This week’s round-up will be shorter than normal, because it’s been a long day and I still need to run payroll.
If you’re new here: Hi, I’m Scar, Founder & CEO here at Bohemiacademia. I do a whole bunch of things, including working from our Kensington office three days a week. Read More
I am one of those strange people who love winter. When the days get shorter, darker and colder I rejoice. While everyone else hibernates, I go for long walks in the cold. And in the summer, when other people throw open their windows and dust off their bikini bottoms, I yank the curtains closed and want to stay in bed.
This year it’s incredibly mild for the middle of February, and I feel like I’m being cheated out of winter. This, coupled with the extra-long, extra-hot summer we had, is making me a bit grumpy.
And then I had to spend an hour on the phone to HMRC this morning, which will never ungrump anyone. So on the whole, it’s been a grumpy week. But there are nice things happening too. Read More
It’s the start of the second month in our new office, and so far we can still afford to keep the heating on. This is good news: a small business isn’t an easy thing to be, and we had to do some financial scraping to rent the office in the first place, but thanks to a nice bank manager we did it and we’re in.
If you’re new here: Hi, I’m Scar, Founder & CEO here at Bohemiacademia. I do a whole bunch of things, including working from our Kensington office three days a week.
Last week we took on a couple of new clients, one for transcription and the other for translation. Read More
Eek, it’s January: the month of making & breaking resolutions, and trying to reassure your body that you’re done with all the cheese and chocolate and you will in fact be eating vegetables sometimes now.
January’s a funny month for the team, because traditionally it’s quiet client-wise but it’s been very busy in terms of work peripherals. So while we haven’t had a huge amount to do per se, I have spent excessive amounts of time in the office, setting up. Read More
Hello everyone, and welcome to the weekly round-up of stuff we’ve been doing here at Bohemiacademia.
This week I am laid up in bed; being ill as a freelancer is one of those things that’s difficult to navigate, so I thought I’d talk about it a bit in this week’s post.
Hello everyone, I hope you have had an enjoyable week. I currently have a cold, which is quite annoying, but it is to be expected with the onset of the colder weather. Luckily, working from home means that (a) I won’t be infecting any coworkers and (b) I can make myself as many mugs of Lemsip as I want.
We’ve had a fairly quiet week here at Bohemiacademia. November-December are often quieter months, as clients are winding down for the Christmas period, and then in January there’s the mad rush when everyone goes back to work.
Garreth and Jackie have been transcribing various things this week: some videos of a conference which Michelle put together; Carlie’s podcast episodes for one of our clients; and various webinars which people send to us to transcribe.
Transcription is a great way to make sure more people can access your video and audio content. Not only does it mean that those with hearing problems can enjoy it too, it also works well for SEO, as it ensures keywords are being scanned by search engines’ crawlers.
I’ve been doing a bit of proofreading this week, as usual; I’ve been focusing on proofreading in French while Johanna deals with proofreading in English.
I’ve also been chasing some client accounts – the less glamorous part of freelance life is trying to stay on top of what you’re owed, and by whom. We are lucky in that most of our clients pay on time (or even early!), but sometimes people need a little nudge.
The social media management team are hard at work as always – take a look at what Emma has been doing with a client’s Instagram account:
Kathy has been hard at work on Pinterest; having grown one client’s following by 12,000 subscribers over the course of a year, she’s now looking at ways to increase it even further.
On Facebook, our team of administrators and moderators have been looking after groups and pages, checking in daily to combat spam and make sure our clients’ groups remain useful, interesting places for people to converse.
Although they’re not as popular as other social networks, LinkedIn and GooglePlus are also places where we share our clients’ articles and keep people up to date with news in their industries. LinkedIn groups can be a great place to focus some attention, especially if you run a B2B company or if you’re in a technical industry.
Our writers are hard at work as always, of course, writing articles for clients across several different sectors. We can also source interviewees for clients, looking for people in relevant industries whose expertise and opinions might give a boost to reader numbers.
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Hello everyone! How are you? I’d assumed no one was really reading these weekly missives, but we’ve had a couple of enquiries over the past few days coming through the site so perhaps people do look at them after all.
Today in London the sky looks like this:
This seems to be making some people assume it’s the apocalypse, but of course freelancers deal with all sorts of weird stuff on a daily basis so a little apocalypse won’t stop us working.
It’s been a busy week here at Bohemiacademia – or perhaps I should say ‘everywhere at Bohemiacademia’, since we don’t have a single office.
I’m writing this from my home office, which is in my kitchen, smushed up against the fridge-freezer. On the desk next to the to-do pile is a speaker, which is currently pumping out a cheesy 90s playlist. DON’T JUDGE ME IT’S KEEPING ME GOING. There’s also a bunch of flowers and a card with a pink flamingo wearing sunglasses. All of these things are making me smile as I go about my day.
Other freelancers will be working from their kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms, local coffee shops, libraries, coworking spaces… all over the place. In a few weeks’ time we’ll be starting an interview series in which freelancers will be giving you a glimpse into their lives, so you should be able to see where people work from and how they structure their time.
In the meantime, however, we’ve been working on a number of projects.
Our French translation team have been very busy this week. One client needed a full website translation; one needed a full website proofreading service; a third needed some documents translated with a very quick turnaround time; and a fourth needed a bit of editing. The projects have all been completed now, and are being compiled and sent back to the client today.
Carlie has been busy interviewing people for a client’s podcast; this week she’s focusing on health insurance and life in the Netherlands. Once she’s done, our transcription team will take over and type up the interviews for the hearing impaired.
Our social media team have been hard at work as always: Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google Plus, and LinkedIn are the accounts we’re currently managing for our clients.
Of course, writing makes up a huge chunk of our work too; this week Garreth, Debbie, Nichola, Steve and Bella have been sending over features to be proofread by Johanna before being posted on our clients’ websites.
Scar has been interviewing people about digital forensics, pitching projects to potential clients, and having calls with current clients about plans for the next few months.
Want to commission a project? Get in touch
Think the freelance life might suit you? Drop us a line
