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December 2013
  Issue #51

Make Changes, Make a Difference!   

 

Have you ever noticed how small changes can make a big difference? How adding a bit of freshly grated nutmeg kicks the flavor of a cream sauce up a notch? Or how polishing those wing tips and adding a fedora takes a fellow from drab to dapper?

 

Your freelance medical writing business is no different. Seemingly minor changes have the potential to amp up your business and take it to the next level. And whether you want to or not, we guarantee you'll have to make some kind of change in 2014. Change is the only constant in this business so it's best to be prepared. (Cue David Bowie's Ch-ch-ch-ch Changes.)

 

We've already made a few changes. And while making those changes we learned some valuable lessons you can read about in The Savvy Marketer. What changes will you make to increase your profitability in 2014? In Dollars and Sense we offer some ideas to consider. Finally, in [Not] Just for Newbies we share some tips that might change the way you do things in PowerPoint.

 

Since this issue is all about change, we invite you to visit our redesigned website. After 4 years it was time for a face lift and we're pleased with the final result. Going forward in 2014, we'll be blogging on a weekly basis, too, so be sure to check back often for new blog posts.

 

In addition, we're excited to be Amazon Associates. You'll see the Amazon search box on every page of our site, with the exception of our home page. Every time you visit Amazon through our site or click on a product link we provide and make a purchase, we earn a few pennies that allow us to continue to give you free content through this newsletter. We would really appreciate it if you do so.

 

As another year comes to an end, we want to thank all of you for subscribing to this newsletter and supporting us in all of our endeavors. You are the best. We wish you peace, prosperity, and joy in 2014.

 

Until next month,  

 

Cyndy and Brian

The Accidental Medical Writer


PS. We offer more tips and have interesting discussions on our Facebook page. Come and join us.

 
 Newbies[NOT] JUST FOR NEWBIES
Information and Inspiration for New and Experienced Writers 

Power-up Your PowerPoint With These Tips 


We use PowerPoint (PPT) often to create slide decks for our clients. And as we've become more familiar with the program, we've learned ways to use PowerPoint more easily. Consider the tips that follow our holiday gift to you.

  • Let's start with some basics. To create a new deck using PPT 2010, click on the File tab (top left corner of the screen), then click New in the drop-down menu. Now you can choose a blank presentation you can customize, or choose from a number of different themes and templates.
    • Check out a few of them just to see how they look. Often, your clients will have a template design already created that they want you to use. Be sure to ask them for the template before you start creating the slides. You can also download PPT templates online, so do some exploring. You never know what you'll find until you look.
         
  • To format individual slides, from the Home tab in the top toolbar click on Layout. You can format slides to be title slides, or to have a title at the top and bullets in the main body of the slide, among other options.

  • To insert a new slide, from the Home tab in the top toolbar click on New Slide, then choose the slide format. Another way to insert slides is to place your cursor in the left sidebar where you see the slide thumbnails. Place your cursor where you want to insert the new slide, right click, and choose New Slide. To format the new slide, place your cursor in the thumbnail of the new slide, right click, and choose Layout from the drop-down menu. 
       
  • You can also move slides around from the thumbnail sidebar. Place the cursor on the slide you want to move, hold down the left mouse button, move the slide where you want it, and release the mouse button.
         
  • What happens if you don't see the thumbnail sidebar? That simply means you have to change the way you are viewing the slides. In the top toolbar, click on View, then click on Normal. In the Normal view individual slides appear one by one and thumbnails appear in the left sidebar. In the Slide Sorter view, you see thumbnails of all the slides in sequence from left to right. In the Notes view, the slide and the notes for that slide appear on a single page.  In the Notes view, you can only edit the notes. To edit the slide, double left click on the slide, and the deck reverts back to Normal view, where you can edit both the slides and the notes.
     
  • An easy way to cite references on slides is to use text boxes. To insert a text box in PPT 2010, in the top toolbar click Insert, then Text Box. Holding down your left mouse button, place your cursor where you want to insert the text box and drag the cursor until the text box is a suitable size. After you release the mouse button, the cursor appears inside the text box and you can type in the text. Most of our clients have set font types and sizes to use for on-screen references, so check with them to make sure the text is formatted correctly.

