As well as providing you with a means to showcase an update-able online CV, LinkedIn can be used for expanding your business network, finding new clients, bringing in traffic to your other sites and increasing your chances of being hired by those that see your profile.

Plenty of information on setting up your profile on LinkedIn as effectively as possible to get the most of out of the platform is provided on page 121 of my eBook on online self promotion.

With a complete, well-presented profile, you can now start to develop a network through LinkedIn.

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Here’s how to build contacts and network through LinkedIn:

• Import people you already know by clicking on Add Connections at the top of LinkedIn.

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• Search for influencers and contacts you’d like to network with and click Add ‘their name’ to your network.

Unless you’ve done business together, it’s probably best to add them as a friend under the options list. Put in a customized message with your invitation. Introduce yourself, explain how you found them/know them (LinkedIn will show you how connected they are to you), and say that it might be beneficial for you both to be part of the same network.

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• Be available for contact requests within LinkedIn. If you have disabled any of these options, you are restricting your ability to expand.

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• Display your email address within LinkedIn.

People cannot find you through email address if you have not either left it within your summary, or within your contact details on LinkedIn. Make sure it is made public.

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• Promote the URL of your LinkedIn page.

You can do this within your email signature, leaving a link in your blog or base and by providing an image as an icon on other sites that people can click through. Facebook has an app that enables you to place a LinkedIn button within your profile, which you should add.

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• Update your status frequently.

Don’t worry about this being yet another site to update your status in. There are tools like TweetDeck and Ping.fm that allow you to post updates to multiple platforms at the same time.

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• Start a group that is related to your industry or blog.

Go to Groups > Create a Group to start one up. Invite members from LinkedIn and elsewhere, and provide content to it on a regular basis.

With good content, your group will increase in membership size, and it will provide a good platform to engage with your networks and promote your sites and work in a professional environment.

You can also use LinkedIn groups to find further contacts to add to your networks.

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Those are the key elements of LinkedIn, and I will be sharing more ideas within this blog and through my weekly tips as usual, so keep posted!

For those who are interested, my LinkedIn profile is here. Hook up with me if you’d like!

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Any thoughts, please share through the comments below.

Social media sites can provide a treasure chest of new clients and exciting new projects for you if you know some of the tools to open it. If you are looking for regular work, it is possible to attract various great clients through social media in an efficient way, without wasting valuable time.

By now you have hopefully properly set up your various social media profiles, including providing a link to your work, which is all explained in detail in my ‘10 Steps’ ebook.

Here are 10 ways to use social media sites to get the attention of potential clients for you:

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1. Share updates on what you are working on. For example:

‘Well, now I can put my feet up! I’ve just added the finishing touches to my music poster: http://www.mywork.com’

2. Share pictures of your work or your awesome-looking workspace. This will get people excited about your work, especially as they can see it, and showing your workspace adds credibility and a personal touch to your self promotion. Twitpic is one such service that allows you to share pictures on Twitter.

3. Ask for feedback on the progress of your own work, by sharing a picture or link.

4. Post any recent updates you have made to your portfolio.

5. Express your joy at positive appraisals from colleagues, clients, fans. For example:

‘Got a great testimonial from my client about my last design project. So happy! [link to testimonial]’

6. Get a friendly conversation going with a potential client, or ask them a relevant question.

7. Get chatting about industry related things with anyone. New ‘tweets’ or updates that will interest potential clients will keep you visible.

8. Share news that will build your credibility as a professional, such as being interviewed for a blog or magazine, winning a new project, or when posting a new article to your blog.

9. Arrange to meet potential clients face-to-face using social media as a first point of contact. Nothing beats a one on one over coffee if you think you could bring something to the table with this person.

10. Ask a question to do with your work that generates discussion. Particularly on Facebook, this is a good way to get ongoing visibility on topics that will get noticed by potential clients if they are connected to you through this platform.

Remember that engaging with others on these sites is less about ‘selling’ and much more to do with getting into conversations and building relationships. So keep this in mind when making use of these ideas.

Another thing to keep in mind is to not restrict your online networking to only one person or one network. Keep an open mind and join other networks and talk with people in related but different industries. You never know what might turn up in the form of new work by engaging in different areas occasionally.

Ideally, as a creative professional, even if you work on a variety of roles, you have one skill that you are particularly focused on and are developing to be known for. The long term success of being known for a particular skill, whether it be website coding, illustration or music production, requires true passion for it.

