Particularly with the ease in which material is transmitted and shared on the internet, such products as training videos, ebooks and articles, have become an incredibly powerful means to get your brand in front of many targeted people. Creating information products can help you gain exposure to potentially thousands of people, no matter what your profession.

Apart from allowing people to learn more about the way you communicate and express yourself, producing information products are useful for you in the following ways:

1. They will help you get more clients because such products will give people the ability to connect with you and learn more about how you communicate and what you know about before taking further ‘risks’ with you.

2. They create opportunities for ongoing passive income that requires little ongoing work.

3. The opportunity for your product, your name, your brand to go viral (spread through word of mouth), if the product is free.

4. Having an information product improves your credibility as a creative freelancer because it establishes you as an expert in your field and will distinguish you from others in your industry.

Whether you’re a musician, illustrator, writer or painter, there are information products that you can put together to sell or to give away to boost your self promotion dramatically.

.

Here are some product ideas to think about:

• A free e-book full of special tips
• A full e-book to pay for (usually in the form of a pdf file)
• An audio mp3 or CD
• Training videos
• Teleseminars
• Ezines
• Charts, maps and information graphics
• Write an article

.

Make sure the product relates to the work you do, is straightforward and isn’t overworked. It doesn’t need to be perfect.

An example of this in action is a web designer putting together an ebook on how to best optimize a site to make navigation as easy as possible. This way the product would be of interest to other web designers and site owners, and people who run blogs, but also potential clients who want to know whether the navigation on their own sites are as easy as possible, who may eventually use that web designer’s services.

It is ok to put together information that has originated from elsewhere, as long as it is presented in your own words and isn’t an obvious copyright infringement. You can also get the majority of the work outsourced, although for your credibility’s sake, you’ll want to exert a fair amount of control over the finished piece.

Does anyone have any further ideas?

Congratulations to all winners and thank you ALL for taking part, and for such excellent and sometimes very funny comments.

The winners of the book are as follows – please contact me, otherwise I will be contacting you all individually with the free book on Wednesday/Thursday…

Heidi Burton
Nadja Johansen
Jason Philip Smith
Steve Ward
Samantha Johnson
Zack Rock
Nate Watkins
Alex Sanso
Lisa Ellwood
Liz Sterry

Well done!

–

In the run up to my new ebook’s launch on Wednesday March 10th, I’ll be giving away 10 books for free.

The offer is exclusive to fans of the Red Lemon Club Fan Page.

To have a chance of getting your hands on a free copy of the book: ’10 Steps to Powerful Online Self Promotion for Creatives’, which will also help people who want to make more sales, and bring greater exposure to their businesses, you need to do the following:

1. Make sure you are logged in to your Facebook account.

2. Go to the Red Lemon Club Fan Page, and become a fan if you aren’t already.

3. Write a wall post or comment stating why you want the book.

..And that’s it!

The ten winners will be announced through the fan page, as well as this site on Tuesday March 9th.

Good luck!

The 5 ‘tweeters’ who have won 60 day-long advertising spots on this site are as follows:

@rachillustrates

@McThrill

@SnarphBlat

@printtutorials

@imediacreatives

Congratulations guys – I will be contacting you all shortly.

Thanks to everyone who tweeted!

—–

I hope the beginning of March is providing everyone with a sense of a fresh start and a healthy optimism for what 2010 has in store for us.

I’ve got some good news.

I am giving away 5 free 60-day advertising spots right here on Red Lemon Club to anyone who can help me promote my new ebook with a simple Retweet.

The majority of ad spots will replace the ones you see on the right, so will be placed above the fold of this site, for optimum exposure. I can also personally help with the banner design for you.

Simply enter the following tweet into your Twitter ‘What’s Happening’ box to be in with a chance to win:

Promote the NEW ebook from @redlemonclub and earn 50% for every book you refer! http://su.pr/9rHAxa #affiliate #promote #earn

Winners of the ad spots will be announced here on Thursday March 4th.

Good luck!

’10 Steps to Powerful Online Self Promotion for Creatives’ on March 10th 2010.

The book sells at $27 USD on launch and $39 thereafter.

.

Become an affiliate here to start promoting!

The 215 page book addresses in close detail an effective step by step system of online promotion aimed specifically at creative professionals, including:

.

