Tips on optimising your professionalism as a freelancer 

When I set up G75 Media in 2007, I’ll admit my working setup wasn’t very professional. I was based in the spare room of my parents’ house, where I’d temporarily returned after a long-term relationship broke down. I was using a glass-topped console table as a desk, with an old personal tower PC underneath and a briefcase of paperwork wedged against the table leg because I had no storage.

Yet to a customer, G75 Media looked professional from day one. Its director (me) arrived punctually for meetings, smartly dressed and fully briefed on the agenda. Emails were sent with full contact details, through a proprietary email account linked to the newly launched (and quite stylish by the standards of the time) website where our services were comprehensively extolled. G75 Media had a dedicated phone number and embossed letterheaded stationery, while my car at the time sported a personalised registration plate and rear window sticker promoting the brand. You wouldn’t have known I spent part of Christmas Day 2007 sat at that drawerless desk in my pants, drafting up social media posts for the coming months.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail

As a small business owner, entrepreneur or sole trader, optimising your professionalism is essential if you want to be taken seriously. Yet many people – often those with the security of salaried employment, and particularly those with union backing – feel little pressure to constantly operate to their best. However, that’s no reason for the rest of us to lower our standards. That’s why I’ve put together a short guide on optimising your professionalism for anyone just starting out in business – graduates, second lifers and people wanting to bring an entrepreneurial idea into existence. It’s not difficult, but it does require common sense and attention to detail.

1. Dress smartly for every occasion.

I recently read a story about a man who attended a video call on his day off, dressed in a shirt and tie…and nothing else. When a cable worked loose behind his computer, he stood up to fix it and revealed far more than his fellow Teams callers had expected. People still judge you by your attire, even when you’re working remotely, so dress smartly – above and below the waist.

2. Ensure your technology is reliable.

I have terrible problems on my laptop with Microsoft Teams, which never works as it should. I now conduct all Teams calls on my phone. However, optimising your professionalism involves – as I do – buying a stand, raising it to a healthy height, ensuring the background looks neat and smart, dialling in before the call to test the camera and microphone. Pre-empt any known issues in advance

3. Always check written communications for accuracy.

I don’t expect you to be a superb writer if you work in engineering or sales or other unrelated disciplines. What I do expect is for you to spell my name correctly, proofread your emails and ensure your contact details are up to date. It’s amazing how often I get emails containing obvious errors. This also applies to social media output, press releases, financial documentation and so on.

4. Don’t be presumptuous.

If I’ve never spoken to you before, contacting me at 3am via WhatsApp doesn’t create a good first impression. Nor does the use of emoji, or unnecessary abbreviations, or loathsome Americanisms like ‘gotten’ or ‘get-go’. Optimising your professionalism means assuming formality is required until you’re familiar/confident/friendly enough with specific people to chat to them like a pal.

5. Get back to people.

If someone asks me to email them/arrange an interview/make a payment, I do it. Yet if I ask them, they often don’t. Few things are more irritating to a pressurised executive than being ghosted, ignored or forgotten about. We’re all busy, but that’s not a good enough excuse to forget appointments, fail to respond to emails or miss deadlines. Which brings me onto…

6. Use a project management app to keep on top of your workload.

I have a Trello board with To Do, To Send and Next Week headings. As work comes in, I make a note of it using a different coloured sticker for each client in the To Do column. When I’ve produced a first draft, it’s dragged into the To Send tab with a note of the due day. If it’s recurring, I move it to Next Week once it’s filed. I never miss a deadline, and all it takes is a few moments of daily organisation.

7. Don’t claim to be an expert if you aren’t.

Freelancing is a fragile profession, where you’re only ever one email or phone call away from gaining or losing a client. However, that’s no reason to fake it. When I last advertised a freelance writing job, I received dozens of applications from people barely able to string a sentence together. Feigning expertise might get you a gig, but you’ll quickly lose it in bad circumstances. Stay in your lane.

8. Invest in good-quality, reliable technology.

I once worked for a magazine publisher who lost her entire history of business records when her laptop failed. Why didn’t she back up her data? Why didn’t she upgrade her old laptop? Buying quality hardware means less downtime and more reliable operations. This extends to computers and printers, phones and website/domain/email hosting, cloud storage – and even your car.

I could have gone on to mention many other points, including diversifying your business’s activities into other markets, but optimising your professionalism generally requires a simple blend of common sense and pragmatism. It means not over-promising and then under-delivering. It means meeting your scheduled deadlines and not allowing personal issues (we’ve all got some going on) to diminish your professionalism. Above all, it means being polite and approachable to everyone, regardless of family pressures or health ailments. And if that’s something you’re struggling to find among the contractors and freelancers you’re currently using, contact G75 Media to find out how a true professional can benefit your brand or business in terms of optimising your professionalism.

Why now is the time to add quality content to your company website

With hindsight, the arrival of generative AI a couple of years ago is beginning to closely resemble the short-lived phenomenon of peer-to-peer filesharing. Emerging from a cloudless sky in the late 1990s like a lightning bolt to the creative industries, P2P filesharing capitalised on the burgeoning number of personal internet connections by offering a sudden – and almost violently reactive – democratisation of access to media content.

