Author Archives: Bevan Thomas

Importance of Balance

16 Wednesday Oct 2013

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One of the constant things in my life, in the lives of many freelancers, is the constant quest for balance. I, of course, have a lot of work I need to do for my clients, but I also have work I need to do branding and networking my own business, work I need to do for Cloudscape Comics, personal writing projects, an d networking with other creative individuals. That’s a lot of stuff on my plate and it’s hard to feel happy about accomplishing any one of them when there’s always so much more on the list yet to do. I may have finished a website for a client but my blog is out of date, I have five business contacts to reconnect with, I haven’t looked at my novel in a month, and I need to read a book before I return it to a friend. How does one deal with all that?

The most common recommendation people give is setting aside particular times or days for particular activities. Most of my networking and personal branding is done the morning. That’s when I like to meet with clients, attend events, answer my emails, work on my blog. Of course, sometimes that’s not possible and the afternoon or evening will have to do, but whenever possible I choose the morning.

Then I have lunch and after lunch, that’s when I do work for clients. I write their websites, plan their commercials, edit their brochures, and what have you. If I’m lucky, all of that will be done by dinnertime and after dinner I’ll be able to work on my more interesting creative projects – comics, my novel, scripts or what have you. And then if I’m really really lucky, I get to read for an hour or two before bed.

Then Friday evenings and most of Saturday or gently put aside for spending quality time with my girlfriend while all of Sunday (and sometimes Saturday evenings) are once again put aside for creative projects.

This isn’t a perfect system and various times I’ve had to switch things around but as a whole it’s working out okay.

I’ve found the most useful part is giving myself particular blocks of time in which I need to be working on particular tasks. For example, requiring me to devote four hours that afternoon to a person’s website or three hours to a brochure. I find my intention is much more focused on an assignment when it’s within these proscribed hours and I’m also less distracted by other stuff. And then when I’m finished, I can turn to something else with a much clearer mind. It’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learned when figuring-out how to best develop myself as a freelance writer.

That and to treat myself as a client who deserves as much attention and effort as my other clients. Sadly, scheduling time to work on my own business and making sure I’m not sacrificing that to meet my other demands is something I still need to work on.

Old Clients

09 Wednesday Oct 2013

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So a client that I did work for more than a year and a half ago recently contacted me to ask if I was interested in doing some work for one of her clients, a web developer who is, not surprisingly, working with people who need websites done. Website writing is certainly something I’ve done a lot and as I had enjoyed working with her on the first project, I was excited to be working with her again. An interesting experience that reminded me you never know where connections can go or when someone you met decides they want to see you strut your stuff.

I probably have an edge in all this because I’ve noticed that copywriting is not the most common profession in the city. Anyone who’s involved with any busy networking in Vancouver is going to know plenty of accountants, web designers, lawyers, etc. But I rarely bump into another copywriter and so there’s a decent chance that I’m the only copywriter a particular person will know and thus the first on their mind if they hear someone needs some good writing done. Maybe something for themselves or for a friend of friend or maybe many moons down the line they notice my business card crumpled in the back of their wallet and decide to give me a call. Networking is often a long game. You have to be patient because you never know what will happen and you never know when it’ll happen. Dedication and diligence are probably the two most important traits for freelancers but patience is pretty high up there too.

Cloudscape & Me

02 Wednesday Oct 2013

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Cloudscape Comics
If you know almost anything about me, you probably know that I’m part of Cloudscape Comics, a local group of comic book creators that publishes a yearly anthology of our work, has regular Wednesday meetings, and engages in a lot of different events throughout the city. There’s a lot going on there. Just last month, we had the launch of our seventh graphic novel anthology, Waterlogged, at the Maritime Museum and a great crowd of people showed up. This week we’re also putting the finishing touches on Epic Canadiana, an anthology of Canadian superhero stories edited entirely by me, and we’re already planning our next anthology, Mega Fauna. That’s not counting the Halloween party we’re preparing, the events we’re doing, the classes we’re teaching, the conventions we’re attending.

