may seem silly, the truth is that the workspace influences much more than we believe in our concentration and moodand therefore, in the use of time during working hours and in the results of our online consulting work.
Take note of these tips about your workspace:
- Have the computer at eye level (you can use a special stand or some books to lift it up).
- Have the keyboard at the height of the hands (otherwise you may have muscle problems in the shoulders and arms).
- The natural light it is an element that directly influences our mood, so if possible put your office near a bright window. You will appreciate it!
- The floors give harmony to spaces. If they are not very good for you, opt for some cacti that do not need watering or natural light, but still, they will give a special touch to the space.
- You always have a glass or bottle of waterIt is important to stay hydrated to avoid health problems.
- He order it will help you not to get distracted. Try to have everything well labeled and stored in its place, if you have too many elements in the space they can be a distraction to your work.
- make a board with phrases that inspire you, task lists, calendars and other elements that you want to have in view to be able to carry out your work in a more organized way.
Search for expert collaborators in different areas
Clients come to you to solve specific problems, and you have to know how to be humble enough to assume that we are not the Superman of online consulting. Many times, we make the mistake of not knowing how to reject projects, with the excuse that in these times there is not the right thing to do it. However, entering a project with unknown elements for us can lead to important problems, such as:
- Not adequately estimating times and costs.
- Putting the client’s project at stake at the expense of our own arrogance.
- If it goes wrong, the client will be able to claim damages and prejudices, in addition to not wanting to count on you again for future projects.
In this type of situation, the best thing to do is have allies and be totally transparent with the client. You can tell him: “this particular area is a bit beyond my experience, so I will take into account one of my collaborators with experience in it in order to offer you a much more complete and reliable service.” Clients will appreciate your sincerity, something that they will value for future collaborations.
Keep in mind what your strengths and talents are
The more you focus your activity and consulting services online, the more likely you will be to succeed in developing your professional career. Focusing on a market sector (example: fashion), on a type of business (example: ecommerce) or on a strategic element (example: online advertising), are just some of the possibilities. Obviously you will have to know about other areas at a general level to be able to cover large projects, but it is always important to fully control an area, being able to count on collaborators to delve into the rest.
A very common practice to stay up to date and demonstrate our knowledge in an area is to use our professional blog to capture the latest news and learning, conduct research and draw relevant conclusions.
Spend time on yourself, your business and the tools that can help you optimize it
What they say about “in the blacksmith’s house, a wooden knife” usually happens. But the worst of all is that, in the world of online consulting, it is so evident that we cannot afford it. If we want our clients to trust the multiple possibilities that the Internet offers them to improve their business results, we have to demonstrate that we trust this medium for our own business. Having a website is essential, as well as a certain presence on social networks or even a blog.
So, you know, excuses don’t work. Get started with your own online strategy! And for this, I recommend the new training that we have at the Academy of Consultants on Automation in social networks. After doing so, you will see that you have no excuse for not maintaining minimal activity on the network, and that with a simple automation strategy, you will not need too much time to keep your personal brand alive.
I hope these tips for providing online consulting services will be of great help to you. Do not hesitate to contribute other ideas through comments in this same post. As I already mentioned at the beginning, these are just some tips that I have extracted from my personal experience and that I think can be of great help to the readers of this blog. But I am sure that all of you have also discovered a lot of tricks and ideas to make your work as online consultants much more satisfying.