  • To copy a text box to another slide, right click on the text box. The text box should be outlined, with dots in the corners. Select copy from the drop-down menu. Now, go to the slide where you want to put the text box, place the cursor where you want to insert the text box, right click, and choose paste from the drop down menu. If the text box isn't in the exact location on the screen, left click to highlight the text box and while holding down the left mouse button move the text box where you want it.
    • HINT: A faster way to copy and paste slides, text, text boxes, tables, images, and just about any other type of content  is to highlight whatever you want to copy, then press Control and the letter C on your keyboard.  Then place your cursor wherever you want to insert the thing you copied, and press Control and the letter V. This simple macro functions across most, if not all, Microsoft platforms, so you can even use it to copy and paste content from PPT to Word, Word to PPT, and even Excel to PPT.
           
  • To format text boxes (for example, to remove the outline), put your cursor in the text box and left click the mouse button to highlight it. Now, choose Format in the top toolbar, left click on Shape Outline, and choose No Outline.

  • To copy slides from 1 deck to another, in the Normal view, go to the sidebar with the thumbnails. To copy a single slide, place your cursor in the slide, right click, and select copy from the drop-down menu. Now, go to the deck where you want to insert the new slide. In the Normal view in the sidebar with the thumbnails, place the cursor where you want to insert the copied slide, right click, and choose Paste from the drop-down menu.
     
  • What happens if the copied slide is in a different template than the other slides? After you paste the slide, you'll see a square with an icon of a clipboard that appears near the copied slide. Put your cursor on it and you'll see Paste Options. Right click and you can choose to keep the source formatting or use the destination theme. Choose destination theme if you want the slide to match the deck in which you're working.
     
  • And let's not forget this simple design tip (and we're constantly reminding our clients of this). From an instructional design perspective, try to have no more than 6 lines of text and no more than 6 words per line on a slide. Yes, we know, clients like to throw as many words on a slide as they can. But do your best to discourage that practice.

These are some basics to get you started. Just like Excel, PPT can be intimidating if you're new to the program. We recommend playing around with it in your spare time. Create some fun decks that don't matter so you can explore everything you can do with this program.

 

 ON THE RADAR
Resources for Medical Writers

Free Tool to Help Remember Your Passwords             

 

Do you write your passwords on slips of paper, or in different notebooks only to misplace them over time? Keeping track of all of the multiple passwords you use to manage your online life is tough. That's why we were excited when we came across LastPass, a free password manager that tracks all of those passwords you have out there. A free program, LastPass supports multiple browsers and operating systems, even smartphones (however, mobile access costs $12 a month). The updated LastPass 3.0 was released in November 2013. We haven't tried it yet, but we plan to and we wanted to make you aware of this tool. If you've tried it, let us know. Leave a comment on our Facebook page or send us an email.

DollarsDOLLARS & SENSE

Advice on the Business of Freelancing 

What Will You Do Differently Next Year to Increase Your Profitability? 

  

2014 is just a few weeks away. Like millions of people around the world, you may already be thinking about making a New Year's resolution. Personal improvement is the typical target. But as business owners, we also like to resolve to make a professional improvement, and we can't think of a better professional improvement than resolving to make more money. Are you with us?

 

We find it helpful to make a single professional improvement resolution so it's easy to stay focused on it all year long. Here are just a few of the resolutions we've made in the past few years. Perhaps one of them is just right for you? If not, use our resolutions to inspire one of your own.

 

RESOLUTION #1: LOSE WEIGHT

It's amazing how a lousy client can pull down your whole business. They demand too much of your time for what they pay. They make you feel used and abused. And they take all the joy out of doing what you love to do. Tired of carrying them around? Resolve for 2014 to lose that excess weight and cut them loose! You don't have to fire them outright, unless that's what the situation demands. We recommend becoming a little less available to them and committing that extra time you now have to finding a better client to replace them.

 

RESOLUTION #2: BECOME MORE SOCIABLE

A great way to increase your profitability is to increase your gross income. To do that, you need to put yourself out there more. Meet more people, shake more hands, put your elevator speech to work; maybe go out on a limb and try new things--like a new therapeutic area, a new type of writing, or a new audience. Sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find one price or princess, but it does make you a better kisser! Need a fresh place to start? Check this out: Never Eat Alone, Expanded and Updated: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi.