In the last year or so, Cloudscape has become a juggernaut, expanding far beyond the original confines of the group. When I first became a member, it was often hard to engage enough people to push forward any project that fell outside the yearly anthology while now we have a host of members who aren’t just interested in the organization as a venue for publishing their stories but are actually interested in the organization for itself. Thanks to their investment, Cloudscape has grown on numerous levels.

Few things make me as proud as being part of Cloudscape. My life would be very different and much less rich today if it wasn’t for the organization. Most of my best artist collaborations have come from people I’ve connected to through Cloudscape, many of my own stories that I’m most proud of have been published through Cloudscape’s anthologies, I count many of my closest friends as Cloudscape members, and of course I met my girlfriend, the multitalented Reetta Linjama, through the organization. Cloudscape has given me so much and I like to think that I’m doing my part to give back to it in return. There’s numerous other things happening on the horizon with Cloudscape and I look forward to being a part of them.

Marketing 3.0

20 Tuesday Aug 2013

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marketing 3.0One of the most interesting business books that I’ve read is Marketing 3.0 by Philip Kotler. This book discusses how the model for successful companies has changed over the decades. Originally the most successful companies were product-focused, those that created the best products. However, around the middle of the 20th-century, the model changed so that the most successful companies were customer-focused, providing great service, meeting the customers’ particular needs, the “customer is always right.” Now, at the dawn of the 21st-century, the world of the Web and social media, customers most want a company whose values and personal identity appeal to them.

Of course good products and good customer service will always be important to a company’s success, but the spread of the Internet has resulted in us becoming much more aware, much more connected with companies’ identities and the identities of the people behind them. We can read a company’s values on their website, follow their CEO on Twitter and Facebook. Suddenly it’s not just their services but they themselves who matter to us. We want to know their values, their spirit. Are the people the sort who would interest us? The sort we can like? Respect?

As a content and marketing writer, I’m very aware that it’s no longer enough to just market your products; you need to also market yourself. You need to tell your story and tell it well. Tell a story that engages someone and you build-up their interest in you and what you offer. They learn of your devotion and knowledge, what makes you stand out from others in your field. Through your story, your audience discovers who you are, what you’ve experienced, and so they come to trust you and what you have to offer. I help professionals explore their story and then I help them figure out how to best use it to engage their target audience. I’ve told my clients’ stories in numerous mediums: text, comics, video, animation… whatever suited the tale the best. How should your story be told?

The Merits of “Commitment”

13 Tuesday Aug 2013

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Commitment business graphic novelMy friend Bob Garlick, marketer and half the brains behind the Bunker Project social media podcast, lent me a very interesting business book: Commitment by Olav Maassen and Chris Matt and illustrated by Chris Geary. It’s a business book… that’s also a comic book, a graphic novel!

Comics have always fascinated me – in fact, I’m a board member and regular contributor to Cloudscape Comics. Furthermore, in my role as a content writer, I’m always interested in finding exciting ways to tell my clients’ stories. As I mentioned in my Corporate Comics presentation, a comic’s combination of text and images really engages readers, making the driest material compelling. You can use a comic to lay out the story of a company, the story of a product, an overview of its methods, or the effectiveness of a process. People want to read the whole thing and they remember what they’ve read.

Commitment explores the ideas of risk management and real options – how an individual or organization can overcome business challenges by creatively re-examining the options available to them. However, it’s also the story of Rose Randall, a shy young woman who finds herself in charge of one of her company’s projects, a project that will fail unless she reorganizes the team and their methods in a way that her bosses don’t expect. By using real options, Rose is able to successfully complete the project, proving to her bosses and herself that she has what it takes to succeed.

When I was first told about this book, I expected something like Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, a comic used to explain content but with no over-arching narrative. I was pleasantly surprised to watch Rose’s story entwine with the various business lessons. Almost all of us know what it’s like to be thrown into a situation we feel ill-prepared for, one that is above what we believe to be our level of ability, and so we sympathize with Rose’s situation and are excited to learn how she uses the business lessons to survive and thrive in her new environment.

