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Freelancer Course: Permission

Trafficnight by Thomas Hawk CC BY NC

This is the eigth post in response to question prompts in Seth Godin's Freelancer Course, found on Udemy. Please feel free to include your answers to these questions in the comment section.

 This assignment again makes me feel inadequate. If I were truly a freelancer, this would be one of those flashing red lights. A sign that tells me I need to do something or do something else. Luckily, for my sanity, I don't need to have that heart-to-heart conversation. But this assignment is still a chance to be introspective.

How many people would complain if you didn't send out your newsletter blog post and Twitter updates?
Very few. Family members and former co-workers are the only ones I know who have subscribed or are frequent readers. I do think the idea of the weekly thank-you note is quaint enough to fill a niche for inspiration. Given a little more time, perhaps I will have more people listening. For now, though, my blog is more of a place to put my participation in random learning circles and expand my voice through my digital footprint. Chronicling my thank-you note escapades is a nice consistency.

Clearly articulate what promise you make to those who give you permission.
To take them along on my learning through various courses and hopefully inspire a few more thank-you notes to be written.

What makes your marketing anticipated, personal and relevant? 
Um...well...the alarm on my calendar goes off on Monday morning, so I usually have a post at the beginning of the week. Unless I'm traveling. Or there was a holiday. Or I'm procrastinating. I can say that my posts are personal in that they let people into my world to some degree. If the question asked if my posts were personal to the reader...well, I failed there. And relevant? Yeah...I admit I'm kind of all over the place. The message of gratitude is consistent at least once a week. If this were a true business, I would find a different outlet for the less relevant courses. This freelance course would be interesting, though a little transparent for potential customers.

What could you promise that people would look forward to?
In a previous role, I managed an internal website that had articles on the happenings of our department. I would send out an email every other week to encourage people to check out the articles. I would start each email with a sarcastic quote or (an often lame) joke. It wasn't until I changed roles and the person who took it over stopped the humor that I heard from people that they looked forward to that email on Mondays and would open it just to see what joke was.

I do think the idea of a new thank-you-note circumstance each week is interesting for the right niche. Some of them are a little random, which hopefully makes them more enjoyable to read and more likely to spark an idea.
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