If you have a focus in your work life on something you are passionate for, that’s excellent. Sometimes we can lose our way over time, and passion for what we do diminishes, or we simply get caught up in other areas of life and just forget about what we were passionate about in the first place.

Since having passion is so important, this post is about re-igniting and cultivating the passion that is already there inside you, so that you can continue to focus on your area with dedication and with great results. This can also be used for those of you who are looking to find their area of focus, which they are passionate about, but haven’t yet.

Here’s how to do this:

1. Write down ten things that are exciting or interesting about your area of work or a potential area of work.

2. Now write down three things that are interesting about each of the points you noted previously. Just keep what you have found in mind.

3. Spend half an hour looking through some good blogs or books that relate to your area of focus, and just drink it all in. Look for things that excite you and get you passionate. Consider printing out some images to inspire you that you can throw into your diary, a scrapbook, or on your wall.

4. Know your role-models. Think about who in the world you really admire and inspire you, perhaps even writing them down. Ideally what they do would relate to your work area, but simply being inspired by people who have achieved can really help boost the passion you have for your own path in life.

5. Read the biography of someone who has experienced success in the area of work you want to boost your passion in.

6. Do a training course in your area of focus or get out a book that will get you to expand on what you know about your skill. Either learn about the foundations of what you do, so that you feel generally more confident, or gain new knowledge to add to what you already know. This will add to your confidence, which will undoubtedly boost the passion you have for what you do.

7. Find somewhere comfortable to sit and get relaxed. Now spend a few minutes visualizing experiencing success in your area of work or achieving a goal related to your work. Think with no limits. Really turn up the vividness of this image, add sound and touch and colour in your mind.

The key thing is to effectively ‘burn’ the thought into your mind, so that you have a strong, positive picture in your mind that will help guide you towards success with passion in your work.

8. Set aside a day or more completely dedicated to creating something amazing for your portfolio. Take some time to plan something that will really add value to your portfolio or your work showcase. This will also give you some practice, stretch your skills, improve your confidence in your work, and allow to work on something that you really enjoy.

9. Talk to people in your industry. This can be through a reach out on Twitter, or in the real world. Go out and meet fellow creatives at social events and gatherings or organize your own. Hearing from others and sharing ideas and feedback is a great way to regain and boost passion.

10. Drop the baggage. Often it is in trying to accomplish too much that we lose passion for one particular area. Make it easier for yourself by committing to working on and developing one single area of your work-life, get good at it, work at it, learn about it and passion and drive will grow.

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.

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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

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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?

Today’s article clarifies using MySpace as one base from which to effectively promote your services and products, and to eventually create and build large networks of relevant people, which is described in detail in my new ebook on self promotion.

Many people associate MySpace with established and emerging musicians and bands. Many musicians use MySpace for greatly boosting their online presence. However, the hugely popular site actually presents a massive opportunity for businesses and professionals of all other backgrounds and industries to promote themselves and create contacts.

The audience you have access to through MySpace can be a lot different to other social networks like Facebook and Twitter, which creates all kinds of additional benefits to just using something like Facebook.

Not only do a lot of people on MySpace tend to be media and trend-savvy, communicative and young, but there are also large numbers of people engaging with MySpace who are searching for talent, expertise and new ideas.

This includes more and more potential clients for professional creatives.

As well as this, there are many other reasons to make use of MySpace as a self promotional platform, including the flexibility behind the design and customization of your profile, which allows for truly original layouts, additional elements like video, driving traffic to your blog and portfolio, and the ability to connect with and communicate to relevant people to expand your business.

Here is how to get set up on MySpace so that you make the most of it for establishing an online presence within a powerful online network:

Create Your MySpace Profile

Even if you have your own personal MySpace profile at the moment, it’s best to set up a new one that centers on your business or work.

Go to www.myspace.com and select a profile type. You’ll find a few options, including a music or comedian profile, which will offer slightly different features according to your vocation. If you don’t match any of the extra profile types on offer, it is best to go for the personal page profile, which is the standard option.

Go through the sign up process, which you will need a valid email address for. You will be asked to verify your email and add pictures to your profile. If you have some pictures that showcase your work on hand, upload those to the site. You can change your main profile picture at any time, but now would be a chance to upload a logo or picture of you in keeping with your consistent brand.

Set your MySpace custom URL to include relevant keywords, or your name by clicking the pick your MySpace URL link in the top left of the MySpace dashboard area. Think about this carefully, as this cannot be changed in future, unless you open a new page from scratch.

The next thing is to fill in your profile details by clicking Profile > Edit Profile.

