Freelancing Just Got Easier With Zoom

Whether you’re writing for a magazine, designing a header for a website, or even coding that website, you need some level of collaboration with your clients and other people working on the project. Most likely, you’re already doing this through email. You might even have some sort of CRM helping you out. You may not know it yet, but these tools are just not good enough.

Once you try Zoom (for free, by the way), you’ll notice how much freedom the cloud video meeting platform offers you. Here's how you can get your freelance on with Zoom:

If you’re working with clients or other freelancers around the globe, you sometimes don't share much of a connection. Chances are that you’ve seen at most a picture of a client, nothing more.

When you communicate through Zoom’s video platform, it humanizes the participants. You will start thinking of clients as people, rather than the name next to an email header. The cool part of this is that the client also gets to see you in human form. This isn’t to say that you’re suddenly going to have a great relationship with a client that stiffs you, but being able to see each other makes people interact differently, usually with more empathy.

Planes, trains, buses, trams, subways, and boats are the least likely places where you’d think you could get any work done. Naturally, you’d think that all you have time for is to grab a burrito and zip quickly to where you’re going. But a busy freelancer like you could benefit from using Zoom on a mobile device. Our cloud meeting software runs on practically anything you can hold in your hand and stick in a vehicle.

On the iPad, you also get our awesome digital whiteboarding feature, where you can draw some mock-ups for clients in real-time.

You’ll be thrilled at how productive and responsive you’ll be when your clients can reach you through video while you're out and about.

In a world without Zoom, you must send your client emails with every little update to projects, attaching annotated screenshots and describing everything in writing. Eventually, your client will just “tl;dr” ("too long; didn't read") everything. The conversation that follows will be something similar to this:

- “Hey, Sarah. What’s with the site? Why did you change it so radically?”

- “Hi, John. I sent you an email a week ago with all of the changes I wanted to make, and you said to go ahead.”

- “I said that? Well, you're going to have to change it back.”

Collaboration goes sour when people have to sift through tons of text and attachments just to get the gist of what you’re talking about. Share your screen through Zoom, and you’ll instantly be brought to another plane of existence.

Screen sharing will ultimately align you perfectly with what your client desires by allowing you to talk casually about the project and annotate what’s appearing on the client’s Zoom window in real time. Using our annotation tool, you can carve out what you want the client to see, or direct attention towards a particular spot.

If your client is constantly asking “What does this button do?”, then Zoom is your new best friend. We take pride in creating no-fuss, no-grunt-work solutions for those who don’t know how to get from point A to point B on their devices. People who rarely use computers can easily join a Zoom meeting in one-click, and will find the easy-to-use interface a refreshing change from their usual software.

One thing no client ever wants to hear: "Can't wait to meet with you. Please just sign up for an account with this video meeting platform and I'll send you a meeting invite." While this sounds polite, it is actually a bit presumptuous and asks a lot of your client, who is busy and doesn't have the mental bandwidth to add another account sign up - password and all - to their plate. With Zoom, you just send them a meeting link, they click it, pause only the first time for a momentary software installation, and join the meeting. Much more professional and considerate of your client.

When meeting with people through video, the first thought on your mind will probably be, “Ugh, I have to start taking notes. Why can’t I just use email?” Close that inbox and prepare to stare in awe at Zoom’s record button! Just click it and enjoy your conversation. When you're done, the recording automatically converts into MP4 and M4A recordings saved to your computer.

This isn’t just about freedom from the evils of note-taking, though. You can review your conversation to see where you can improve your social skills and even let your client have something on record by sending over a copy.