For consumers who had been price gouged by music labels and DVD sellers over many years, the ability to grab free music and download pirated films often felt like a blessing. And in fairness, some artists actively supported the concept. Radiohead and The Offspring were among the high-profile bands to champion platforms like Napster, or make free music available to swell their fanbase and encourage purchases of their album archives. There are artists around today whose reputation was forged in P2P sharing, just as tape trading propelled some musicians to stardom in the 1980s.

Bursting the bubble

Yet P2P filesharing proved to be a short-lived phenomenon which attracted a swift and brutal crackdown from the industries whose creative content was being illegally shared en masse. Many uploaded files were of poor quality or not as described, while it was impossible to escape the fact that talented artists weren’t being paid whenever their content was stolen. Platforms like Napster were quickly suffocated by punitive lawsuits, and when legitimate business models failed to take flight, the entire P2P industry collapsed in on itself.

Today, we can expect similar things to happen with generative AI. Indeed, the parallels are uncanny. Once again, entire swathes of digital content (this time mostly written forms) are being systematically plundered with no respect for copyright. Once again, high-quality content is being repackaged with diminished quality and distributed with no royalties or recognition of the artists responsible for creating it. Once again, the legal industry is creaking into gear with enough IP lawsuits and litigation to keep the world’s lawyers working overtime for years to come. And once again, consumers are beginning to turn against the low-grade slop they’re being served up, recognising belatedly that ‘free’ doesn’t mean ‘ethical’, ‘quality’ or ‘dependable’.

The impact on small businesses

What does that mean for a company here in 2026, wanting to add new content to its website, compile a tender document or produce a business report? In theory, being able to add quality content to your company website for free sounds great. Free looks good on the balance sheet, especially in these economically straitened times. However, there are numerous drawbacks to commissioning a generative AI engine to repurpose existing content and attempting to pass it off as your own work:

  • Generative AI is derivative. All platforms like ChatGPT and Grok do is regurgitate what already exists. They might use different phrasing each time, but their output will be predictable and stale, making points any of your competitors could also make, without acknowledging your firm’s USPs.
  • Generative AI is unimaginative. A professional writer will add features no AI algorithm can replicate – humour, warmth, emotional heft, lived experience. When you need to add quality content to your company website, a person can inject urgency, passion and excitement in a way algorithms can’t.
  • Generative AI is effectively theft on a mass scale. I’ve seen my own work presented as an AI ‘answer’ to search engine questions. I never granted permission for this to happen. Do you want your own company to be guilty of plagiarism or copyright infringement when the lawsuits start raining down?
  • Generative AI is likely to be downgraded by the very firms promoting it. Google AI is infuriatingly unreliable, and Google itself will eventually have to acknowledge this. Once it does, sites with AI-generated content are likely to plummet down ranking results, below those with authentic content.
  • Generative AI won’t be free for much longer. The vast data centres and endless arrays of servers used to power genAI tools cost an absolute fortune to build and run. Sooner or later, their owners  will seek to monetise them, turning off the supply of free content in favour of paid business models.

It’s immediately obvious that AI-generated written content isn’t going to stand the test of time. Consumers can tell the difference, just as they can look at an AI-generated photo and instinctively tell it’s fake. And if its content is fake, why would the company that published or promoted it be genuine, or trustworthy? Do consumers really want to hand over money to a company that’s obviously cutting corners, and taking so little pride in its own achievements that AI produced its brochures or blog? Are they likely to receive personalised service or bespoke support from such a company?

The old ways are still the best

If you want to add quality content to your company website in 2026, look beyond the superficial temptations of free, instantly generated text or images. This is the year when quality original content, imbued with the nuance and lived experience only creatives can call upon, will rise to the top of search results and propel companies to the top of their market sectors. AI has many valuable uses – finding specific terms among cluttered inboxes or summarising presentations – but its days of indiscriminate content production are almost inevitably numbered.

When the litigation comes, and the generative AI machines retreat behind paywalls to justify their astronomical running costs, don’t let your company’s online presence be downgraded and ostracised by low-quality AI slop. Instead, ask G75 Media to help you and your business find the right words for any situation. Conference slides, bid writing, marketing copy, recruitment literature, website blogs… whenever you need to add quality content to your company website or marketing materials, we’re here to help. Get in touch with us to find out why paying for premium media content beats stealing it off the internet.

Tips for reducing your small business’s expenditure

Being your own boss is never easy. I founded G75 Media just weeks after the run on Northern Rock, and a few months before the global financial crisis began to sweep across the planet. Since then, I’ve steered my tiny business through two ages of austerity, Brexit and its myriad consequences, the interminable Scottish independence referendum, a global pandemic which saw us locked in our homes for most of a year, and – most recently – a double-fisted assault on small businesses from the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Hard times in an age of quarrel

In living memory, it has never been harder to run a small business, or less profitable to try:

  1. Companies are paying ever increasing amounts of corporation tax, employers national insurance and other mandated levies, in exchange for dwindling amounts of state support.
  2. Generative AI and search engine algorithm changes have disembowelled the advertising-funded business model of many websites, rendering much of the internet economically unviable.
  3. Swathes of the HR sector have collapsed under a tsunami of speculative and specious applications.
  4. Hiring new staff has become a scenario to avoid wherever possible due to soaring taxes, day-one employer commitments and questionable legal rulings. Describing a serial absentee as ‘disorganised’ led to a company last year being found guilty of disability harassment, disability discrimination and unfair constructive dismissal.

