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.

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!

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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!

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?

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I’m a big advocate of Twitter, for keeping your sanity if you have an isolated work place, for getting feedback and inspiration from your peers, and for publicizing your work and goings on.

Twitter is a pretty minimal experience, which I love. It’s as far from Facebook in terms of complication and usability as you can get. There’s something innately more interesting about someone who’s made some effort with their avatar and Twitter page, and will often lead me to believe they’d be good to follow.

Your Twitter page is a great blank canvas to represent you! Take advantage of this and use it to display a business card style list of links, along with your eye-catching and stylish imagery.

I will show you how!

Step 1: Prepare the canvas.

The size is important because of how people view your page; it’s the trickiest bit. Different monitor sizes, be it a 15inch laptop, a 24inch monitor or bigger, mean the placement of your background image behind the central Twitter panel will vary. You can’t cater to everyone, unless you are creating a simple repeating pattern with no business card.

I decided to go for 1600 x 1200px, it means that most displays will fit, with some smaller ones slightly, but not completely obscuring our info.

Click images to enlarge.

TIP: It might be tempting to put something snazzy on the right hand side, such as your logo, but as the center panel is not stationary and expands from left to right, anything in that area is more likely to be obscured.

Step 2: Setup the work area.

Make sure your rulers are in view (cmd + R) and setup to measure in pixels (crtl + right click + select ‘pixels from the drop-down). Now drag out a vertical guide from the left rule, and place it 245px from the canvas edge (to add a precise measurement type the amount into the ‘X’ field at the top).

The area we’ve marked out between the canvas edge and our guide is our safe zone – we need to keep our business card info inside this area.

TIP: Make sure you lock your guides so you don’t accidentally move them, got to: ‘View’ > Guides > Lock Guides.

Step 3: Bring in your design elements.

I re-used elements from other work to keep it consistent with my brand and in keeping with my own website. Not essential, but I think it’s a good idea to fade your backdrop out from left to right, it adds to the idea of having a sidebar, without having a harsh edge to it.

Step 4: Add your business card style details.

I suggest bringing in a logo and making sure you keep whatever info you have, web address, social networking links etc, inline with it. With ‘Snapping’ turned on your ‘safe area’ guide will come in useful for this.

Step 5: Save.

Go to: File > Save for Web, and save it as a jpg at ‘High’ quality. All that’s left to do is upload it to Twitter, pick a complementary colour pallet for your center panel, and you’re done.

TIP: Twitter limits the file size of backgrounds to 800kb, for loading reasons you’ll want to keep it under this anyway, you shouldn’t have trouble achieving this -any problems, have a play with the ‘Save For Web’ quality settings.

Whenever someone hears about you and the work you do, whether that be through a referral from someone else or seeing a mention of you on a website, there is a chance that they will want to find out more about you or want to contact you by Googling your name. It is a huge benefit to you if sites containing your name appear high up in the search results page, so that these people can find you, learn more about you and ultimately hire you.

One of the most important elements of self-promotion that I talk a lot about is your credibility. This means that people associate you, your name and your brand with professionalism, likability, trustworthiness and being knowledgeable on your niche. As such, having your name appear prominently and in multiple places in search engine results (for the right reasons!) will have a positive effect on your credibility as a freelancer.

Whenever your name appears on something like Google search results, you will want that link, when clicked, to lead to pages that put you in a positive light, and, wherever possible, showcase the work that you do. This list will address this too.

Here are some ways you can increase the visibility of your name on search engine results pages for self-promotional goodness!

1. Add your name to your site’s meta tags. Meta tags are the information inserted into the ‘head’ area of your web pages (it helps if you know HTML) to help get categorized and indexed on the web. If you use wordpress, you’ll find this in the header.php file in the ‘appearance’ section. Adding your name within the code here, will hopefully get picked up by web spiders and help get your site ranked highly when your name is run through a search engine.

2. Work your name as a keyword into your site and blog. Google and others will pick up these keywords as it indexes your site, but don’t over do it, as it will affect the quality of your writing.

3. Where possible, include your name in your site’s hyperlinks. This is the link text, not necessarily the link url itself. So, for example, instead of writing ‘contact me’ on your personal site, you can say ‘contact *your name*’. Again, this will get picked up by the search engines.

4. Add your name to the image alt tags you put on your site or blog. Whenever you place images on your site, there will be an option to incorporate ‘alt tags‘ into the image code. Keywords placed here should benefit your sites getting listed in results that match your name as a search term.

5. Contribute any new updates you might have to news portal sites that are suited to your industry (such as the Little Chimp Society), as well as on the growing number of sites that serve to promote the work of creatives, like Society6 for art or Last.fm for music. Make sure you incorporate your name into the posts or updates you provide, and use your name as your username if you are required to register to any site.

6. Sign up to social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter. By simply setting up an account with these sites, your profile and name will get indexed well in search engines. The next step would be in uploading work to the social media platform, such as illustrations through Facebook photo albums, or providing a link to your portfolio through the site.

7. Send out a press release on something fairly major you have worked on or updated, such as a site re-design, and put your name in as a keyword (for example in the subject, main body and link at the end). You can submit your press release to multiple sites, which you can speed up through press release submission sites. When people click the link in the search results, having seen your name, they will be taken to the press release, which demonstrates your writing skills, adds credibility to you and provides solid information. This is also a very good way of driving traffic to your sites.

