10 ways to promote yourself on a budget
Friday, December 19th, 2008There 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 “V” 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!
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