As a result, individuals and businesses alike are choosing to spend less money and not grow their businesses. The consequences for entrepreneurs – often at the sharp end of such economic shifts – have been little short of catastrophic.

Nonetheless, many of you reading this will be self-employed or small business owners. Listing the myriad challenges we all face is less productive than considering ways of mitigating and tackling it, which is why the rest of this blog focuses on ways of potentially reducing business expenditure. Some are industry-specific while others are universal, but they might all help to shave small amounts off your annual outgoings – which could make a material difference to your prospects of surviving another year…

Scrutinise your monthly outgoings

This sounds obvious, and yet a lot of entrepreneurs couldn’t tell you how many standing orders come out of their business bank account – if they even have a dedicated business account to differentiate work-related funds from personal ones. If you don’t receive paper copies of bank statements, print out your three most recent ones. Highlight outgoings which are essential to the existence of your business, like Companies House statements or accounting fees.

Slash non-essential purchases

Next, study the non-highlighted bank deductions and consider how many of them really needed to be made. It’s easy to spend money on unnecessary things – stationery which sits in a cupboard, subscriptions you don’t get much benefit from, support contracts you haven’t called upon in the last year. It’s often surprising when you study bank statements how many superfluous items have been paid for, especially if you have a company credit or debit card.

Minimise advertising costs

I spent many years paying money to Google every month for online ads. In the final three years, I didn’t obtain a single paid piece of work from Google Ads enquiries. What I did get was a steady trickle of spam calls and junk emails. Perhaps advertising is essential for your company’s survival, but perhaps it’s not achieving what you hoped it would – or enough to justify its impact on your bottom line. Review the new clients you onboarded last year; did any of them come directly from an advert?

Work from home full-time

It’s tempting to have a dedicated office for your business, which then incurs rent, rates, heating costs and factoring charges. It’s desirable to spend part of each week in a co-working suite, sharing space and ideas with other people. Yet clients won’t pay you more, travelling soon becomes costly, and you probably won’t get any more done. Even working from your local café incurs costs you wouldn’t have at home. You can hire spaces specifically for meetings, but WFH where possible.

Renegotiate contracts

We’re all familiar with the annual increase in car or home insurance premiums – the loyalty penalty existing customers pay to fund new client discounts. There are likely to be many aspects of your business’s service provision where you could obtain a cheaper deal by renegotiating. Industry-agnostic examples include website/email hosting and broadband contracts, business insurance policies, bank account fees, tech support services and media or magazine subscriptions.

Only sub-contract to experts

G75 Media has spent almost two decades supporting companies and charities who wouldn’t be able to generate premium copywriting and marketing copy in-house. We’ve also worked with firms who simply didn’t want to carry out certain tasks internally. When every pound matters, an easy way of reducing business expenditure is to work longer hours and complete more tasks yourself. Yet content production is often worth outsourcing to experts – contact us to find out why…

The importance of taking time off over Christmas

We’re familiar with the concept of emergency service workers spending Christmas Day on shift or on-call, and yet many freelancers will also be squeezing in turkey carving and watching The Snowman around work this year. Running a business is an exhausting process which can consume any available free time – and I speak from experience, having spent much of Christmas Day 2008 working from a temporary home office as I tried to establish my fledgling business.

However, working over the Christmas holidays is potentially damaging. It can lead to frustration and resentment, as well as meaning you don’t start January feeling refreshed or ready for the new year’s challenges. With only a few weeks until the end of Advent, I’ve written a blog on the importance of taking time off over Christmas – and why it can avoid far worse eventualities…

Burnout revenge

Burnout isn’t something the self-employed like to talk about, because it implies an interruption in service, which might potentially scare off clients. However, like mental health, burnout is a topic which needs to be addressed, primarily to reduce the stigma surrounding it. Burnout happens slowly and then quickly, as your mind and body begin to buckle under the cumulative strain of insufficient rest. I’ve previously written about how after fifty weeks of solid work, I drove into the back of a parked car at traffic lights, because my exhausted brain simply couldn’t function properly. Ever since, I’ve forced myself to take a few weeks off each year (which is always stressful in itself) so I don’t have to endure that level of mental fatigue again.

Freelancers face different pressures at varying times of year depending on their industry and client base, but nobody will expect you to be working on Christmas Day or Boxing Day. Ebeneezer Scrooge has thankfully been left in the Victorian age. Many people take a week or even a fortnight off over Christmas, and others will only work on one or two days between the 24th of December and the 5th of January. In the meantime, inboxes will be empty, meetings won’t be scheduled and deadlines are rare outside industries like print journalism.

Christmas represents a unique opportunity to take time off, since many other companies will be closed for most or all of a ten-day period. My first job was with a major car dealership, and they required one member of the marketing team to be present in the office each non-statutory day over the festive fortnight. We split the days between us, and I spent two very pleasant days each Christmas driving to work along empty roads before eating homemade quiche and reading books. I certainly wasn’t expecting anyone to email me regarding important work issues, and I wouldn’t have needed to respond until January even if they had (which they never did).