 

RESOLUTION #3: EXPLORE

However you like to market yourself, resolve for 2014 to get out of your comfort zone and try something new. Make a commitment to social media. Invest a little cash in a direct mail campaign. Stop making promises and launch that website you've been talking about for years. (We just launched our newly designed website, and we're happy to share with you what we learned along the way. Click here. Remember, there's always room for improvement, but the only mistake you can make is not trying.

 

RESOLUTION #4: GET MORE OUT OF LIFE

Billing is the lifeblood of your business. Resolve for 2014 to get more out of it than ever before! Billing on a more regular basis is a great way to start. Another way is to increase your profitability with every job. Check out our article in Pencil Points Issue #48 on how to give yourself a raise. If you charge by the hour, learn why you should be charging by the project (we talk and write about this one all the time). If you charge by the project, pick up some tips on how to be a better estimator from our article in Pencil Points Issue #47

WhereWHERE IN THE WORLD ARE BRIAN AND CYNDY?
The Accidental Medical Writer Calendar

 

We closed out our year of teaching last month at the AMWA Annual Conference. But we're already planning our schedules for 2014. If you'd like us to come and speak at an event you're organizing, don't wait too long to contact us. Our schedule is filling fast!

 

Be sure to check out Brian's interview in Breaking Into Medical Writing and Editing by Kristen Fischer that was published online on January 6 by mediabistro.com, a top site for communication professionals who create or work with content. If you're a member of AvantGuild you can access the article for free. If not, there's a $55 annual subscription fee, which gives you access to all the exclusive content the site offers. If you recall, Kristen interviewed Cyndy last year for the Freelance Switch blog, which you can read here. Thanks, Kristen.

 

We frequently speak and teach at medical writing conferences and seminars; we've also been interviewed online. Check out our Webcasts. Brian's interview with Danielle Hampson of The Business Authors Show is also available right on our website!

We would love to present at your next upcoming meeting or event, so invite us!

 

SavvyTHE SAVVY MARKETER
Marketing Tips to Build Your Business 
What We Learned By Rebuilding Our Website   

 

When we launched our first book, The Accidental Medical Writer, we were proud to have built our own website to help get it off the ground. That was 2008, and our original website served us very well. But recently, we knew it was time for a change. How did we know?

 

Lesson #1: You evolve, so should your website

We realized that while our original website was complete and fully functional, it didn't really match our current styles and tastes. When we designed it we had great plans for regularly updated content, and we wanted to tell our whole story. More recently, we realized our old website was trying to do too much, trying to be too much. We now wanted a website that was concise, quicker and easier to navigate, and gave visitors better access to the information we provide.

 

To create our original website we contracted with GoDaddy and purchased their online software Website Tonight, which they now call Website Builder, and Quick Shopping Cart to build the site. It was wonderful, because it gave us the ability to construct a professional-quality website without having to immerse ourselves in HTML coding. But we were having trouble keeping up with the site we built. Why was that?

 

Lesson #2: More success equals less time

As The Accidental Medical Writer grew and our freelance businesses grew, we found ourselves with less time to manage our website, even though the way we built it and the software we used made it very easy to do. We simply no longer had the time. We realized that content we meant to keep fresh was getting stale, and that was antithetical to our goal.

 

We took the plunge and hired a website design specialist we met earlier this year at the AMWA-DVC Freelance Workshop, and worked closely with him to create a leaner, cleaner website we're proud to say really gets the job done for us. How did that help us?

 

Lesson #3: Technology is your friend, when it's in the right hands

Because of our website designer's expertise, we were able to harness technology that was far beyond our personal grasp but that we knew would make our website better. For example, we were finally able to launch the blog we've wanted to produce, and have it link to our other social media accounts to give us a greater voice without increasing our workload.

 

If you haven't already seen our new website, we hope you'll check it out. Then click Contact and let us know what you think. Our new website will continue to be a work in progress for a while, but then, what part of marketing your business isn't a work in progress? We hope these lessons we've learned along the way will help you freshen up your website or finally get it off the ground.

 

THE FINE PRINT

 

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