Put some thought into filling in all your details including your interests as this will all add to your personality and brand and will appeal to those prospects and users who could potentially add you as a friend, contact you, and so on.

Putting in these details will also bring people to you, as the keywords you put within fields such as ‘interests’ are searchable by people on MySpace.

Think about which keywords relating to your work you could incorporate into these details pages.

As with Facebook, you might want to hold back on your year of birth for security. Don’t forget to include a link to your website. Also consider incorporating your web link into the design (discussed in the next section), like you might have done through your Twitter background.

Designing your Profile

Next, you need to set about designing your profile so that it looks professional, is appealing and reflects your brand and your style. You want your profile to be an extension of your base site, and reflect the style that runs through your portfolio and brand.

MySpace is one of few social media sites that enables you to use code, including CSS to customize your profile. This means designing the various sections you want to put into your profile, through Dreamweaver for example, and pasting the code into the available profile boxes.

This allows you to make some very special and dynamic MySpace profiles with slide shows, Flash and more.

I would recommend taking advantage of the flexibility this provides, and either designing your own profile or getting someone to help you with it, although bear in mind that legibility and simplicity will benefit your profile.

If you don’t have to ability to input your own code into your profile, you can use any of the various third-party profile editors on the web, such as Mashcodes or you can use the very good MySpace Profile Editor within MySpace itself.

The Customize Profile link, which is located on the top right of your screen once you have clicked Edit Profile from your homepage, will take you to the MySpace editor.

The editor is very intuitive, and you shouldn’t find it too difficult to work your way through designing your profile.

When you get to customizing your modules, which are the individual blocks within your profile, make sure the Add to Friends link stands out, as this is something you want people to easily find as you build out your MySpace network.

Consider taking advantage of images, text and video to drive visitors to your mailing list landing page or blog, and/or base site. Effectively you are incorporating a call to action into your profile, which you can do in several places, which will attract people to your blog or base.

You’ll see many professional MySpace pages using this.

Adding Music

If you are a musician, you need to have prepared mp3music files to upload through the music player available with the musician’s profile.

There are also several other music widgets available for your profile, (have a look at the mp3section at Widgetbox) that you can get online.

Widgets come in the form of code that you incorporate into your profile by dropping the code in your About Me section.

Adding Video

If you have video to showcase, or have videos that you might be sharing as part of your marketing campaign through sites like YouTube, you need to follow these steps in adding it to your profile:

1. Click Video from the top navigation menu.

2. Click Upload.

3. Browse for the file and click Upload Video.

4. Under your newly uploaded video, click the Add to Profile link to bring the video to your profile.

The methods on building up a substantial network and promoting your products and services through MySpace effectively, are covered in Step 6 of the new ebook: ’10 Steps to Powerful Online Self Promotion for Creatives’.

Does everyone think these are the best ways to optimize your presence on MySpace for effective online self promotion?

Whether it’s lacking energy and focus, or believing that we are “not good enough” in the face of competitors, our drive to take action in promoting ourselves and the work we do can sometimes take a beating.

Fortunately, there several ways to regain a sense of confidence and purpose, so that self-promotion doesn’t feel like a chore.

I’ve put together a hands on step-by step-approach over at the 99% for getting fired up and getting organized to market yourself in the short-term and the long-term – an essential task that too many of us neglect.

To see the steps, head over to the 99%.

’10 Steps to Powerful Online Self Promotion for Creatives’.

The book has received an incredible amount of praise amongst top creative industry people and others who enjoyed the book at the pre-launch last week.

I’m pleased to share the book with you at a special launch price that will last only three days until March 13th, so if you are keen on reading the book, now would be the time to get a copy at a greatly reduced price.

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You can read more about the book and purchase it here*.

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Some early reviews:

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“Alex Mathers has mastered the methods for effective self promotion in the creative world.”

Scott Belsky, Founder of Behance, The 99%, and Author of ‘Making Ideas Happen’

“’10 Steps’ boils down the complex topic of online self promotion into a simple and pragmatic process, giving creatives the needed knowledge and resources to be able to effectively market themselves online in a fun, engaging, and wholesome way.”

Jacob Gube, Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions, Co-Founder of Design Instruct

“Mathers’ book is all you’ll ever need to become an expert yourself. I’ve never encountered a more valuable or thorough guide to promotion.”

Jerelle Kraus, Former New York Times Art Director

“Most marketing books say the same thing as everyone else, so it was a happy surprise to find out that the book did not have the usual marketing tips. I literally couldn’t put the book down!”

