Freelancing TODAY, BlueSky, Audio Looping Tool

A month ago, this newsletter had an article about preparing for life after January 20th. Here we are today, and I could not have predicted everything that has happened….in such a short period of time.

I’ll concentrate on things locally that have already affected freelancer life, including my own.

This week, I’ve been editing a non-profit video for an association that supports USAID orgs. I’ve been asked to take out any mention of the word “women” or references to supporting minorities. And every day, I’m pulling more out of this video, as conditions deteriorate from where they were last summer, when I started this video. My contact at this client site is a recently furloughed communications director from one of those organizations whose funding was slashed, in light of their ten-year contract with the U.S. government. All for being part of 1% of the federal budget.

Our DC traffic is back in full force as the president has ordered federal employees (the ones that still have jobs) to go back to their DC offices. Ah, the joy of 1.5 hour commutes! Wondering if the traffic robots working for Google Maps and Waze have adjusted their timing predictions when they tell you when to leave for a job. Maybe not, since they’re busy changing “Gulf of Mexico” to “Gulf of America”. I generally add 15 minutes, I might start adding 30.

I am concerned about MANY of my jobs and clients. I offer video production services, which has traditionally been seen as “too expensive” and “not necessary”. I worry that my position with the local school district will get cut, if the Dept of Education gets dismantled and even more funding is cut from school budgets that never have enough money as it is. I’d love to know if there is ANY school district in the country that feels like they are sufficiently funded to give students the best education they can.

I am trying to lean into where my services ARE needed and necessary to address what’s happening. Asking if I can livestream activism events to spread messaging to more people. Similarly, making sure that the event organizers know about my teleprompter services, if it’s appropriate.

And in the midst of all of this, I’ve lost one of my long-term non-profit clients, and the others are so busy putting out fires with teaspoons of water, I can’t get conversations with them.

Reply to this newsletter and tell me how your freelance life has been affected, and what you’d like others to know or be aware of, and I’ll share it in the next newsletter.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve really been struggling to find my way in navigating social media in a way that doesn’t impact my mental health lately.

I gave up on my Facebook business page a couple years ago, when Facebook really stopped helping business pages. The page is there, but I don’t post anything.

I gave up on Twitter/X even before that. Again, there’s a presence there, but no new postings in years. It’s like “MySpace”, I guess, at this point, for me.

Since Meta/Facebook also owns the Insta-verse, I’m hesitant to post there right now, while it’s unclear how my content and engagement is being used by Meta. I’m just using my personal Facebook page to share ways that people can take action against what our government is doing and not doing. With so many unemployed people now, they should have a bit more time on their hands….and motivation.

So personally, I’ve moved over to BlueSky, and I’m using my company’s domain name as my handle (@picturethisvideo.net). Learn how to do that for your company with these step-by-step instructions. I’ve created a separate BlueSky account for my personal stuff.

When you are building a BlueSky account for your brand, keep your brand in mind! Use a handle that you’ve used for your business before, highlight what your company does, and remember to put in a call-to-action to draw people to your website. Use a logo for the profile picture.

As for content, the normal social media rules apply, but try to make it more organic: conversational content to encourage engagement; behind-the-scenes content; staff and/or customer testimonials, educational content, videos. Focus on value-driven content and work on building genuine connections with your audience.

Bottom line, get in early and you can get ahead of the curve.

Have you heard of Audjust? It’s a way to extend or loop music. This week, I was editing a video that was 5 1/2 minutes long. When you search in Adobe’s stock music library, you can’t find very uptempo music that goes on for 5 1/2 minutes. So I managed to find a shorter song, less than 2 minutes, and looped it manually as I wanted, knowing I wasn’t on the final version of the video, but the client was already asking about the music, after draft 1.

Draft 2’s feedback included liking the music, but more cuts to the narration. Of course, this will change the music pacing, too.

What Audjust will do is analyze the music to create a loopable version, that you can match to the amount of time you need. Unlike Adobe’s Remix, you can mark parts of the song you dislike and have them removed. You can download the entire new version, or just the chunk of the song that was turned into a loop. And you have a choice of .mp3 (128/256/320 kbps versions) or .wav. Only the 128 kbps .mp3 version is free. The others require a premium fee ($6.99 per month). The free version does NOT allow commercial usage. Of course, Adobe Premiere Remix already works with Adobe Premiere, and has no limitations on it’s use. If you’re not using Adobe Premiere, the Audjust tool may be just what you’re looking for.