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SMMs, how to efficiently manage your time when dealing with demanding clients and short deadlines?
I work as a freelance SMM, with my own clients that I post and create content for. I also work for a digital agency (A) answering comments and messages for their clients’ pages and I work with another SMM (B) as her copywriter, writing captions and blurbs.
I’m generally a very organized and timely person, but I feel like I’m always working in a rush, mostly due to last minute requests by clients, or projects from B. She sends me topics to write articles or captions on and submit back to her to clean up before she sends to her clients, however it’s always with a very short deadline, sometimes only a few hours. If it’s something that I know, I can write quickly, but most of her clients’ topics are very technical, so of course I have to research. I also go on Instagram and look at captions for similar products/services for inspiration. All of this adds up in time. I’ve asked her to give me more time so that I don’t have to scramble every time she sends me work, but nothing has changed. To be fair, I don’t know if her clients give her short deadlines too. If I dedicate a whole day to writing 4 projects for her, by the time I finish, another 3 have been send to me. It’s never ending.
I like working with a scheduling app (I use Later or FB Business Suite) so that I can have posts lined up while I work on future ones. However, due to all the time I spend writing for B, it cuts into my time for my own clients. By the time I get to writing captions for them, I have no more energy or creativity. I then find myself working at night which I hate as I want that to be my off time.
Answering comments/messages for A’s client doesn’t take up too much time currently, but it got crazy around Christmas – it took almost 4 hours a day just to get through all the messages! So I know that will increase later on this year.
Some of my clients also pop up at last minute asking for me to take photos for them, or do a quick graphic post to be uploaded immediately. ALWAYS with short deadlines! I also work as a videographer and illustrator and I now have proposals for more projects coming up soon. I just feel overwhelmed!
I’ve started turning down projects and clients, but every few weeks someone appears asking me for my rates. I have contacts/friends in similar positions that I pass on projects to, but the “problem” is that people say they really like my writing style, and would prefer to work with me.
I feel bad complaining that I have too much work during a pandemic where others are struggling, but it feels like I have no time for myself. I am constantly stressed, not eating/sleeping well and I have my own personal projects that have been put off for months because of clients constantly bombarding me with work.
Does anyone else feel like this? How do you cope?
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3 Replies
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byu/JonODonovan insocialmedia -
Do you see a problem with creating fresh content?
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I’m really feelin for ya! That sounds horrible— a great entrepreneur knows how to delegate tasks. It sounds like you need a couple managers or assistants. It’s worth the money to outsource some of this work but I get it bc then you run into the problem that your clients aren’t getting you — and to solve that problem you must charge more … your problems will be solved by charging more because it gives you more leverage and resources to make sound decisions— just my $.02 — if u wanna chat more find me on IG dav3flanagan
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