• Establishing a target market and creating a USP
• Expertly building a personal site
  
• Setting up on social media sites effectively
• Building up large online networks to engage with
• Setting up and running an effective mailing list
• 18 Ways + of driving traffic to sites
• Free advertising
• Alternative online promotional strategies
  
• Blogging
• Collaborating
• More

Early Reviews (more on the sales page when revealed):

.

Scott Belsky (Founder of Behance, the 99%, Author of Making Ideas Happen)

Ben O’Brien (Ben the Illustrator)

The 10 steps are clear and concise. They explain how online promotion works, what’s best to do and how to best do it, and how online promotion can effect you, your business and your career. Alex’ book is going to really reduce your workload!

.

Jerelle Kraus (former New York Times Art Director)

Alex’s book is all you’ll ever need to become an expert yourself. He dispels the outdated “filthy lucre” myth to which artists have long clung & replaces it with the tools to give you confidence in your ability to promote yourself with integrity.

If you are interested in becoming an affiliate to promote this book through your own channels, and earning 50% of each sale made, sign up to the affiliate mailing list below. Doing so means you have access to all affiliate materials, including a range of banners, and a clear guide on what to do.

Become an affiliate here!

To be in with a chance of winning 2 months worth of free advertising here on Red Lemon Club check this out.

.

This could be in the form of using your services, commissioning work from you, buying your products, spreading the word about you, and so on.

Obviously producing unique and high quality work as a creative will be one of your primary means of motivating people. However, there are several other ways to quickly motivate people to take action through activating appropriate emotional responses, as well as highlighting the benefits you offer.

Here are 13 ways to do this:

1. Create the impression of scarcity

Increase the assumed value of your products and services by emphasizing their rarity. For example, you might display limited stock quantities for products you might be selling or giving away. When it comes to your own work, the best way to increase a sense of scarcity is in producing work that is unique and remarkable.

You might also emphasize the scarcity of your services in the way you describe yourself, such as in highlighting what you do that few others can. Really pick out and clarify your strengths when doing so.

2. Build a sense of obligation

You can motivate people to take action when you give something away, or in helping people, which will trigger a sense of indebtedness or liability in them. By giving something away, such as in the form of free information through a blog post, this will unconsciously drive people to feel the need to give something back to you.

3. Express yourself

Revealing your personality, your passion and your character through everything you do online, particularly through your own work, but also through your writing, the design of your site and in the way you interact with people, will appeal to people in a big way, and will get people quickly interested in you.

Visitors will be more motivated to buy into your ‘brand’ after they have witnessed some of your self expression. This will manifest itself for a large part in your own work.

4. Limit options

By cutting down on the choices you offer to people, whether this be all the products you want to sell them, or in the various services you might offer, you will reduce the issue of ‘decision paralysis’, which restricts one’s ability to make a decision at all. By minimizing choice, options become clearer and easier.

Those who you’d like to take action will be more motivated to make decisions if the options in front of them are not complicated. This includes simplifying the navigation and design complexity of your site/s.

5. Evoke desired emotions

In the world of ‘cognitive marketing’ expert marketers suggest embedding messages into your writing (or spoken word) to affect people’s thought patterns through evoking positive feelings like excitement, curiosity and interest. The best way to sell yourself, products and your work is to have prospects and customers associate positive feelings with them.

Think of this as helping people better understand your benefits and not as an exercise in deceit! You can use motivational statements here and there in any persuasive communication you do to motivate people positively, such as:

“What would it feel like to have a beautiful, clean new website?”

“See how you’re getting excited about the prospect of having a print on your wall”

6. Tell stories

Weave stories into any copy you have that seeks to persuade people in the content of your blog and articles, for example. You don’t need to go overboard with telling stories but they have been shown to grab the attention of viewers and readers very effectively. Grabbing attention through intriguing stories is a powerful way of motivating people to take action in the ways you want them to.

7. Get people to make a small step

People are much more likely to make a decision or take action if they have already done something small towards it or in relation to it. According to psychologists, a small commitment in this way activates a commited ‘persona’ in the person, which they will then look to maintain with future commitments.

So, if you provide the ability to leave comments or feedback on your site, for example, this can lead to people taking further action in committing to you if the opportunity is there.

8. Activate the brain’s survival instinct

Triggering the survival instinct in a certain part of the human brain will have an effect on people’s attention, and in getting them motivated.

Three things are linked closely to the this survival trigger: sex, food and danger. Consider incorporating these themes and images relating to them into the headlines you write, your articles, images you include on your blog and in the work you create to grab attention and motivate people to act.