Tips for taking time off over Christmas

Back to the present, and these are my recommendations for taking time off over Christmas with a clear desktop and a clean conscience…

  1. Stockpile work. If you have clients who require work over the festive period, produce and submit it in advance wherever possible. Unless it has to be topical, this will keep them supplied while you rest.
  2. Write a to-do list. List all the things needing to be done in December to enable an orderly shutdown. Monitor progress every day to minimise the prospect of last-minute panics or missed deadlines.
  3. Highlight forthcoming absences. Tell clients the dates when you’ll be unavailable a few weeks in advance. Use social media (LinkedIn, Instagram, etc) to do the same, so everyone gets the message.
  4. Schedule things for January. Meetings, deadlines, presentations…it doesn’t really matter. If clients know they’ll have your focus in January, they’re less likely to contact you in mid to late December.
  5. Set out of office messages. Email remains the main method of B2B communication, so ensure any new enquiries or messages are politely acknowledged with the date of your return while you’re off.
  6. Clear your to-do list before Christmas. January will be less stressful if you only have to deal with things that arose over the holidays, and you’ll be less inclined to check emails or ‘just do an hour’.
  7. Tell friends and relatives you’re taking time off. It’s harder to break your vow of abstinence and work if your family are expecting you not to. Plan activities which will allow you all to connect and unwind.

Help when you need it most

Although G75 Media shuts down over Christmas for the reasons outlined above, we are dedicated to helping our clients throughout the other 50 weeks of each year. Get in touch with us to discuss our award-winning copywriting, journalism, proofreading and editing services.

What we’ve learned over the last 18 years

Time travel never seems to work out in the movies, but I wish I could pop back in time for five minutes and have a word with my younger self. Not to urge caution, or plead for different life choices to be made – I have surprisingly few regrets as the spare tyre and crease lines of middle age manifest. Rather, I wish I’d been more knowledgeable about business when I decided to found my own limited company, exactly 18 years ago today (this article was published on Friday the 7th of November).

I’ve learned a great deal in my time as a freelance writer, and it’s easy to overlook how significant some of those lessons have been. I’ve never been overly keen on reflection, since it’s always more productive to look forwards than backwards, but I’ve been on a typically dramatic entrepreneurial journey since November 2007. These are the key messages I’d pass onto my younger self, if I was able to momentarily jump back in time to the days of waiting for my Certificate of Incorporation to arrive from Companies House…

Patience is a virtue

If I had a pound for every time I’d lay awake worrying about an unpaid invoice which would subsequently be paid…I’d be better off than I am. And I’d have slept more. Even if you’re a paragon of efficiency like me, other people aren’t. They can be forgetful, lazy and even downright incompetent. Being patient is a valuable personality trait, because you’ll spend plenty of time waiting for other people to sign off on work/respond to enquiries/pay invoices.

Other people are winging it too

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve left a meeting with a prospective or current client shaking my head at their unprofessionalism. You’re not the only one juggling a family with work, or battling ill health. You’re certainly not the only one with impostor syndrome, or a sense of inadequacy. However, you are the only one who truly knows what’s going on below the surface and behind the scenes. To everyone else, you’re just another professional, so act accordingly and they won’t know any differently.

Stick to what you love doing – if you can

In my career as a journalist and freelance writer, I have written or edited around 11,000 pieces of work. I’ve enjoyed the vast majority of these, yet the ones I didn’t enjoy stick in my mind. They fall into two categories – unusual assignments from existing clients, or work I accepted because I needed the money. It’s easier, quicker and more enjoyable to focus on the topics, industries and work you’re naturally interested in, where possible. Don’t apply for jobs you don’t really want to get.

It’s who you know, not what you know

Just before writing this article, I had an interview for a freelance writer role. The client approached me (always a welcome development) because a staff member I worked with years ago when she was at another company saw a LinkedIn post I’d published and remembered me. It helps that we got on well back in the day, and I was as professional then as I’ve always been. Job opportunities become more frequent as you make more contacts, expand your network and increase your portfolio.

Trying to second guess the future is pointless

As well as worrying about invoices, I also spent a lot of time anticipating a future that didn’t pan out as expected. I founded G75 Media to act as a freelance writer for local clients in Lanarkshire (hence the postcode-based name), but a third of our clients are now in America. I now live in England, and G75 Media does much more than just providing freelance writer services. Had I known all this in advance, I might have approached everything from marketing campaigns to my choice of accountant rather differently…

While the business has evolved in directions I never anticipated, I still recognise my 2007-era self in those early emails, invoices and articles. Some ventures, like my attempt to crack the UAE market, ended in disappointment, and nobody (least of all me) foresaw the global financial crisis which hindered G75 Media’s early years. You won’t win all your battles, either. You won’t ace every interview. You certainly won’t get every invoice paid. Yet the above advice remains valid for anyone starting out as an entrepreneur, manufacturer, freelance writer or any other branch of self-employment.