8. Use your name when you comment on blogs. As well as incorporating it into the comment text, you can use your name for the link that you provide to your site.

9. Write and submit an article and drop your name in. Submit an article that relates to your work for example and link it back to your site. Incorporate your name in the copy and make sure you submit to several of the popular article submission sites.

10. Incorporate your name into the text on forum message boards and discussions. Again, you can use your name as your user name, and it will tend to be indexed well in the search engines. Someone clicking on the link with your name highlighted in the search results will be taken to your discussions on these forums and hopefully see how and what you write (and hopefully it’s half good!).

11. Use your name as the author on blog posts. When writing blog posts, make sure that the author tag (usually under the post title) is active, and that your name is listed as the author. This will get picked up by search engines and take people straight to the blog post.

What are some other ways to get your name on the first page of Google people have come across?

Alex

With the web’s ability to link together people who can interact (key word here) in constantly growing online networks, the knowledge, expertise and support of people, along with their pre-established networks has never been more accessible.

Particularly through social media platforms like Facebook or Tagged, it has become possible to get through to ‘key influencers’ that may have been previously inaccessible, especially for creatives in the early stages of their careers.

Key Influencer: This is someone in your industry that has power; Power to lead, have influence, make change, inspire and support other people. This is through value created over the span of their own careers and through the value created by the number and quality of people in their own networks. They don’t have to be people you see on the TV everyday or who you read about in magazines, although these are ideal. These are also people who are active in their niches, industries and networks, are well connected and well respected.

Engagement with these key people and having access to their online networks holds the key to a substantial part of your self-promotional strategy. Any recommendation of you by such a person is very valuable, as is access to their networks, referrals, expertise and support.

Social media, for example, has allowed this engagement through the ability to ‘friend’ others, build relationships and become visible to these people, and subsequently their networks too. For example, the friends of people you ‘friend’ on Facebook will be aware of you on their newsfeeds whenever your primary contact interacts with you, joins your group, page, comments on a link, and so on.

Key influencers can be found using search engines, printed magazines, social media sites, popular YouTube videos, writers of popular blogs and online magazines etc.

Find people in your field who are key influencers, link up with them with an appropriate personal message on social media sites or an email that isn’t directly advertising anything and get them into your network.

Some Resources:

Popular People on Twitter

Tweepz / TweepSearch /  Twellow / We Follow / Twubble

Popular Blog Searching

Technorati /  Blogged /  MyBlogLog / BlogCatalog

Popular sites search:

Delicious /  Stumble / Digg /  Reddit /  Furl /  Squidoo

Social Media

Twitter People Search /  Facebook Advanced Search

Searching through groups and fan pages on Facebook using the standard search tool can yield results on active and popular members.

Comments and further suggestions are very welcome!

One of the best ways to do this is to have people in your network, including fans, friends, previous clients and potential clients, sign up to your email mailing list.

Although it doesn’t have to be termed as such, a newsletter is the best way to attract people onto your mailing list in a mutually beneficial way.

Here are some great benefits for creative people of sending out a newsletter to your list to drive your promotional activities:

1. Building Validity. Getting a newsletter out to members of your mailing list will strengthen the way people view you as an expert/specialist/devotee to your area of interest. This will build trust in those following you in this way. This is why it is important for your newsletter content to regularly focus on your speciality or area, or at least be consistent in what you write about.

2. Receiving feedback and gathering testimonials. Keeping people updated on what you are doing will allow you to see what people think of your work if you request feedback from them. This feedback can be posted as testimonials (once permission is asked) on your site, to add value to your products and services.

3. Building loyalty. Keeping people updated through a newsletter, reminding them of you and providing them with good content, will have the benefit of increasing their loyalty to you.

4. Ability to introduce new products/services. Newsletters are a very practical means of keeping people updated with new projects you might be working on, products you’re marketing, exhibitions you’re in, as well as any changes you make to your set up as a freelancer.

5. Maintaining traffic. Newsletters can regularly boost traffic coming to your site through a link you place on the newsletter. Those coming to your site will then have a chance to potentially browse through whatever else you have to show/offer on your site.

6. Strengthens your own brand. If your newsletter content stays consistent, your personal brand as a creative can be strengthened over time. This is not only reflected in the information and expertise you provide, but in the way you transfer your personality, attitude, passion and everything else associated with ‘brand you‘ across to your readers. All these elements are important in creating a brand of yourself that people will remember you (and come back to you) for.

7. Improve your skills. Regularly writing for a newsletter, although this doesn’t have to be more than once a month, will improve your writing skills over time, but also add to your creativity, as you think of and apply new things to keep your readers interested.

8. Keeps you focused. Newsletters will improve your focus as a creative in aiming to succeed, producing and showcasing high quality work etc. Ideally you’ll want to be updating your readers with positive things that are going on in your freelance world, so newsletters help you set goals and hopefully get things done!

9. Re-establishing connections. Contact with a proportion of your business network in this way will help fire up relationships with clients or fans that were perhaps previously lost.

10. Expands your network further. Newsletters are a useful platform on which to hint to readers the other ways they can keep in contact with you. This can enable your network to strengthen and build further. For example, if you let readers know of your LinkedIn profile, and they connect with you through this, you receive the benefits of having a new LinkedIn member, which includes their access to your profile and more regular updates, their LinkedIn contacts being aware of you, receiving recommendations and so on.

If you have any suggestions or comments, don’t hesitate to contribute using the comment form below!

Thank you.

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!