The story & art take what could otherwise be a dry business book and transform it into a vibrant narrative which we eagerly explore and through exploring learn its lessons. Commitment shows the effectiveness of using a graphic novel to describe business ideas and I hope that other business authors will follow the example of these creators in explaining their own ideas through this powerful medium.

Wildfire Storytelling

06 Tuesday Aug 2013

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Stephanie Michelle Scott

Stephanie Michelle Scott

One of my favourite things about being a freelance writer is all the networking I do, as it means I meet a lot of fascinating professionals. One of the most intriguing ones I met recently was Stephanie Michelle Scott, owner of Wildfire Effect, a company devoted to marketing clients through innovative storytelling techniques.

As anyone who knows me knows, I love stories and the focus of my business is helping my clients tell their stories in the best way to engage their potential customers. Thus, I find Stephanie’s work very compelling, especially her use of ARGs (alternative reality games), innovative games that are played-out in the “real world” to spread buzz about her clients, their services, and their events. For example, hiding around the city various clues related to an upcoming event, then using a viral campaign to encourage people to hunt for all the clues so that they’ll be awarded with a prize at the event. It’s a great way to engage your clients, getting them involved in your brand identity while having fun in the process.

That’s only one of the many techniques Stephanie offers. Stop by her website and take a look at everything else she provides. Though she and I have not worked on the same project yet, our philosophies towards marketing our clients’ companies are so in sync that it’s only a matter of time before we end-up working together.

Corporate Comics

27 Saturday Jul 2013

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Cloudscape Comics originInterested in connecting with your target audience in a new and engaging way? Have you ever thought of corporate comics? They’re comic strips explaining yourself, your company, product, service or event; written by myself and illustrated by one of the talented comic artists I know.

Learn more about it in my Corporate Comics presentation and then stop by my portfolio to read some examples in detail.

Why I do what I do

22 Monday Jul 2013

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I attended an interesting business seminar that spent a lot of time investigating each participant’s psychology, who they were, what they were doing, how that connected to their business. One of the most interesting elements was when the person running it asked us to think about our own story and see how it motivates each of us in our particular professions.

I suppose in different ways it’s something I’d been thinking about at various times over the years but I never put it into quite those words before. Why do I do what I do? Well, if you asked me to describe myself in a single word, that word would be “storyteller.” Whether I’m writing comics for Cloudscape, writing copy for clients, even playing role-playing games, I’m telling stories. That’s what I do. Stories fascinate me.

I’ve always yearned for self-expression, always wanted to tell the stories that matter to me and to people who are ready to listen. And I continue to tell my own stories in numerous mediums. As this is my great passion in life, it’s also something I seek to provide other people with. I help other people find their voice, tell their stories, get their voice. I allow them to express themselves, their passion, through their story. Their passion may be a product or a service, a company or a personal identity. Whatever it is, I make certain that it’s being expressed in the most effective way possible.

I tell stories. Sometimes it’s my story, sometimes it’s other people’s. It’s what I do. Because self-expression and expressing ideas, telling stories, is what I love most in the world. I do it because it’s my passion. Why do you do what you do?

Comics for Clients

17 Wednesday Jul 2013

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STUD onlineSo I like helping companies and professionals tell their story and I like comics, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that I like using comics to help companies and professionals tell their stories. Comics are a very versatile medium: their combination of pictures and words is concise and engaging, allowing information to quickly, clearly, and compellingly be delivered to a target audience. This can be shown in everything from emergency procedure pamphlets to Larry Gonick’s classic cartoon histories.

Cloudscape Comics originI’ve written an underwear ad as a comic, told the history of a comic book company as a comic, and recounted two news events as comics. They were four of the funnest copywriting projects I’ve done and four of the most powerful, as they get the readers involved in the information in a very memorable manner. I’m proud of all my copywriter but my non-fiction comics have an especially soft place in my heart for they’re a beautiful union of my career and my passion. You’ll certainly be seeing much more of them in the future.