Docking stations – every freelancer’s best friend

Any freelancer, entrepreneur or small business owner needs a computer to run their fledgling empire. And while some choose a laptop for its portability and simplicity, many will favour the increased performance and durability of a desktop computer. These are available in many guises (from affordable home workstations to high-end gaming machines) and usually at affordable prices. They offer more processing power and far greater support for peripherals like monitors and external speakers.

Ideally, entrepreneurs and creatives would be able to have the best of both worlds – a computer which can act as the centrepiece of a productive workstation during the working day, yet slip into a rucksack for easy transportation and use on the move. In fact, there is a way to combine laptop flexibility with desktop technology – by installing a docking station.

Plug in baby

A docking station is basically a giant plug adaptor, into which various computing peripherals are plugged. Different docks have varying numbers of ports, but these are some of the devices they typically accept inputs from:

  1. DisplayPort and/or HDMI and/or VGA ports, enabling you to output your laptop’s visual display to a larger external monitor (or two, if you’d like a multi-screen display).
  2. USB-A and/or USB-C ports, ideal for wired peripherals like keyboards and printers.
  3. A 3.5mm audio jack, supporting external speakers.
  4. A power input, ensuring a laptop battery can charge while connected.
  5. An Ethernet port, creating a hardwired broadband link to either a WiFi router or a Powerline adaptor.

A laptop can be connected to the docking station via a single USB cable, at which point every peripheral wired into the station will automatically connect to the laptop. External keyboards will spring into life, monitors will begin displaying visual output, the battery can recharge and sound output is displaced from the weedy speakers found on almost every laptop to external ones – though you may need to adjust your sound settings before this last change takes effect.

Why doesn’t everyone use a docking station?

One barrier to widespread adoption is the issue of technical complexity. Although docking stations aren’t complicated, the profusion of wires sprouting from them may confuse less tech-savvy entrepreneurs. Some docking stations prove to be simpler to set up than others, while it isn’t always desirable to have a box with loads of wires on display (especially if you can’t hide it in a cupboard).

Docking stations occasionally fail or become temperamental, and they don’t increase the performance or processing power of a laptop, which is typically inferior to a comparably priced desktop computer due to the limitations of space and the cost of building a compact machine. No docking station can add multiple fans, water cooling or a second graphics processor unit card to a desktop PC. Meanwhile, Apple users may need a specific type of dock to handle advanced features like multiple monitor displays.

What are the advantages of fitting a docking station?

If you’ve already got – or plan to buy – a laptop, docking stations may be transformative. In daily use, they bring all the benefits of a desktop computer, with the ability to bypass features like fiddly trackpads and small screens in favour of whatever accompanying hardware you want or need. You can hardwire printers and scanners into your computer instead of relying on wireless connections, and if a keyboard or mouse gives up the ghost, it’s easy to replace.

Durability is another factor to consider. Unlike the integrated components in a sealed-unit laptop, freestanding peripherals can be replaced on demand. Also, not using your laptop’s screen/keyboard on a daily basis should ensure these components operate perfectly whenever you’re working on a train or in a conference centre.

Sitting on the dock of the bay

At G75 Media, we’re big fans of docking stations, having used them for many years. Get in touch with us to discuss the award-winning marketing, journalism, proofreading and editing services produced through a docking station every day.

How Microsoft Copilot can help small business owners

Microsoft’s track record of new technologies and product launches has been patchy over the last four decades. For every Windows XP or 11, there’s been a Vista or Windows 8. For every successful Word and Edge browser it’s developed, Microsoft has produced a HoloLens or Windows Phone. And while Microsoft has shrewdly acquired some very influential companies – LinkedIn and Activision to name just two – it has also sunk huge sums into the likes of the Invoke smart speaker, Nokia Lumia smartphones and the Yammer social network tool.

When Microsoft unveiled Bing Chat two years ago, there was a muted response to this new generative AI chatbot, especially since Bing has always been a poor relation to the all-conquering Google search engine. However, having rebranded Chat as Microsoft Copilot, the software has evolved to be far more powerful and effective. It now offers genuine benefits to small business owners and entrepreneurs, so if you’re don’t yet appreciate Microsoft Copilot’s talents, it’s worth reading on…

Flying high

Microsoft Copilot is essentially an automated solutions platform which aims to resolve user queries. For instance, the 365 Copilot is integrated into other Microsoft 365 applications and utilities. If you want to find out how many fields in an Excel spreadsheet incorporate a particular term, you could type in “How many fields have Open status in column D”. Within a few seconds, Copilot will create a formula which resolves this query, before displaying an Insert Cell button. Clicking it inserts the formula and instantly displays the number of fields marked as Open across that particular column. Equally, it can also adjust formatting, create graphs, identify trends and summarise data.

Copilot performs other tasks which are more commonly associated with generative AI, such as image creation. Log into Microsoft Designer, ask it to create an image and then type in a particular search string – a faulty broadband router in a domestic home, for instance. After around fifteen seconds of processing time, four broadly similar images will be displayed of a router covered in red warning lights. These images can then be edited or downloaded as the user wishes.

