Last week it was National Freelancers Day in the UK. I went along to a lecture organised by the PCG, who represent the voice of freelancing here, entitled ‘Let’s Talk Freelancing’.

One of the speakers was Professor Andrew Burke from Cranfield School of Management who is currently researching into the key contribution freelancers make to British business innovation and how this contribution affects the UK’s attractiveness as a base for this kind of activity.

The Sunday Telegraph reported his talk last weekend and here is a summary of that article.

Professor Burke argued that, with governments and consumers both cutting their spending in the developed world, the need for companies to invest and generate growth will only increase.

“All hope is being placed on an entrepreneurial Britain gaining new international market share through innovation,” he said. “So, if Britain is to succeed, it needs a sufficient supply of innovative businesses.”

When I started up my copywriting business, I had no marketing budget to play with. Over a year later, I still don’t: not because I can’t afford one, but because I don’t need one. Right back in the beginning, I was talked into using Twitter in a personal capacity by friends and family, who had got there way ahead of me.

But once I saw how other people were successfully using Twitter as a free tool to market their businesses, I started to apply their approach to my own company. Since then, my biggest contracts have come through Twitter and I use it every day to build my business and win more clients. Most of my business now comes from word-of-mouth recommendations – and that’s really what Twitter is all about.

Twitter training

NFD 2011 is next week and it’s all about celebrating freelance working in the UK.

It’s a day to focus on the opportunities that freelancing offers to individuals, to organisations and to the UK economy. The day is organised by PCG, the voice of freelancing in the UK, which represents the largest slice of Britain’s 1.4 million freelancers.

Win tickets

Click here for a chance to win one of 10 pairs of tickets to the Freelance Lecture on November 23 at St Luke’s in Old Street, London EC1. The subject this year is ‘Flexibility, capability, agility, compatibility – let’s talk freelancing!’

Do you regard other freelancers in your niche as competitors or colleagues?

I’ve won some lucrative projects going in with a co-writer that I wouldn’t have secured on my own. Either the workload was too much for me to fit in with my other commitments, or the deadlines were too tight for one person to complete.

On one occasion (writing a big new website for a major building society), all we had to do was agree how we were going to divide the work and prove to the client that we could both write in the same style.

I’m currently pitching for ongoing project work – the potential client is a high-profile international organisation. I’m doing this in collaboration with two other people. If we get it, I will be writing case studies, another writer will be doing opinion/thought leadership pieces, and the third person will focus on producing videos based on those stories.