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!

Psst, use this code to get a massive £200 off this years FOWA in London this October.

From the GeeKyoto conference a few weeks back.

Mark Simpkins and Ben Hammersley ran a one day conference in central London, with designers, technologists, artists, architects, policy-makers, explorers, economists and scientists, and lots of clever clever people, to discuss the future and how we’ll live in it.

I was attracted to this conference partly as I am fascinated about how other people percive the future, but also likeminded people attend conferences because we ‘are’ thinkers, innovators and shapers.

Seen as a progression or journey by developing ideas together, online, offline to make communication easier, quicker and without boundaries or frontiers. And perhaps encouraging others to think about their role in society now and in the future.

Play in todays world:

• 71% of adults used to play outside when they were young only 21% do now.
• Why? The public realm, and fear of, and for children
• Kids seeing play where adults don’t see it, and the result is often vandalism as it doesn’t work out.
• Experimented with swings at bus stops to see if adults utilise this.

Beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk – what will the future of education look like in 2025?

Paleofuture – A blog that goes ‘Looking into the future that never was’.

• The future happens everywhere to everyone
• Economists and technologists are the ones who know
• Often people are mistaking the present for the future

‘The future demands your participation’, says Richard sandford. Who helps transform the way people learn through innovative technology and practice.

A good introduction and demonstration of diykyoto.com – electricity consumption that you can see, with the help of Wattson.

Finally, we were shown the wide channels of different way of thinking with todays online tools that let us collaborate and share more than ever before. At sites like:

• mysociety.org
• innovationexchange

A really thought provoking day and inspiring event, something different from the web design and development events I have recently attended. A new bunch of people to meet and share ideas with. Certainly will be back next year for what looks like to be a larger event.

Well, the creme de la creme Web Design and Development Conference in Austin, Texas certainly lived up to its formidable reputation.

And it’s hard to put into one blog post an event that encompasses so many aspects of the web, real time social networking, some marketing, and a lot of partying with new friends.

One interesting statistic was that it was thought 20% of America’s iPhone users were at SxSw. There were a lot of iPhones, and Apple products everywhere you looked. It felt like being part of a community just by having similar gadgets with these folks.

I really loved the openness of the event, it’s true – you can sit next to a Vice president of Yahoo! on one side and an A list web celebrity on the other.

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A great resource of web 2.0 trends, emerging technologies, web code, web services and what you should be checking out are on podcasts.

Great if your job involves travelling, have a short break, on have a long flight on the way back from a conference!
It’s a great way to keep in touch with whats happening on and around the web. And a different way of learning compared to getting the lowdown from friends and followers on Twitter.

For those on a limited budget for training or self learning this is an excellent way of listening to leading industry experts share their knowledge and information for free!
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The annual event held at Earls Court in London, saw many more people attending the event than last years.. Over 3000 people filled the venue each day.

Also probably the least geekiest web event to attend in the web industry calendar.

I attended on the wednesday, when I saw the following presentations:

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I’ve found some time and only gone and added extra functionality to Jayonline.

1/ AJAX functionality – to show the blog feed on the homepage which is in HTML format.

Partly due to Jeremy Keith writing ‘Bulletproof AJAX‘, a book which I have read recently. He has some examples of the code online, which is a great place to start playing around and seeing how the functionality can work for you.

The beauty of progressive enhancement. (more…)