9. Present quick results

Promise a ‘quick service’, ‘instant download’ or ‘super fast shipping’ in the details you include with products and services you offer. Only do this if you can deliver on what you have promised. People are much more inclined to be motivated by getting something quickly.

10. List key things first

Anything you list first, such as a point on a list, or an illustration in your portfolio, will be prioritized by your visitors. So, if you want to get people motivated about a particular thing more than anything else you have to offer at that point, make sure if is listed first in a sequence to boost the priority people give to it.

11. Demonstrate ‘Social Validity’

Showing that you and what you offer is liked and respected by others, has a strong motivational effect on people. Social validation in this way triggers the part of the unconscious brain’s urge to ‘belong’, and hence will attract people to you and your work.

You don’t need to be the most popular kid in school to do this, just make sure you give preference to such validity whenever the opportunity arises.

Social validity can be demonstrated in the following ways:

• Showcase any ratings, testimonials and reviews others have made on your site.
• Enable and encourage commenting, but delete spam and any overly negative comments.
• Display popular posts and articles.
• Install social media buttons like Digg and Tweet and recently introduced Facebook ‘reshare‘ buttons.
• Display your RSS subscriber and Twitter follower numbers.

12. Use the word ‘you’

People’s attentions will be drawn to this word, and being spoken to directly, because we all give priority to ourselves in an evolutionary, survivalist sense. Speak directly to your visitors and you will see improvements in your own persuasiveness.

13. Be professional

This applies to how you present and apply yourself in carrying out your creative work with clients and in the areas surrounding this, such as interacting with prospects, and presenting your work (in the form of your portfolio site etc).

Make sure that you treat everyone you deal with with respect and courtesy, as this feeling of importance has a strong motivational drive behind it for others. Be professional as you go about writing your blog and designing your site too as this will instill a sense of enthusiasm in people as they engage themselves with your professionalism.

Let the community know if you can think of other ideas and if you have other views with regard to anything that has been mentioned.

Having knocked heads and discussed some ideas together, mainly with JC’s eye-opening input, we have compiled some of the main issues that add to as well as detract from great online portfolios. The post is split into rights and wrongs.

Rights

Be mindful of your target audience. Ask yourself the question: “Who is this portfolio site aimed at?” Knowing this, whether it is aimed at potential clients or art-directors, will help clarify exactly how you present your portfolio site. Be aware that the majority of visitors will want your work to be accessed quickly and easily.

Make your best work visible from the start. If you are an illustrator, have your best piece clearly visible or at least easily accessible from the homepage.

Be honest. Try not to embellish facts and details to look more impressive. This will come back to bite you eventually. Have a portfolio that truly represents your work and who you really are.

Be descriptive. Explain clearly and concisely everything that is appropriate to write about (see this post for writing well). This doesn’t mean waffling needlessly about your work, your interests and your background. Give enough information to create a picture of the kind of person you are and describes your work with detail and clarity.

Be mobile phone compatible. Viewing portfolios from a phone like an iPhone is becoming more and more prevalent. JC views a great deal of work from his iPhone, and will likely skip over portfolios that don’t ride well in mobile format. Here’s JC’s comment on iPhone mobile compatibility:

‘I’ve seen that generally they work better with blog-like layouts because thumbnails might end up being too small on the iPhone’s screen. I don’t have much experience with other mobile platforms, but most art directors I know have an iPhone.

Creating an iPhone version of the site is a good solution as well (a la Poolga). Sites with lots of thumbnails could consider organizing them in a list format, so that they are more viewable on a phone.’

Make your work shareable. JC uses the example of an art-director wanting to share samples of the work they see with a client or other members of the creative team. Make it easy for people to email links of specific images, for example, or to be able to copy and save images and other files from your site.

You might also want to consider adding social networking buttons to your portfolio so that it can easily be shared amongst everyone, even going viral.

Have professional and accessible contact information. Include a physical address. People like to know where in the world you are and this will add credibility to you. Include your agent or representative details if you have one. Make sure it is obvious from the homepage exactly where the rest of your contact information is.

Showcase your work in context. Whenever you can, display work you’ve done in the way it was published. For example, if you created an illustration for an advert, you can present an image of the final ad including the illustration in its entirety. Not only does this allow for people to see your work in its applied context, increasing the confidence in your prospects, but this will add value to the work you present.

Be clear and simple. Don’t make the process of viewing your work any more complicated than it should be. The best portfolios are those that display all they need to without being excessive. Clarity means that your site is easy to navigate and avoids clutter. Think zen!