Amber Weinberg, Established Blogger and Web Developer

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Buy the book!

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Become an affiliate and earn 50% on all sales you refer.

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*10% of all sales will be donated to the World Land Trust, a charity that protects rainforest and other habitats across the world.

To go with my recently launched ebook on self promotion, I’ve put together a list of various marketing mistakes to take note of.

Here are 10 mistakes you should avoid as a creative freelancer or professional:

1. Not establishing a target market before promoting.

One of the main things that creatives and other freelancers overlook when taking action in attracting new clients and getting their work seen is the importance of knowing who it is that you are producing work for.

If you produce work to please anyone and everyone, with no target market in mind, you will have trouble maintaining high quality, focused work. You will also create too much work for yourself, and you will have difficulties promoting it. If you have no idea who you are promoting to, your strategy of promotion will be aimless, fluffy and ineffective.

You need to decide on a group of people you would be passionate about creating work for. This is the group of people who will come to enjoy and experience your work upon its completion.

2. Ignoring the smaller details on your portfolio sites.

A lot of us neglect the smaller details when we go about showcasing what we have produced to share online. This includes providing good high resolution images in your portfolios, having links that work, aligning things properly, avoiding site clutter, and keeping words spelt correctly and sentences grammatically correct.

Attention to these finer details will have an effect on how viewers regard your professionalism and your general care about your own work. This can sometimes be the difference between someone choosing to hire you and someone quickly leaving your portfolio or site.

3. Not being contactable.

I still too often arrive at the personal sites of various creatives and find it hard to find out how to contact those behind the sites. The bare essentials of your online presence are your work being showcased clearly and properly, and a way to be contacted. The latter is often hard to get to, so make it obvious how to be found on the front page of your site/blog.

The best way is to set up a contact form, so that you don’t have to worry about email spammers taking your full email address through your site.

4. Not having a referral policy.

When it comes to attracting referrals as you network and interact with your contacts later on, having an official referral policy in place is one of the best ways you can attract more clients and more work. At least making a point of asking for referrals when dealing with clients is important also.

In the business world, 80% of companies get 70% of their business through word of mouth marketing. This can apply to creative professionals too. You will be surprised how many referrals you can make just by asking, especially when you find referrals for others.

See my previous post on getting referrals for more information on this.

5. Having an unfocused marketing strategy.

It can be easy to lose your way when trying to get the word out about what you do. Sometimes marketing activities don’t happen for weeks and months because there is not strategy in place. It is therefore important to lay out some kind of schedule in a calendar that will help you dedicate some focused marketing time each day or week.

Apart from scheduling a marketing regime in a calendar, there are other ways of creating focus within your marketing strategy. Writing a blog is one way of staying focused and building regular exposure for your own work, for example. Providing updates to a mailing list is another way of staying focused, hugely benefiting your promotional strategy in the process.

6. Not being set up effectively for promotion on social media sites like Facebook.

People’s views on social media appear to be fairly split, with one group seeing the self marketing value of networking sites like Twitter and Facebook and others ignoring it. In either case, it is crucial to get set up effectively on these sites, so that your work and services are promoted in the best ways that they can be. Many people miss out on the opportunity to take advantage.

Sites like Facebook, which attract huge numbers of people every day, come with a range of tools that will help you promote yourself that people are very often unaware of. Many people often overlook the various ways these sites can really help you promote yourself, such as one’s ability to showcase artwork to targeted people, or importing a blog through your wall on Facebook.

I’m giving away a free chapter of my book through Inspired Mag on setting up properly on Facebook.

7. Not securing the relevant contacts you find.

People visiting your sites and those that you can interact with on social media sites, as well as clients, previous clients, referrals and fans are very valuable to you. For the benefit of your long term marketing success, as well as selling products and selling your services in general, you need to secure these contacts to you so that they are contactable and within your professional network.

This means directing people to your mailing list and making people aware of your social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. With contacts in place in these ways, you are able to maintain visibility in front of them over time, which will help you attract regular work and exposure.

8. Lacking credibility as a professional or expert.

For success as a creative who wants lots of work with great clients, you’ll need to be perceived as credible, likable and trustworthy within your field and within your ever-growing network.

Having a personal brand and giving off the right attitude both contribute to this, but there are a few other important things you need to consider if you want to appear credible and trustworthy, including having a unique domain name for your portfolio site, providing a high quality of service and providing testimonials of your services on your site. Several more ideas are provided in the book.

