If you've been freelancing for any length of time, then you've probably worked for a client who, frankly, didn't have a clue what your job entails. You know the type: who throw around terms in ways that make it apparent they have never worked in publishing and who refuse to give you a concrete word count ("just tell the story," one editor instructed me last week before we parted ways). Yesterday, Deb Ng posted a hilarious rant about blogging for people who don't know how to blog.
Sometimes clueless clients can be a good thing. Yes, you heard me right. When someone doesn't know how to set up a blog or write a press release and they know it, then they usually have a deep respect for you and your expertise. They may look to you as an advisor and really value your suggestions, because they know that without someone like you, they wouldn't even have a blog or a press release or whatever you're working on. Sometimes I find it endearing when clients say things like "please add this to your next blog" when they mean post. As long as they pay me on time and trust my work, I don't care if they know the difference between a blog and a post or a headline and a hyperlink.
It's when someone doesn't have a clue and they think they do that we run into problems. When someone says "I could be doing this if only I had more time" or "you bloggers have it really easy," then you know that they don't respect you and they probably don't know how much time you spend finding relevant links, optimizing photos, coming up with SEO-friendly headlines, etc. Or when they make absurd demands out of some misguided notion about writing or blogging. Or when they don't know what they want, so rather than trusting you to do what you're being paid to do, their expectations become a moving target.
I used to have a client who wanted posts that were the length of an epic poem. Not because this would provide important information to his readers, but because he wanted to feel like he was getting his money's worth and he didn't understand that a blog post shouldn't be the same length as a feature article (or that blog posts that length would cost more than he was paying me). Another guy I used to work for thought that adding buttons for social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, and Delicious made the layout look too cluttered. Never mind the fact that this would have given readers a chance to share our posts and leverage Web 2.0.
Now it's your turn. How do you feel about clueless clients? Or have you worked with people who really get it?