Have your work easy to keep up with. People perusing your stuff might not be looking for your style for their projects right at that moment, but they may need you in the near future.

Make it easy for potential clients and so on to follow your work through enabling RSS subscription, creating a small blog that people can subscribe to, having a Twitter and Facebook account linked to from the site and having a mailing list to sign up to.

Categorize your work. As well as breaking your site down into relevant and distinct pages, consider dividing up the work you showcase according to category, perhaps into separate pages. Categories like ‘editorial’, ‘advertising’ and ‘personal work’, make it easier for prospects and art-directors to distinguish between the types of work they want to see.

Wrongs

Never updating your portfolio. Try to keep your site fresh and ‘buzzing’. It looks unprofessional if nothing changes in a long time. Updates also benefit the way your site gets indexed in search engines, as Google loves active websites.

Small thumbnails. Taking the guessing game out of opening portfolio pieces is recommended for the sanity of people browsing your work! Avoid a page full of tiny thumbnails that, when clicked, take a long time to load. If you do use thumbnails, make them large enough, so that users get a feel for them before clicking on them.

Being trigger-happy with your window settings. Most web surfers prefer having control over the windows and tabs that are up on their screens. Avoid having your page maximize itself, and cut down on pages that pop-up in separate windows.

Use low quality images. I get put off sites that contain images with low resolution, or appear blurry. It looks unprofessional and is a shame to downgrade work that otherwise might have appeared nicely in higher quality.

Make sure images and other files strike the right balance between resolution and internet load time. Save images for the web through editing programs like Photoshop or Gimp.

Using Flash for the sake of it. Some flash sites are well designed and work well for the purpose of the site. More often than not, using flash on a site is unnecessary and overly ostentatious, often proving plain annoying. Other problems that come with flash sites include not being able to link to individual pages from elsewhere, not being compatible with many mobile platforms, including the iPhone, the site taking up the whole screen, the back button dis-engaging, non-selectable text and non-selectable images.

Watermarking images excessively. Placing large watermarks on images etc just makes a portfolio look ugly and tacky. Your true audience, those that care about the work you produce, will be unlikely to steal your work. It is those people who your site is for. Unfortunately it is almost inevitable that your files can be copied if someone really desired them. The good thing about the Internet, however, particularly if you have a following, is that stolen work will likely be reported.

If you must use watermarks, a small signature on an image can be ok.

One last thing…

Provide the option to browse further. Design your portfolio site, if you can, to cater for both people who are skimming your work, and for those who want to delve a little deeper.

This means having a simple opening page with easily accessible work straight away, but also having pages that provide further detail, including testimonials and awards, blog updates, archives, your about page and interviews. Keep these visible, but out of the way of visitors who first arrive.

What does everyone think? Have we missed anything glaring?

Be sure to sign up to the mailing list to get your free book and unique weekly tips.

Every once in a while, I will get a discussion going on the RLC Facebook Page that aims to bring together a collection of Internet resources, ideas and methods real people have found useful for their own self-promotional efforts.

This post focuses on a handful of sites that enable you to showcase your work, while having all kinds of other benefits too.

The comments area at the end of this post aims to extend the discussion further, so don’t hesitate to send through some feedback. It’s great karma for you!

Society 6

A site for artists and creatives to promote their work, connect and interact with others. I like the layout and clean design of the site. I’m also a fan of the voting system, which allows people’s work to be bumped up to the front page if it is popular. Some good exposure is afforded shortly after submitting work to the site, and you can sell prints through here as well. Society6.com

Behance

The site provides a single point of contact for anyone involved in creative industries. The site is for photographers, illustrators and designers. The site is beautifully designed, with some great opportunities to share links, showcase your work, notify people of your working status, look at all kinds of stats, and interact with others. The site can even be used as your default portfolio page. Behance.net

Pinkmuse

Pinkmuse is a service for artists to present work, browse galleries, message, critique, buy, sell, and search art by specific criteria such as artist name, school, city, medium, colour, mood, genre, material, dimension and price. Pinkmuse.com

Carbonmade

Containing close to 160,000 portfolios, Carbonmade is a crowded online space, but is one of the main hubs of creativity on the web. This provides an excellent opportunity for further self promotion across all creative disciplines. Carbonmade.com