Growth and costs

The real breakthrough for Microsoft Copilot was the company’s decision to incorporate it into Windows 11, positioning it on the Taskbar and ensuring a Copilot icon is displayed in iconic Microsoft packages like Word and PowerPoint. By constructing it using the pre-existing GPT-4 large language model developed by OpenAI (a company Microsoft has invested heavily in), Copilot was able to hit the ground running and gain advocates at a startling rate.

Like many software packages, Copilot operates a freemium model. It’s possible to access basic features free of charge or pay to unlock a Pro subscription which offers the latest features and the ability to create a custom chatbot. There are chatbots dedicated to travel, cooking and personal fitness, while Copilot can discuss websites as you browse them. It can serve as a translator, source information from the internet, or even check product inventory and shipping data when you grant Copilot database access.

Should I be concerned about Microsoft Copilot?

There are legitimate concerns about the removal of human involvement in automated processes, especially when Copilot drafts up an email on your behalf by scanning previous emails, giving you the option to vary the tone of the new email depending on how assertive (i.e. angry) you want to sound. It’s one thing letting AI summarise a Teams call, but it’s quite another letting it produce corporate communications. Microsoft is unlikely to accept responsibility if your company issues a statement/email/report/spreadsheet with Copilot-generated inaccuracies in it. Clients will also take a dim view of receiving AI-generated content, especially if it contains mistakes.

Hallucinations remain a problem for AI models, while their attempts at political correctness have hitherto resulted in images of black Vikings, or seen foodbanks listed as tourist destinations. Some might dismiss these errors as teething troubles, but there is a very real issue of incorrect AI-generated results being fed back into the source material for these AI engines, creating a negative loop of increasingly wayward output. This is going to become more problematic as the large language models powering AI engines run out of existing internet content to plagiarise, and as publishers add anti-scraping tools to their websites to prevent new material being pillaged in the same way. Some believe generative AI will improve its quality in the coming months and years, whereas others argue it’s already peaked.

Don’t approach Microsoft Copilot thinking it can do your job while you do something else – such attitudes could land you in a great deal of trouble. But if you’ve ever found yourself thinking “there must be an easier way to do this” while using a Microsoft package or utility, Copilot may be the answer to your frustrations. And if you don’t like the idea of generative AI speaking on behalf of your brand or business, you could always use the traditional method of employing a freelance writer to handle your content, editorial and journalism needs. Get in touch with G75 Media to see why even the best generative AI platforms will never match the nuance, humour and lived experience imbued into our award-winning copywriting services.

* No generative AI was used in the making of this blog.

Working for overseas clients

It’s twenty years since I first came up with the idea of setting up a small copywriting agency. I was working as a property journalist on a local weekly, while my then-boss attempted to find freelance contributors to augment my own daily output. He consistently chose people within a twenty-mile radius of our office in Glasgow, and they were consistently poor. Before long, inspiration struck – I could be the dependable, high-calibre local freelance writer the market clearly needed.

Two years later, I founded G75 Media, naming it after the suburb of East Kilbride where I was living at the time to emphasise our Lanarkshire origins. I chose an accountant in Helensburgh, hired a Renfrewshire-based web design company to build the first-generation G75 Media website, and imagined being a local writer for local people across Lanarkshire – or maybe Glasgow if I was feeling adventurous.

A local business with a global profile

As it transpired, Lanarkshire did not embrace the new copywriting agency at its heart, and Glasgow didn’t rush to engage my services, either. Instead, I worked with companies in Edinburgh and across England, before recruiting my first foreign client in 2015. Since then, I’ve been taken on by overseas clients in the Netherlands, Singapore, Ireland, Australia and America – where a third of today’s G75 Media client roster is headquartered.

Working for overseas clients can be rewarding and inspiring, introducing you to new cultures and offering the prestige of being chosen ahead of that nation’s indigenous freelancers. However, it requires some lateral thinking, a relaxed approach to working hours and an exhaustive knowledge of linguistic idioms in foreign countries. For any freelancers considering the merits of seeking international custom, these are some of the key things to be aware of…

  • 1. Time zones

If you believe work should end at 5pm GMT (or BST), working for overseas clients is not for you. By that time, it’s lunchtime on America’s east coast and Californians are only just firing up their MacBooks. I have emails arriving throughout the evening from my Stateside clients, which I feel obligated to respond to, so they don’t have to wait until the following day to get a reply.

Conversely, Singapore is seven hours ahead of the UK, so if a client emailed me during their working day, it’d be in my inbox as soon as I started work. I’d then feel duty bound to respond straight away to avoid making them wait overnight for a reply. You have to be on constant inbox alert when working for overseas clients, as well as being willing to hold video calls at relatively unsociable hours.

  • 2. Languages

Having grown up in Scotland, I know what words like dreich, scunnered and bampot mean. Having not grown up in Australia, I don’t know their equivalents. Yet working for overseas clients means learning each nation’s slang, syntax and jargon. I write for an American car website every week, where I have to incorporate their nouns, measurement systems and cultural references.

As a freelancer, you’re unlikely to need to know the distinctions between the Portuguese language and its Brazilian counterpart, but an awareness that they’re not the same is beneficial – as is knowing that Brazil speaks Portuguese while the rest of South America uses Spanish. Why? To do with history and empire, which is a whole other kettle of fish from contested waters.

