About Deborah
Deborah is a B2B freelance technical writer, SEO content writer and copywriter. She has been freelancing since 2019 and specialises in email and sales copy, blog posts, web content and technical writing.
Key Challenges
As a freelance content writer, Deborah’s primary challenge was upskilling. She says, “Even if you are a creative writer, a born writer, you still need to learn the correct way of writing.”
Another key problem for Deborah was finding the right clients, people “who value your skill, and also pay as they should.”
Learning Practices Before Terrain
Before she discovered Terrain, Deborah searched for free courses on Google and YouTube to upskill herself. About YouTube, Deborah says, “Because you get short courses, and if within a span of 10 minutes you are not satisfied, you can easily jump to another one and see what that is all about.”
Deborah has also tried Udemy and Coursera in the past. Before she found Terrain, Deborah would choose a learning platform based on the kind of information she was looking for and what she hoped to take away from the experience. For shorter crash courses – such as learning about keyword research – Deborah would go on YouTube. But for a more in-depth learning experience, such as for SEO, Deborah would try Coursera or Udemy.
However, as Deborah says, “Now I enjoy Terrain.”
The Terrain Experience
Having taken courses on a series of different learning platforms, Deborah feels that the Terrain model of learning is “filling a gap” in the course industry.
One of the things Deborah likes most about Terrain is the degree to which she can relate to the course content:
“Most of the courses that I’ve checked on Terrain, they’ve been something I can really relate to. If you need help, a generic response to your question or to the problem might not really solve that problem. On Terrain, I’ve seen that people talk from their personal experiences. For example now, the first course that I checked was Amplify Your Voice and it talked about how to pitch for podcasts. She talked about her experience and I was able to resonate with it. I love it when people talk from their personal experience, that this is what worked for them and I can see that they have been successful in it. It makes me believe that if I try their paths, if I follow their principles, even if I don’t get the 100% answer, at least I will be closer to it than just a generic response.”
Deborah also recognises the inherent benefit of having a subscription-based platform where members have access to a range of different courses, instead of just paying for the ones they need. This encourages learners to experiment with different courses, pick up new skill sets, and broaden their services and offerings.
Here’s an excerpt of Deborah’s experience of taking a course on TikTok strategy:
“I loved that course on TikTok strategy because I’m the kind of person that never believed that TikTok would be a platform for businesses. So I’ve always been like okay, people dance, people sing. So for me, even though I’m focusing on learning SEO, this gives me another pathway to understand the optimization of TikTok.
Let’s say I have a client now that needs to optimize their social media presence. Now that I’ve learned on Terrain that okay, you can use TikTok as a content strategy to boost your visibility, I can introduce it to the client or the brand.”
Finally, Deborah also mentions that through Terrain, she came to see that learning does not always have to be lengthy in order to be effective. She says, “Through Terrain, I’ve been able to see that learning does not necessarily need to be lengthy. It can be short and you can still get value for it.”
Deborah’s Terrain experience highlights the practical nature of Terrain’s courses, the benefits of a subscription-based model, and the advantages of a bite-sized, highly actionable model of learning for freelancers and entrepreneurs. Deborah continues to be an active Terrain member – she continues to try new courses and regularly engages in our community, and we can’t wait to see her apply her learnings to her business and scale new heights!
Interested in seeing what Terrain has to offer to you? Sign up for our 7-day free trial and find out for yourself →
You can reach out to Deborah on:
Website: www.smartcoppie.com
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