In this series of blog posts at Chinwag Jobs, we present Secret Diary of a Freelancer, brought to you as part of Xchangeteam’s Freelancer of the Year 2008 awards.

Welcome to my secret diary. It’s secret because I want to be candid and give you the inside track on what my life is like as a freelance gun for hire. It’s warts an’ all but hopefully inspiring in the main, highlighting the highs and the lows of my profession. We freelancers are the future: hear it here first.

‘Yes we can!’

Our digital marketing freelancer thinks business needs to take a leaf from Obama’s book

A fact that both I and I think the marketing industry itself is highly aware of is that the President Elect of the United States got there by relying heavily on the Web – and is expected to continue so relying during the course of his administration. Obama, of course, got into office by raising an appreciable chunk of his campaign funds via small donations over the Internet; and his ‘Change.gov‘ approach is going to be based on inviting the public to share ideas about running the country, encourage individuals to apply for jobs in the administration and undoubtedly occasionally get a flame mail or two from ‘Joe The Plumber’.

Exhilarating stuff in my mind, plus a great model of a transparent and genuinely participatory relationship with a service provider. Given the rise of all social media I have been encouraging my clients to embrace such a vision – albeit on a smaller scale, natch.

I have been encouraging clients to blog, create wikis, use Facebook, all the rest… but the resistance I have met is probably familiar to you too. Some social media are fine (to keep the troops happy), goes this argument, but to ask staff or customers for genuine involvement in the running of the company is not Social Networking, but Social Nihilism!

Will Obama’s success – and his transparency and willingness to genuinely involve his ‘customers’ – finally change this archaic set of notions?

Part of why I don’t have a salaried position is this: a frustration at working in a command and control style culture. As a freelancer, I get to say ‘yes I can’ a lot. Customers and workers, everywhere, want to call the shots and know what shots to call.

Like us freelancers, business needs to say ‘yes we can’, too.