  • 3. Etiquette

I mentioned cultural references in the last section, but working for overseas clients involves far more than respecting their language and not mentioning Gibraltar. It means acknowledging local customs and religious practices/holidays/traditions, right down to adjusting stock email introductions to reflect indigenous habits. It could even mean working over Christmas but not during Eid-al-Fitr.

Cultural awareness of target markets might involve knowing that Americans call football soccer, Israeli clients won’t respond to you on a Saturday or that Chinese customers regard red as a lucky colour. As with language, there’s no need to scour encyclopaedias about the markets you’re potentially operating in, but you do need to know a few basics to avoid any unnecessary faux pas.

  • 4. Billing

When the work is done, and it’s time to request payment, invoicing foreign clients can be fraught. Some will want to pay using platforms like Wise, Stripe or PayPal, which all incur fees and may have varying levels of compatibility with your existing website/bank/accounting software. Before agreeing to work with a foreign company, ensure you’re amenable to its stipulated payment terms.

Many businesses pay via international bank transfer, so put your IBAN number on your default invoice template. Foreign firms might need more information to process payments to overseas contractors. Also, debt recovery becomes exponentially more difficult internationally, with a higher risk of bad debts being incurred, so undertake due diligence before working for overseas clients…

A decade of international copywriting excellence

This article has been written to celebrate the tenth anniversary of G75 Media’s first foreign foray, to advise and support other entrepreneurs and freelancers who are thinking about working for overseas clients. However, if you’re looking for a UK-based writer to undertake English-language content production or journalism, you’re in the right place. Contact us for more information on how G75 Media can bring the world to your website, app or business.

Tips for reducing procrastination at work

Have you ever had one of those days when you just can’t be bothered? You sit down at the computer, coffee in hand, full of good intentions…and somehow the work won’t flow through your fingertips as it normally does. The flashing cursor on a blank word processing document begins to seem taunting, and oh look, the neighbours are getting a parcel delivered. They really need to wash their car. Now where was I?

Procrastination has always been part of the human condition, but over the last five years, it’s been indulged as never before. When South Cambridgeshire District Council decided to introduce a four-day working week for their staff, one of the key benefits the council reported was that their employees spent less time procrastinating and more time actually working. In other words, they could have done their jobs in less time all along, had they applied themselves.

With alarm bells ringing throughout the economy and companies shedding staff or cancelling expansion plans, even the bloated public sector is belatedly having to consider productivity. In the private sector, procrastination often means the self-employed and the owners of limited companies simply don’t get paid. Yet it’s easy to drift off, put things off or clock off early, especially if a particular piece of work seems dull, unpleasant or complicated. We can’t all spend our days being motoring journalists.

Based on personal experience and professional best practice, here are ten tips for reducing procrastination at work – starting with something we could all do with taking on board…

Ten easy steps for reducing procrastination

  1. Do the hardest or worst things first. If an unpleasant job needs doing, get it out of the way as soon as possible. You’ll be grateful later on when it’s been wiped from the to-do list, and it’ll allow you to do easier things later in the day when tiredness is becoming more of an issue. Speaking of which…
  2. Keep your energy levels up. It’s far more tempting to procrastinate if you’re also battling a carb slump after a stodgy meal. Try to eat lighter things during the day (this doesn’t have to mean fewer calories or smaller portions) and space out caffeinated drinks strategically for maximum impact.
  3. Turn off the radio. I spent three years working in an office with Radio 1 on all day, discussing how good Evanescence were, or whether Mark and Lard were better than Chris Moyles. In the meantime, we weren’t working. Background noise acts as a natural impediment to concentration.
  4. Keep the TV off. Even worse than an aural soundtrack is an audiovisual bombardment of programming, adverts and (worst of all) live news. Don’t think muting a TV solves anything – few sights are more compulsive than a picture with no sound. TV is for non-working hours only.
  5. Close email packages. Email is the lifeblood of sole traders and small businesses, but there are occasions when it distracts you and breaks your concentration. Close email software while tackling complex or challenging jobs. No email needs an instant response, so deal with your inbox in batches.
  6. Take regular breaks. Giving yourself five minutes away from the screen will reduce vision-related headaches and allow your mind to wander in a healthy, structured fashion. You’ll return to work more focused and less likely to become distracted. A five-minute break per hour is ideal.
  7. Use workflow boards. A Trello board gives you instant oversight of your workload, enabling you to prioritise and structure your week. Having daily and/or weekly columns relating to deadlines focuses your mind on what needs to be done, reducing any temptation to waste time or dither.
  8. Set yourself rewards. If you can finish work by 4pm and you don’t need to do anything else until five, working hard will result in a bonus hour which can be spent on enjoyable activities. Having a goal like this banishes the temptation to slack off, keeping you focused and more productive.
  9. Create an informal time sheet. If you’ve spent the last ten minutes thinking vaguely about updating your website, what would you put on a timesheet? Some clients expect work on their accounts to be recorded, and it tends to focus your mind if you can only charge for things you’ve done.
  10. Sleep well. My final tip might not seem directly related to productivity, but it’s generally harder to concentrate when you’re tired. Banish phones and tablets from the bedroom, go to bed before 10pm, keep the room cool and dark, and avoid caffeine after teatime to boost efficiency tomorrow.