Artwanted

As recommended by illustrator Jade Boylan: ‘You get a great portfolio set up and fantastic page and visitor stats right down to individual image hits and artwork comments‘. Artwanted.com

Creative Shake

Artist Dave Hile has had good results from this site. ‘In the last 2 years it has generated around $30,000 and costs about $450 per year (it might be $600 the first year). That’s a good return on investment. I haven’t gotten a lot of jobs from it, but the jobs I did get were large ones’. The site is for all kinds of creatives willing to showcase their porfolios for a price. Creativeshake.com

FormFiftyFive

A site that scours the web for the best in photography and design work. Also a great place for network building, setting up collaborations, interaction and inspiration. Formfiftyfive.com

Everycreative

A really nice online resource to enable further networking, collaborating and pitching for designers and other creatives. You can also use the site in finding work experience and gaining valuable feedback and advice from established industry workers. This is a great one. Everycreative.com

Of course, you don’t need to sign up to all of these, but perhaps have a look through some of the sites here you haven’t heard of, try them out, and see if they mould to your own style of work, and fit in with your own self promotion strategy.

In and amongst this seemingly large heap of information, you as a creative freelancer, in need of useful and effective self promotion, may be wondering whether there is any point at all in commenting on other blogs for promotional gain.

Well, actually, there is a point. There are some excellent benefits of commenting:

1. Credibility. The writer of the blog you post on, as well as its readers will begin to see you as an expert on what you are talking about. This is good news if it relates to your industry and your speciality.

2. Adds to your Strategic Visibility. This was mentioned in a previous post. This is the idea that people are reminded of you, that you and your name and link is seen in key areas on the web.

3. Traffic. Always make a point of putting in a link to your portfolio, blog or site if you can. People intrigued by your comment will click your link to find out more about you and this will drive people to your sites.

4. Idea Creation. This is particularly useful if you write a blog. If you comment something useful or interesting, chances are that this can be turned into an effective new post on your blog.

5. Important readers. Key people, including potential clients and key influencers in your industry might well see your comment for obvious benefits.

6. Networking. Commenting on blogs is a useful networking activity. People are more likely  to talk about you, refer you, and link to you if they have heard about you.

7. Returned comments. Commenting on others’ blogs will often lead to people returning the favour (as well as through traffic coming through your comment) on your own blog. Try it. This has the benefit of adding social value to your site, feedback on your work, as well as potentially helpful information for you.

8. Improve skills. Writing valuable comments exercises that important area between the ears. For creatives and particularly writers, this is an excellent opportunity to practice and improve your idea creation and writing skills.

9. Improves Ranking. Search engines like Google love things called backlinks. These are links that their spiders can see link back to your site. Comments with links will add to the number of backlinks to your site and thus will improve where you are ranked in search engine results.

10. Makes you read. Active commenting will push you to read more of what you are commenting on. If the post you choose is relevant to you, a more solid grasp of what you are reading about will be very useful.

This doesn’t mean you have to spend all day on the Internet to address just one angle of effective online self-promotion. You need a simple strategy in mind before heading out to comment on posts occasionally.

Half of your strategy is being aware of the 10 points above. The other half is deciding to comment on blogs that are relevant to your field, have a decent amount of traffic and influence and will attract the types of people you yourself want to network with.

You can search for relevant blogs on social bookmarking site Delicious or Google blog search, for example. You can look at traffic levels and rankings on Alexa.

Happy commenting!

Don’t hesitate to comment with your thoughts below.

Here is my list of why you need to make use of social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter:

1. To bring admirers, fans and followers of your work to you

2. As a source of inspiration from others in your field

3. For constant and regular free exposure

4. To advertise events such as gallery exhibitions in the real world

5. To establish a network of professionals who can support, inspire and teach you in your industry

6. To drive traffic to your site

7. Improved indexing of your site/s and thus your name in search engines.

8. To stay on the pulse of your industry (what’s trending, what are other people saying?)

9. To build rapport and establish and build business relationships

10. To keep in touch with old clients

11. To provide a market for your products (such as prints for artists)

12. To drive up the standard of your work, through the enabling of freelancers to share work with others (i.e. we want to show off good work)

13. For spreading referrals to and from others

14. To facilitate direct marketing

15. By building a following, you increase your value (at least perceived value) when viewed by prospective clients

And there you have it, although I do believe there are many other benefits of social media platforms for promoting your work.

If you have any suggestions, don’t hesitate to contribute your thoughts in the comments below. Thank you!

