When I thought about it, I knew the reason why I wasn’t getting any commissions. Being away for a while meant I was not in any potential prospect’s field of vision (on their minds). Because I had not been talking with prospects or people in the industry for a while, and wasn’t updating my work and generally networking; online and offline. I was out of sync with my industry.

And this is more than likely the reason behind your ‘work slump’, or your ‘not getting any commissions’ phase. People just aren’t thinking of you. Horrible, isn’t it? If people aren’t thinking of you or talking about you, you are less likely to get commissioned, especially by previous clients. Simple as that.

Some of you guys might be guilty of spending too much time working creatively and wondering why you aren’t getting commissioned when you haven’t been out and about talking about your work.

Well, I’ve scraped together a few of the key methods you can use to get back in the minds of those that can hire you quickly, so that you can get back to working again!

- Begin pinging people. By this I mean reaching out to people to get back in their ‘headspace’, via phone or email or social media. This can just be a hello, without any mention of work. It can work wonders just to re-establish contact with someone, even if they’re not directly a potential client.
Continue the dialogue if the first ‘ping’ leads anywhere.

Ongoing dialogue with someone is a good thing when it comes to promoting yourself, especially when it gives you a chance to mention what you are working on and your availability.

- Start some online conversations. This could be through a social media status update that gets people engaged with you, which could lead to discussing your work and so on. Going to an online forum likely to attract prospects is another good place to start contributing.

Online conversation is good, because it allows you to expend your digital self on the world without exerting too much energy. In a world where physical energy is scarce, this is a good thing. Obviously real-life interaction takes precedence.

- Go to one or two events this week that centre around your industry/field. It doesn’t need to be a ‘networking’ event, just something that draws in people that share an interest that relates to the work you do. Get talking. Just take it step by step.

- Talk and share a little more about your work than usual with people. That’s right, you need to spend the next week sharing and talking about your stuff as much as you can without annoying others. We’re talking about getting back on track in terms of getting commissions as quick as possible, so this will help.

This also includes adding work updates to a set of creative sites for example, making a point of handing out your business card when you otherwise wouldn’t, and contacting new potential prospects and people indirectly linked to your industry like bloggers.

- Share your knowledge. Write a good blog post about something you know about and promote the heck out of it or write an article or two for some other sites, especially those that are well-visited.

It would be a good idea to start a bit of a dialogue with the owner of a better-known blog before you start offering your writing services. This will build your credibility as a creative pro and get your name and thus work out there.

Your comments and further ideas are encouraged!

A big and growing trend has emerged for creatives to expand their reach (and income) through product-creation in the form of placing designs on t-shirts, selling prints, making knitted products, posters, toys and other merchandise.

Sites like Etsy, Threadless and CafePress are making this a viable and easy option for more and more creatives, whether this be in providing the means to sell products or actually help create them.

This provides for great extra income potential, as well as a chance to further market your own brand and work.

Steve Harrington’s collaboration with InCase.

This is all good stuff. However, there can be a noticeable difference in terms of earnings and self promotional power through actually collaborating with a brand (established or otherwise) to produce your own line of products or have your design as part of a series.

You could work with companies such as a clothing line, toy manufacturers, iphone skin-makers, gift brands, stationers and others.

So, to take uploading your work to websites a step further, make the move to contacting a brand, creative group or company you like and get a conversation going on potential collaborations you could contribute to. Get on the phone and arrange a meeting with them if you can.

Even if a collaboration doesn’t go ahead initially, taking action in this way will have a positive impact on your self promotion efforts and image.

You will be regarded as enthusiastic, action-prone, innovative and confident in your own work by those you contact and may be called upon in the future.

Above: Droplets from Jam Factory, and Tokyo Plastic’s collaboration with Terratag.

As Tahir says, this is hugely beneficial from a business side too, because it will get you thinking about how it all works within all the different industries and products you work with.

Here are some ideas on collaborating with companies that could get your work really noticed and boost your income:

1. Making toys with a designer toy company. For example, the ‘Droplets‘ toys through Jam Factory and Crazy Label.

2. Work with a T-shirt brand who you think could work with your style. Tokyo Plastic and Terratag are a good example of a collaboration as their styles appeal to a similar market.

3. Accessories for various gadgets like the iPad are a big industry at the moment. InCase’s collaborations with artists like Steve Harrington is a good example of a successful convergence of company and talent.

So have a brainstorm on what types of products or collaborations with other companies you could come up with and give appropriate companies a call.

Thanks Tahir for your ideas and work on this.

Your thoughts are welcome in the comments section below this post!

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!

It can be a wise way to expand your network, pool resources and save time and work.

The Internet has opened up a range of exciting possibilities for engaging others in promoting your work effectively.

Here are 5 ways you can do this:

1. Joint Blogs/Sites. Getting a blog or simple website out there that you can use to showcase your work, build credibility in your field, promote yourself, and simply express your interests, is an important element in one’s online self-promotional strategy.

A successful blog requires regular and outstanding content to be in for a chance of attracting many visitors. Particularly for those lacking in time, it is worth considering setting up a site with one or more suitable other people. With others working on the same platform, it is now possible to build up posts quicker, combine skills and resources, and promote everyone’s work through a single site.

Some freelancers might even want to consider using a joint site as a platform to promote the combined skills of several people as a business, as opposed to promoting individual freelancers.

2. Friends on Social Sites. Social media allows people to build up substantial networks of people who we’d want to know about our work. With sites like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, it has become possible to link up with potential clients, fans, as well as key influencers and even celebrities in your industry. It’s best to add new people to these networks with appropriate personal messages.

What is extremely powerful with being connected to people who are well connected themselves, is that you are effectively ‘piggybacking‘ on their networks whenever they are linked to something of yours. For example, on Facebook, if someone with connections joins your page, all their contacts will be aware of this in their newsfeeds.

Linked up with key people, you can keep them in the loop with whatever you are working on, adding to your Radical Strategic Visibility.

3. Content Swapping. Getting material on someone else’s website, can be a great way of having fresh new people seeing your name on the Internet. You can agree to put an article or a guest post on another site in return for content for your own, or even agree to swap decent comments with someone else with a site or blog relating to yours.

One underused method of enhancing your validity online as a freelancer is to request a review/testimonial swap with someone. These can be placed visibly on your site, is mutually beneficial, and adds real value to the services etc you offer.

4. List Promotion. If you send out a newsletter to a mailing list that you’ve built up, you can use this to promote other people and get your name on other lists. Having a feature, link, article about you on someone else’s newsletter is possible through polite asking. However, it’s even more possible through agreeing with relevant people who have mailing lists to swap content like articles or even simply a link in a newsletter so that you and your work get seen by a new and targeted audience.

5. Exchanging Links. A straightforward but useful promotional tactic is in agreeing to place a link on your site to someone’s work who has done the same for you on their site. People do click on links featured on or recommended by sites and by having many of your web links on key sites around the web, this will benefit your exposure.

If you have any thoughts or more suggestions, please comment!

Thanks