There are a number of ways a freelancer can promote themselves in today’s marketplace. Whether you are starting out, or want to find ways to boost your reputation and awareness in your community.

1. Traditional Press [off-line]
A traditional press release to digital press publications still works, eg: new media, revolution etc. In my experience it is sometimes better to either call or e-mail the features editor and float an idea for a story with them and see if they like it. I would maybe spin a bit of an angle on it maybe try and make it really personal like a profile piece or focus on some of the really unique parts of the work you did.

Worth covering local business press too, as there are likely tons of local businesses that might have need for you – again pick off the important ones and make personal contact with them.
I’ve written articles for a number of local papers, and magazines, it doesn’t make you money, but it gets you noticed – people will pick up your thoughts and comments from the article and mention your piece when you meet them.

2. On-line Content placement
Offering something that other sites will be happy to publish eg: Top Tips for finding work written by Award winning digital freelancer Jim Callender etc etc with a link to your site. Have a list of sites that you could approach to do this. A great way of getting deep links into your site, with keyword rich text links with your name or services on.

3. E-mail newsletter to past and current clients
Possibly the most difficult as the design needs to be done to suit your clients requirements, ie: ‘give something that makes your client want to make contact with you, buy something from you.

4. Have goals, short and long-term
Before you do anything, think about what your objectives are. In particular for brands or personal brands, identify the keywords that you’d most want to be associated with. Try to think of keywords that people would search for, are long-term, and aren’t some made up name that no one would seek.

5 .Develop a unique brand
I really don’t think URL’s are as important as they used to be, often folks will Google your name to find you, and the fact that we disperse to so many websites (Facebook / Twitter / Friendfeed) it comes down to how you write, what you write and say.

By commenting on the right channels means you will be noticed, and people will regularly take time to read your thoughts if you continuously put out good advice. It takes time, but you will notice uptake in people subscribing to your RSS feed, and number of people ‘following you’ on social networks.

6. Get personal
If you want to stand out, you should add your picture to your blog, and develop a visual icon that demonstrates who you are. While not everyone shows their picture (Virgin comes to mind) Richard Branson developed an icon that represents his business and brand.

7. Attend ‘real time’ events
One thing you will find very useful when trying to get noticed is to attend local and International events. I attend 2-3 tech events every week, which is easy to do here in Brighton, UK.

By doing this, I’m able to meet folks who were passionate about the web, and developed a network to interact with online during the day, and one I’m very active with now. It’s also a great way of finding leads, new clients and also suppliers that you can collaborate with and take on larger projects.

8. Lead events
You’ll soon start to notice a gap in the events you’re going to: a particular topic isn’t being covered, or a particular style of a topic isn’t being approached (unconference, workshops, networking) and you can start to quickly develop your own events. Many people are doing this, in particular blogger ‘geek dinners’, or barcamps.

9. Be interesting and genuine
Given the large number of people talking about the same thing you are online, you’re going to need to differentiate. Sure, standard business strategy but it’s amazing how few fail to do so. Many simply quote what others say, adding very little value, instead, you need to consistently be intersting. Here’s a few approaches: conduct analysis, respectively disagree with the mainstream, break news, compare and contrast services, develop lists or indexes of companies or topics.

10. Archive your achievements
As you develop your repertoire of speaking at events, leading events, or being quoted in articles or top blogs, start to create an archive that links to all these achievements. You don’t need to make it totally visible, but you’ll want to be able to share this with decision makers (next job, speaker selector, media, recruiters) to indicate on one page how you stand out. Linkedin.com is a great way to keep colleagues, peers and clients up to date with what your aims, and goals are.

Constantly measure and adapt, using buzz-monitoring and web metrics
Monitor what you are doing, understand your visitor statistics to you site, find out the most popular blog posts you have written, ego search on twitter with your name, and in 12 months time you will be able to review what has and hasn’t worked.

Any others that you think that I’ve missed, comments are on.

Good luck and all the best for a successful 2009!

So we cannot ignore the job cuts around the world, and we have to think about reducing our overheads what ever size business we are.

However, as a freelancer, you should think about the time now and the opportunities times like these offer. Times to enhance develop, collaborate, and push forward innovation. Some of the best innovations are done during times of economic downturn.

Innovation can be done cheaply, picture this – two geeks in a garage, wearing sweaters, trying to get an online experiment to work on an old macbook.

‘Innovation inspires, educates and entertains societies’

That’s the amazing thing about being based in Brighton, UK. It’s all about small groups of people working collaboratively at co-working locations across the city or at events like barcamp.

However, I want to think in terms of a revolution, rather than a downturn.

