Portfolio: Guildhall Alumni Magazine

Working with the Guildhall School

This past Autumn, I worked closely with the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. I led on the copywriting for the Autumn-Winter edition of the university’s alumni magazine called Play.

The project included writing features, news, interview pieces, and obituaries for the magazine. Preparatory work included interviewing former alumni and partners and independent research. I also contributed to the editing and proofreading process along with the in-house Guildhall team.

Read the PLAY Alumni Magazine

You can also download a copy directly from the Guildhall website, here.

Find out more about my copywriting services here, and view my portfolio here. Want to discuss a potential copywriting project? Go ahead and email me!

Update: I’ve Relocated to California!

By Nicola Balkind

Welcome Back!

It’s been quiet on this blog lately, hasn’t it? I think it’s about time I gave you an update.

2016 So Far

2016 has been super busy for me – which is always promising for a freelancer! I’ve worked with some fantastic returning clients, including the Small is Beautiful conference for microbusinesses, which took place in June. This summer, I hosted a social media workshop for authors with my old friends at the Scottish Book Trust. I’ve also been writing regular book columns for The Big Issue Magazine throughout the year.

This year has also brought me some fantastic new collaborators. I’ve been working with the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama, writing this Autumn’s edition of their alumni magazine called PLAY. I’ve also been writing case studies and marketing copy for another new client: the lovely Russwood flooring and cladding company in the Scottish Highlands.

Sadly, the move means that I will no longer be able to contribute film reviews on the Janice Forsyth Show on BBC Radio Scotland. However, I have been and will continue to publish audio and video content on my podcast, Bookish Blether, and my YouTube channel. (You might even be able to convince me to review films there, too.)

I hope your first half of the year has been kind to you, too.

What’s Next?

As email subscribers will know, I recently moved from Scotland to California. I’m now located in Central California, but will continue to work with clients all over the world. (After 11 years doing this long-distance travel-work-life thing, I’m really good at working ahead of deadlines and across time-zones.)

Whether you need to update your social media strategy, want to learn how to improve your writing online, or are ready to launch a new campaign, I’m here to help.

As always, click through to read more about my services and examples of my work – the pages are freshly updated – and feel free to get in touch with any queries you may have.

I’m currently booking projects for October – December 2016. I look forward to working with you soon!

Skilling Up

By Nicola Balkind

I’ve written a lot about my freelance journey and about a lot of my favourite resources for running a microbusiness. In addition to my mantra about working on my business as well as in my business, I have to keep on top of the latest trends and relevant skills. As freelancers, we have to work on our skills without a board member to send us to a seminar or call in a training squad. Here are my tips on skilling up.

There’s a lot of talk about digital natives – oh, we millennials and our innate skills and internet prowess. But the truth is that almost everything I know about working in digital content and marketing, and all of my related skills, are learned. I can navigate around faster than the average 40 year-old, sure, but no-one is born knowing how to craft an excellent call to action or photoshop an image.

Skilling up is important to me, and this year I’ve focused a lot on multimedia, particularly audio and image editing – but more about those below. Here are three resources that helped me to skill up this year.

Business Training & Mentoring

Last year, I won a place on the Flourish programme from the Cultural Enterprise Office here in Glasgow. The programme included 4 days of business training along with private sessions with a mentor.

The time and space it afforded me to refine my business model, think about customers and plan growth was so welcome, and the mentoring sessions were a lot like business therapy. Whenever things are slow or I’m struggling with a recurring problem, I have advice to remember and apply to the new situation. It has been invaluable.

DIY Practice-Based Learning

Being a digital autodidact is a great asset, particularly these days. There’s tons of great software, online and off, that’s easy to use when you put in the time to learn to use it.

This year I embarked on a new audio project with my friend Holly. Making our podcast, Bookish Blether, has given me a chance to work on my audio production skills, particularly the use of GarageBand for audio editing. Now I feel ready to move on to more professional software and am looking into more options to up our game even more.

I’ve also taken visual content more seriously, creating my own header images and video thumbnails. I have a reasonably good eye but have never been happy with my artistic skill. While my cobbled together header images aren’t necessarily works of art, they’re eye-catching, and trying harder and making that extra effort was necessary so as not to be left behind. It has also raised the bar for the standard of content I’m willing to publish.

The secret? I’ve been using the free online software at Canva – give it a shot yourself.

E-Courses with CreativeLive

Another audio-related course I’ve taken this year is Alex Blumberg’s Power Your Podcast With Storytelling with CreativeLive. It’s up to you to make time to work on these, and it has taken me a while to work my way through this one. However I found it’s a great way to gee yourself up when you’re feeling uninspired, and I learned a lot from this one.

CreativeLive is a great platform that brings in experts to teach 1–3 day workshops across creative disciplines including photography, video, design, business, and audio. You can log in and watch live online workshops free in real-time, or you can purchase the course materials and watch the training in your own time. Some of the courses are quite entry-level, while others are more advanced, so even if you’re just thinking of starting up there might be some workshops that are relevant to you.

They also have a fantastic blog, by the way.

Your Turn

How do you skill up in your business? How do you decide which skills you need or want to add to your personal toolkit?