Getting your work and your brand out into the world is the flip side of the creative freelancing coin.

I believe that those who make use of the following 6 elements, can achieve self promotional greatness!

Here they are:

1) A network of relevant people

2) A database of accessible contacts

3) Direct marketing

4) A referral system

5) A regular flow of unique visitors to your work

6) Radical Strategic Visibility

–

1) A network of relevant people

Establishing and growing an accessible network of people online will be massively beneficial to you as an independent (or not) worker. Those vital people in your network are those who:

a) are fans of and love your work;

b) have worked with you in the past;

c) share your interests;

d) respect and admire what you do, and;

e) are your prospects themselves.

Fans will inevitably go out of their way to spread the word about you and your work. A large proportion of those you have worked with previously are likely to want to use your services again. People who share your interests will pay attention to what you have to say, as well as providing inspiration to you, if you choose to listen to them. Those who respect your brand and admire what you are doing will do the same, as well as provide referrals for you and will support you.  Your network, particularly a substantial one , will contain prospective clients. However, a network will only be fully effective, if contacts are ‘seized and captured’. This is where ingredient number 2 comes in:

2) A database of accessible contacts.

As well as an address book to store your contacts, for example on your Google mail account (which acts as a great mail storage centre), an excellent system whereby you are regularly updating members of your network with news and information, comes in the form of an email mailing list. This allows you to not only keep in touch with contacts as long as they stay subscribed, but to allow them to be regularly reminded of you. For those non subscribers and potential subscribers, social media sites like Twitter act as a great aggregation of what I call ‘secondary contacts‘, who can be drawn to your mailing list eventually.

3) Direct marketing

Direct marketing is actively advertising your services and products to potential clients. This means contacting people and organizations with the intent of building a relationship with them in the least aggressive and spammy ways possible. In my view, self-promotion today, and actually marketing in general, is all about creating, building and maintaining relationships, as cheesy as it sounds, with those who may eventually use your services. Direct marketing is advertising without selling.

For freelancing professionals, contacting individual potential clients directly through their online contact details, ideally building rapport and directing them to your portfolio and mailing list (they will join if they are interested in your work) is a perfectly viable demonstration of this. Having a mailing list (or even emailing individual members of your network not on a mailing list) will allow for continued direct marketing.

4) A Referral System

Having a program in place involving active referral creation is often overlooked in my view in self promotion methods. Very often, people avoid asking prior clients and members of their network for referrals. According to referral guru Vince Golder, 80% of companies get 70% of their business through word of mouth marketing. This undoubtedly applies to freelancers too. I’ve found a large proportion of my work through referrals from key people in my online network.

The reality is, most people are happy to get referrals for you if asked, and especially when you have gotten them a referral already (in which case you don’t have to even ask, as most people are keen to return good favours).

5) A regular flow of unique visitors to your work

In order to build up a network, find new clients, and find new fans to rave about you, it is important to attract new eyeballs and/or ears etc to what you do. Whether it is a trickle or a torrent of new people coming to, and experiencing your work, it is all important in the world of self promotion. Even if you have created art to rival the masterpieces of Picasso, this doesn’t guarantee lots of new people seeing your awesome work.

You need to build the bridges to allow people to get to you. One of the best ways of doing this is to provide intriguing content in some form, such as a blog that focuses on your interests that will attract visitors to your content and eventually your work. Better still, would be to become an expert at something, ideally related to your super-focused niche, whereby people would be drawn to you and your services. An example is for a safari photographer to set up a blog on African wildlife photography, drawing interested people in who would add to your network, create referrals for you, add to your mailing list and employ you and so on.

6) Radical Strategic Visibility

This is a term coined by Facebook marketing specialist Mari Smith. Radical Strategic Visibility involves strategic steps taken so that you are seen everywhere (more feasible online) and you actively appear in the ‘peripheral vision’ of particularly key influencers in your industry. What this means is that, using the Internet as a tool, you create subtle and constant reminders that you exist, that you are active, relevant, and that you care about your work, your industry, your friends and helping others. This doesn’t have to be in your face advertising. This involves doing small things here and there including commenting on other people’s blog posts, updating your facebook status, ‘tweeting’ on Twitter and writing guest posts on other blogs.

When I read about this, I felt that the concept really added the last necessary ingredient to this self promotion cake by binding it all together.

–

Does anyone think there are other key elements of self promotion? If so, I’d love to hear from you.

Please use the comments below to contribute your thoughts.