9. Not maintaining whatever self promotion steps we have already taken.

You might know about and put into action all kinds of successful promotional methods that get your work noticed and contribute to a strong brand. However, without proper maintenance, these efforts will be short lived and you are likely to see success in patches, as opposed to work coming in consistently.

Keeping things automated through delegating tasks is one way of keeping the momentum going and so is keeping a schedule together for posting blog updates, keeping your portfolio fresh and engaging on social networking sites.

Maintenance also includes tweaking, tracking and tuning the various activities you are involved with as part of your promotional strategy. It’s key to get regular feedback from what you are doing so that you know what to work on and improve and so that you know you are on the right track with what you are doing. Google Analytics is an excellent free service for tracking website stats that you can incorporate into your various sites and blogs.

10. Ignoring the importance of appropriate web etiquette on the sites we visit.

Internet etiquette, or ‘netiquette’ in general, is something everyone should be aware of before setting out on a journey of effective self promotion. These are practices used to make the internet experience a pleasant one for everyone you deal with. Often people try to market what they have, and annoy others in the process by being too aggressive and persistent without focusing on developing relationships.

Particularly when you are engaging with social media, where you want to build relationships, you need to communicate with people in a way that is respectful, professional and responsible and appropriate to the site in question.

When promoting a product or service, the old method of directly advertising what you have, has now gone out the window with Web 2.0 (the new phase of collaborative information sharing the internet is now going through). If you forget all else in marketing yourself online, remember this:

Relationship building and rapport come first, promotion comes second.

What does everyone think?

All these issues are addressed in my new book, ’10 Steps to Powerful Online Self Promotion for Creatives’, launching Wednesday March 10th at a reduced price for three days only.

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Sign up to the weekly tip mailing list to be alerted of the when the book becomes available.

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Get fixed up here:

*Your information will never be shared or sold

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When thinking about branding, a lot of people picture the brands of large companies or mainstream products. Branding doesn’t only apply at a corporate level, and has huge relevance at the level of the individual creative freelancer.

The internet and social media has meant that face to face interaction between worker and client is becoming increasingly scarce. Because of this, the need to project a consistent virtual persona in the form of a brand across all areas of your online presence has taken on a much greater significance.

Here are twelve ways to establish an online brand:

Determine your brand

Know yourself and what you want in life in general. An understanding of who you are in the sense of knowing where you are going will determine the characteristics of the brand you transmit online.

Name

Either use your own name, or a pseudonym, but stick to one of them all over the web that you can use so that your audience knows who you are and can identify you across multiple online venues (Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, and so on).

Make sure you secure a domain name that includes this name that you associate with your online brand as soon as you can.

Logo

You might choose to use a logo to mark your brand, that will become recognizable as you go about doing business with clients and promoting yourself online. A logo will add a sense of professionalism to your work, which should be used when you have the chance, to garner exposure for your brand.

You needn’t use a logo in its traditional sense. A consistent style and colour of the font you choose to have your own name in is often enough.

Blog/website

Have a ‘yourbrandname.com’ site, which encapsulates your brand in the content you add to it. A blog is especially effective at strengthening your online brand, be acting as a platform through which you can express yourself and share your expertise with others.

Online portfolio

A portfolio that displays your best work is one of the key parts of the online branding toolkit of any creative worker. However, these can sometimes work against the favour of the image of your brand if the work you present does not stay true to a distinct style or if the work is confused, difficult to view and/or inconsistent.

Present a clear portfolio that exemplifies a style or a presentational style that is in-keeping with the brand image you are trying to create.

Social networking profiles

Take advantage of the networking capabilities of sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to create exposure for your consistent brand. Be sure to really make the most of each of the profiles available to you on these sites, as they provide further opportunity to build and expand your brand. This includes using a consistent message, logo and/or picture.

Avatar

Even though the avatar is often a tiny image icon, most people identify contacts at a glance because of it. Keep either a photo of you or a logo consistent throughout the web on sites that use avatars. This also applies to any profile photos of you on social media sites and/or your personal sites.

Go to gravatar.com to upload an image that will appear anytime you post a blog comment and keep it consistent to your other avatars.

Colors and fonts

Just like any company, it doesn’t hurt to be consistent in terms of the colours and fonts you use wherever you have a presence online that allows them to be altered, especially your personal portfolio site.

A consistent message

Whenever you have the opportunity to reveal your work to the web, include a message that is consistent with all the other messages you include online. This includes the way you describe your achievements, your mission and yourself.

