I’ve been working with interactive agencies, online marketing companies and even served as the in-house internet marketing person for the better part of a decade now. I have recently made the move back to being an independent consultant. By recently, I mean it’s been exactly 24 hours. In order to be successful, I knew that there were a few things I would have to do. Below are some ways that I know that I’m going to need to do in order to remain successful and on my own.

Treat each day as a normal work day.
This doesn’t mean get up, fight traffic and hate the entire world before you get to the office. What I mean is that it is very important that while you’re just walking into your home office or living room, or back patio, you should still treat it as you’re walking into a working environment. I would never walk into an office setting in shorts and flip flops, so I made sure that when it was time to work, I was dressed and ready for the day. If you don’t do this, you’ll surely find yourself in the same shorts and flip flops when the end of the work day rolls around.

Keep your reputation strong.
One thing I have done over the last few years is create many positive working relationships with people. I have made sure that I have always had my best foot forward when it was important and that I always gave more of myself than I did the time before. You want to make sure that whenever you put your name on something, that it is the best thing you’ve ever done. If I’m not proud of my work, I won’t put my name on it. Your reputation, especially in the online marketing world is like a viral resume of sorts in the fact that you can be recommended for jobs and consulting work without even knowing it.

Stay Organized.
Calendars definitely help, whether it’s Outlook, Google, or even one of those hideously big desktop calendars that your teachers had in 3rd grade. Merely writing down appointments, calls, and meetings chronologically has helped me tremendously. On my first day out on my own, I had about four meetings that I had to make sure I was ready for. I make sure that every single meeting invite I have is synched to my Blackberry and I set the meeting reminders for 30 minutes ahead of time. This helps me never miss something important. The other thing that I do is keep lists. When I first sit down to work, I always create a list of things that I should do, and things that I have to do. I know it sounds so simple and elementary, but it has really helped me.

Create Goals (and see them through).
I have a few goals as far as how much new business I need to bring in to get to a good client load and how much money I need to make to live comfortably. Everything I do and work on, I make sure somehow ties into either my short-term and/or long-term goals. You have to know what you’re working for or you may not always see the value in doing something.

Stay Connected.
Probably the most important thing for me to do would be to make sure I’m staying connected in the industry. Staying connected can mean three things to me. First is the internet connection. Seriously, in this day and age, how many internet outages should we have!? Nothing’s more frustrating than having emails that you can’t get to when you’re on a tight deadline or not being able to access your online tools etc. Secondly, staying connected to me also means that I’m current in everything that’s going on in the industry. In my business, I have to know what’s happening, when algorithms shift, when best practices change and any other relevant news. The last thing, but most important is staying connected to people. If it weren’t for the people I’m currently connected with, there’s no way I would’ve been able to make such a smooth transition to working on my own. Most of my contract work and consulting gigs I’m working on right now are because these people that I’m connected to have referred them to me.

Well I know this was quite the post, but I had to make up for not posting in about a month! I guess now I’ve got nothing but time on my hand, so this blog is yet another way for me to stay connected!

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