Content is King! Content is what makes people visiting a website or app! Unfortunately a lot of Developers tend to forget about this fact… But not Paulo Oliveira, a freelancing all-rounder from the beautiful city Porto in Portugal. Paulo Oliveira describes himself as a hybrid between Front-End Developer and Content Strategist. Let’s find out how he bridges the gap between these two worlds. And interview with Paulo Oliveira…1) First off, can you tell us bit about yourself?
My name is Paulo Oliveira. I live in Porto, Portugal´s 2nd city. I´m freelancing in 4 adjacent areas:
- frontend development (html5,CSS3, jQuery)
- Content Strategy
- Conversion Optimization
- Online Advertising with Google Adwords – I belong to the Google Partners program.
2) If you would search for your profile on Google, which are the three keywords you would type in the search bar?
content strategy, microdata, conversion optimisation
3) What was your inspiration and when did you actually decide to become a freelancer?
I started freelancing after my last company closed doors. Portugal was (is!) going through a deep economical and social crisis – employment is skyrocketing and we’re experiencing mass emigration. Some of the areas I work are handed to no-paid interns – except for a handful of very large companies. So I – and many others – were a bit forced into fulltime freelancing, for the lack of decent jobs (or no jobs at all).
Nevertheless, I was freelancing for several years now, accumulating with a ‘normal’ day job, everytime there was an interesting project. So, my inspiration, my goal with freelancing is to embrace the most exciting projects – projects that can make me growth – personally and professionally, while contributing to exciting challenges.
4) What kind of services have your clients asked you to provide?
3 main areas:
- implementing html/CSS/javascript, assuring client side interactions
- planning and designing landing pages and planning and managing AdWords campaigns
- Making SEO and usability audits: ultimate goal is to extract more business (money!) out of the online channel – and establishing trust across channels; implementing my recommendations
5) Do you use other freelancers or companies to provide skills that you don’t possess?
For large projects (or even small) to which I don´t possess all the skills or even time, I work with a team of freelancers or with web design or web marketing boutique companies – DigitalJump and Antsmedia. On the team we have a web developer – go language, dart, python and php projects and a web designer / UX designer.
6) Now tell us, how do you find new clients that are interested in your services?
Word of mouth is the most effective way to get more projects and clients: a good reputation, trust, makes them find me and many other reliable professionals. So most of the projects that I was invited for came that way: “Oh, Paulo is a reliable frontend developer for our project.” or “Hey, Paulo made such a good work on the web audit for client X. We should contract him to make a similar project for company Y.”
7) What about freelancermap.com? Can you tell us a little bit about your experience with our IT-network?
I´ve just entered freelancermap. So what I can tell is that seems to have a great management: I as a freelancer receive highly interesting – and relevant! – daily project offers to my profile. As mentioned. I´ve just entered freelancermap and I wasn´t accepting major projects because I was finishing two major projects: one for a Portuguese government body and the other for a Dutch company. So if the projects are coming in, I believe that the contractors/customers are happy with freelancermap response and the performance of its freelancers.
8) How do you set yourself apart from your competitors? What makes you special?
I´m a hybrid: besides a huge experience as a frontend developer – since the early days of the web always applying the latest techniques and technologies to my projects – I´m also very focused on content – it’s what makes people visit the website or app! Most of the developers lack that sensibility.
On the other hand, content folks lack the technological know-how that a developer has. So I make the bridge between those two worlds, with a result measurement culture, extreme focus on usability and user experience
9) What are the top three books, blogs or magazines you read to stay up to date in the IT-market? I would recommend, in my expertise areas: http://moz.com/blog – if you´re into web audits, website optimisation, then Moz is a must read, almost daily.
For content strategy, I would strongly recommend Kristina Halvorson “Content Strategy for the Web”, the 2nd edition (but also the 1st edition). It made me realize how content can be a game changer for businesses, getting them results and profits. http://contentstrategy.com/
In terms of AdWords, I strongly recommend Advanced Google AdWords 2nd edition, by Brad Geddes. http://www.advancedadwordsbook.com/
And for frontend development, I visit daily several Google Plus communities:
- https://plus.google.com/communities/103299867207875326585
- https://plus.google.com/communities/106425668610348127113
- https://plus.google.com/communities/100875929141897651837
10) Freestyle! Is there anything you would like to tell our readers?
If you goal is to reach Portuguese speaking countries you should contact me. Together we can provide audit and consulting services in key areas:
- content strategy
- copywriting to support sales and marketing and internal and external communication
- responsive HTML, CSS, Javascript and Schema.org structured mark-ups semantic coding
- heuristic evaluation of websites to optimize its presence
- Planning, implementation and management of online advertising, namely through Google AdWords.
Where to find Paulo Oliveira?
freelancer profile: Paulo Oliveira at freelancermap.com
The interview was conducted by Doreen Schollmeier, freelancermap.com team.
Pic: © Paulo Oliveira
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