You’ll probably have a longer, more complete description of yourself on your website than on your Twitter description, but these still need to follow one unified communication strategy.

Voice

Your voice is the manner and tone with which you communicate with others through online media channels such as email and Twitter. Again, consistency as opposed to style, is more important here. Be aware that a strong brand will transmit a similar voice in all that it does. This could be a jolly tone or a corporate voice, but make sure your voice remains consistent and positive.

Video introduction and profile

Consider putting together a short video introducing yourself and your work to upload to your own YouTube, Vimeo or other video site profile (or any other online presence) so that you can vividly communicate your brand. You can also use a video presentation to describe reasons behind an application for a specific job role that you can show potential employers.

Email

You shouldn’t ignore the relevance of your email account in adding to your online brand. Include details of your site and other areas of your internet presence in your email’s signature, perhaps also a slogan or tagline that reflects your brand. Especially with Google’s Gmail account, which enables chat, you can strengthen the relationships you have with your contacts and express your brand even further.

All of this will add to your brand being firmly incorporated into the online world, so that your work becomes associated with professionalism, character and value.

What does everyone else think and do some of you have other ideas?

Scott, who has been focused on working to understand how creatives can best organize themselves and their projects since the start of Behance, provides some fascinating insight into the origins of Behance and shares with us some useful knowledge on self-promotion, organization and relationship-building. He also reveals what he’s currently working on and what’s due to be released through Behance.

What made you decide to get involved in the creative industry?

There are two things that really inspired me:

1. The stuff that makes our lives interesting – the art, the design, and all of the original content – is all created by the creative professional community. But, unfortunately, creatives in particular face unique obstacles when it comes to actually making their ideas happen.

2. There is so much discussion in the creative world about inspiration and creativity, but very little discussion about organization and execution. I found this very frustrating. It seemed that creative professionals would become more effective – and thus benefit society even more – with assistance on execution, efficient self-promotion, and organization.

We created Behance with a very specific mission: To organize the creative world. We are not trying to increase creativity. On the contrary, we are trying to help creative leaders harness their own creativity and actually make ideas happen.

How did you think Behance would benefit creatives on first starting the site?

Our goal with the Behance Network was to maximize exposure and help organize the creative world’s work. When we interview some of the world’s leading recruiters and agencies, they complain about typical “portfolio sites” and how difficult it is to organize and navigate creative talent.

We developed Behance.net to be a neutral, powerful platform that organizes creative work based on location, field, and – to some degree – quality.

Behance.net is not designed to be a “social network”. We don’t use the word “friends” in Behance. Instead, the platform is designed to push careers forward. When you add a new project to your portfolio, it is automatically displayed in any other network you are a part of (such as AIGA or MTV) as well as other galleries, circles, and collections across the web.

You maintain complete control and ownership of your work, you select privacy and copyright settings, and you are always associated with your content.

We have already received incredible success stories from members who report “career-changing opportunities” that resulted from the Behance.net platform. And, we have some incredible new features and partnerships in the pipeline that will bring Behance.net to a new level.

How do sites like Behance allow creatives to promote themselves?

We believe that promotion should be an organic process. It’s not about sending unsolicited emails or self-promoting yourself on twitter. Instead, promotion should be about building respect.

As you build your “inner circle” in Behance.net – and more people and recruiters begin to follow your work – you will start to receive exposure and opportunities every time you publish a new project.

In Behance.net, you are represented by the quality of your work – not your connections or affiliations. We believe that this is a powerful mechanism that I have come to call “creative meritocracy.” You’ll see more on this in the future.

What, in your opinion, do creatives need to prioritze the most when it comes to getting their work seen?

Since I believe that the greatest marketing strategy in the creative world is building respect for your work, I think that all creatives should prioritize building relationships with their peers and potential clients.

This means exchanging feedback with others, taking part in industry conversations, and soliciting advice from others. These are all steps toward building relationships that could result in mutual respect.

What are your current projects?

My latest project – which took years – is my upcoming book Making Ideas Happen. After interviewing hundreds of creative leaders and teams that are especially good at making ideas happen, I have collected a series of insights that are critical.

They relate to organization, execution, marketing, and leadership capability.

I have also been very focused on the next generation of Behance’s products, including the Behance Network and Action Method, our online and offline productivity tools for creative professionals.

Thank you Scott!

I personally think Scott’s focus on harnessing ideas we already have, instead of always searching for new ways of increasing creativity is a very good one. This is one of the main things that make the difference between success and procrastination.

What does everyone think?