As good things usually come out the end of revolutions like this, the Industrial revolution, the Internet revolution, now this financial revolution - we don’t actually know what will come out of this – I feel this is why a lot of people are worried.

I hope the ‘downturn’ doesn’t mean that peoples creative taps are turned off. We are currently in a time of radical change, now is a chance to connect with people who you may not have done with before.

How can you connect and innovate in a downturn?

• Co-working places – Find out if your town or city has shared office space, if not start one up. Co-working is a great idea for individuals and companies looking to save on costs, and also be in a position to grow your business through networking opportunities learn more >>
• Bootstrapping – A business is one sure-fire way to build a sustainable business under these circumstances. By bootstrapping, you can be more open to ideas, and also responsive to market and technological changes, if you are small you can move direction quickly, and if you get it wrong you’ve got less chance of losing vast amounts of money learn more >>
• Idea marketplaces are where your ideas from weekend projects and bootstrapped efforts can be offered to larger organisations and companies that want to add your innovative ideas to their list of services. This is also an excellent way of getting noticed by your peers, and competitors so fantastic for your reputation/brand.

How to ‘bulletproof’ you business in a downturn?
Freelancing is not an easy option. That’s why I love it, it’s a challenge that the freelance, and larger business community face together. Freelancing means fluctuating fortunes, financial roller-coaster rides, and a constant fight for success. Listen to your customers, show that you care, and once the storm is over you will be able to smile and reflect about what you have learnt along the way.

As a freelancer approach large companies to see if they have any work that you can help them with, find out the name of the marketing or sales contact, and send them an email: “I appreciate you may have in-house designers, however if you are overworked or need fresh ideas – we have a creative team that.., all at lower costs..” or an html email newsletter showcasing what you services you can provide. This is a cost-effective way of marketing, and also gaining valuable contacts and potential clients in your industry.

Just a thought. As people like me are using Twitter more for business and networking (Facebook for friends btw).

The search on twitter is great as more companies and job boards are posting jobs on Twitter.

Like getting the first for breaking news and people’s thoughts on Twitter (which was fantastic over the U.S elections) you can do the same for work. Be the first to contact a future client and make their day as well as yours.

I like that this actually spans not just your local neighbourhood, by doing a twitter search means you are searching globally – within the ‘connected’ generation. Great for diversifying your work and client list, some thing that is cheap to achieve using tools like these and great for your experience and career prospects.

For example, the search for CSS Developer brings up 20 results, try searching for what you do.

You can even get these results sent to you as daily or weekly alerts, using tweetbeep.

A nice way of boosting work over the next few months

What are your tools for finding work on the web?

Update HOW TO: Find a Job on Twitter

Some of my thoughts from a recent workshop I attended at The Werks, titled “Developing and demonstrating your reputation“.

The beauty of a workshop about this, is that it doesn’t apply to just web industry, see what points you think you offer and perhaps start working on the others!

Why do some people seem to get all the interesting projects to work on, and be able to easily go from one project to the next? Why are some people able to charge higher daily rates than others?
Here’s a list of reasons why :

1. Employers require from freelancers, that they are pleasant, eloquent and ‘get it’ – no matter what industry you are working in. Also get on well with their in-house full-time staff.
2. Clients want you to do job more quickly than full time employees – there is no shorthand way of communicating with a client or freelancer, it all depends on how are you working with them – you can make it easy, open or hard and slow.
3. You should be honest, and face up to problems by communicating when ‘don’t get it’.
4. Do it on time, especially if you have been drafted in to complete a tight deadline, but if you don’t deliver that will let you and your reputation down.
5. Do it well – quality of work – should be bulletproof, and stand up to audits and reviews, ie: accessibility (WAI) and semantic code (W3C) standards.
6. Price (not the most important in this list – if your reputation is good, you will be worth your costs) unless new clients find you on forum – like freelancers.net will be price only as they wont see the other thing.
7. From what I have learnt from quite a few years contracting and running my own business, you should be proactive with your clients and you suppliers. Be clear what you can offer clients as part of your services/brand.
8. Provide case studies of how you have worked in the past. Testimonials always help as clients can identify with other people hiring you for work.

What works for you? Let me know because this list is obviously not a holy grail, just a list of pointers to make you work more effectively with your employers by providing extra value for them and strengthening your reputation at the same time.

Fantastic link posted today by Jeffrey Zeldman, created a lot of laughter today on Twitter.

Every web freelancer must either sympathise with his thoughts, or can learn when to walk away from dubious projects with new clients.

20 signs you don’t want that web design project

In a matter of hours the blog post has around 80 comments and growing, it’s one of those posts where the comments are just as valuable, worth reading!