Sometimes reducing procrastination isn’t easy

One reason why you might be struggling to motivate yourself to do something is because it seems (or actually is) difficult. Many people find writing challenging – coming up with content for a website, drafting up a business plan, preparing a speech or compiling a report. These are services G75 Media undertakes on a daily basis, and we’re always happy to discuss how we can simplify new clients’ lives by tackling the jobs they don’t feel able (or willing) to begin. Get in touch with us for more information on our pricing and turnaround times.

Five things your home office needs (and three it doesn’t)

In February 2010, a decade before many of my contemporaries, I said goodbye to office life and started working from home full-time. It was a decision inspired by ten years of frustrating and time-consuming commutes to unpleasant industrial estates, which in turn followed six years of equally lengthy journeys to and from college/uni. Sixteen years of traffic jams, toilet cubicles and cafeterias came to an end, and fifteen years of WFH began at a time when homeworking was still considered exotic.

A great deal has changed since then, not least in terms of technology. Countless articles, reports and studies have been published about the benefits and drawbacks of working from home. We all have a vague idea about concepts like zoning and the delineation of work life from home life, yet millions of people are still working in home offices which are unsuitable in any number of ways.

If you’re reading this perched at a dining table, or about to start a conference call from the edge of your bed, there are some things your home office needs to function effectively – and a few things it doesn’t. Let’s take a look at the essentials first.

Five things your home office needs…

  • 1. A large desk.

This might seem like an odd place to start a list of things your home office needs, but the chunky oak desk you can see in the photograph above has been my workstation since 2012. It’s still going strong today. In fact, it’ll outlast me. Not only has it swallowed everything from tower PCs and stacks of paperwork to DVDs (remember them?), but it remains an attractive and tactile piece of multifunctional furniture. Without it, there’d be papers everywhere – and I’d be a less efficient freelancer.

  • 2. A laptop docking station.

In 2019, I stopped using desktop computers and switched to laptops. I can now attend meetings with my entire work history on one device, rather than porting things onto a tablet or printing out papers. I can work from Costa, the beach or a jury service waiting room with equal efficiency. Yet when I come home, plugging in one USB-C lead connects my laptop to a full-size keyboard, two 27-inch monitors, Bose speakers, a printer and hardwired broadband. Laptops are a WFH game-changer.

  • 3. An ergonomic chair.

As a middle-aged man, it’s perhaps inevitable that I have a bad back. The chair I’m sitting in while writing this blog has adjustable lumbar controls, neck support and armrests. It’s also heated and massaging, which help to reduce the aches and pains often stemming from long periods being seated. Standing desks aren’t always practical long-term solutions, stools and benches don’t support your back, and cheap or poorly padded chairs quickly become uncomfortable.

  • 4. Shelving.

To match my desk, I purchased an oak bookshelf with drawers underneath. Then I bought another one. Both are now groaning with proof that the paperless office was never going to become a reality. From lever arch box files filled with old invoices and bank paperwork to client brochures, booklets and manuals, shelves are a vital resource. You’ll need lots of it, too – paperwork is unavoidable, and some careers require extensive ancillary storage.

  • 5. Effective lighting.

Since adolescence, I’ve suffered from Seasonal Affective Disorder – a common condition brought about by the lack of sunlight in winter. A crucial element of my annual battle with SAD is full spectrum lighting, which stimulates serotonin production in the body as well as casting a clean white light ideal for working or reading in. Eye strain, headaches, low mood and an increased risk of accidents can all result from inadequate office lighting. All are best avoided.

…And three things it doesn’t

  • 1. Gadgets.

Look closely at the photo above, and you might spot a label writer. In theory, this was a great addition to my canon of home tech. In reality, it was a pain. It jammed, smudged, failed to launch when I opened the software app and cost a fortune in labels. In general, gadgets are distracting and cluttering, causing compatibility issues with other hardware or software. They’re rarely things your home office needs, but they’re often an unnecessary cost – and hard to justify on the balance sheet.   

  • 2. A landline.

Go back to the photo, and what do you see nestled up against the label writer? Yes, a house phone. This business expense added bloat to my telecommunications bill, yet the only time it really came into its own was when conducting phone interviews, so my mobile could run a voice-to-text transcription app. The absence of a landline doesn’t seem unprofessional any more, and it’s increasingly superfluous in terms of broadband. Plus, you’ll get fewer spam calls without one.

  • 3. Clutter.

This is something I’ve never been guilty of, but clutter is the enemy of productivity. I once visited a solicitor’s office, where his desk groaned under three teetering piles of paperwork marked Urgent, Very Urgent and NOW. How he slept at night was a mystery, let alone how he worked during the day. The desk and shelving mentioned above should provide sufficient storage for anything from keys and lanyards to printers and peripherals. When everything’s neatly filed, it’s easy to find.

Much of my expertise in this area has evolved out of personal experience and trial and error, although 22 years spent working as a property writer has also offered up many valuable insights. If you’re looking for property journalism, G75 Media should be your first port of call.