But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and ruin a smooth, positive and ultimately fruitful experience on social networks for yourself, as well as others through engaging in a heavy-handed way. From personal experience and having had a look around to see where people tend to be going wrong, I’ve compiled a little list of the big ones.

1. Being impersonal

I mean this in two ways. Firstly, incorporate some personality into your posts and your engagement. This doesn’t mean being bouncy and bubbly all the time, unless you want to and if that suits you, fine. It’s more about being human, and not appearing to be an automated robot churning out posts.

Secondly, I’m talking about when people substitute making a connection with a person for being more efficient. An example of this would be in copy and pasting the same message sent out to several people, or tagging many people in one message meant for all of them. This doesn’t show much care for an individual, and will most likely not mean much to them. So when you reach out to people, show them that the interaction is directed to them.

2. Always writing for yourself, not your audience

It’s ok to share things that interest you, but bear in mind, that, especially as you want to attract the attention of prospects and others, you want to be prioritising the sharing of information and updates that you know will be of interest to them. This is one of the major misunderstandings of social media. It doesn’t need to be about you all the time!

This is why circles on Google+ is so useful, because it allows you to share specific content to specific people.

3. Not interacting enough

Obviously if you have a large network with tonnes of people messaging you, responding to everything can be tricky. However, it’s important you maintain a good level of engagement with your connections, as well as responding to what people are saying, asking, commenting on, etc. Be the person who comments the most within your own discussion threads.

Showing that you care will demonstrate to others that you take your connections seriously and strengthen your network as a result.

4. Treating it as a space for advertising

You will vapourise your network by constantly promoting your services and products on G+.

Remember that it is a platform for building, expanding and maintaining relationships, so directly selling to people will distance yourself from them. Keep any ‘selling’ to about 10% and the rest to 90%.

5. Not listening

Social media is not a one-way system, so be aware of what people in your network, as well as those who could potentially be in your network are saying, what their needs are, what their feedback is, and what they are saying about you. I’m sure you’ve heard how listening is vital to any relationship!

6. Being brash, and marginalising people

Steer clear of sharing stuff that could be disagreeable, controversial or even offensive to people. You might feel passionate about something that stands you firmly in one group as opposed to another, such as a political camp, but be aware that you could be losing fans and followers this way, so better just stay away from anything that could be considered a ‘touchy‘ subject.

Further comments will win kudos and compliments from me!

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!

1. Make Good Offers and Promises

Don’t sit back an wait for work to come to you. Make offers to help your clients improve their business. If you think you can improve their branding…say so. Make and keep promises that are valuable to your clients. Promise delivery dates and milestones.

2. Over Deliver

Over-deliver….always. Delight your client with something extra they are not expecting!

If you produce videos, provide a DVD of outtakes from the production. Over-delivering will immediately differentiate you from 99% of your competition and will drive WOM (word of mouth) through the roof.

3. State Your Conditions of Satisfaction

Before beginning work, state your conditions of satisfaction (COS) verbally and in writing. What do you agree to deliver? When? When do you expect to be paid? What must happen for both parties to declare they are satisfied?

4. Confirm Satisfaction

Immediately after delivering your work, confirm that the client is satisfied. Now is the time to ask for referrals. If they are not satisfied, why not? Review the conditions of satisfaction with them. Who deviated? You or the client?

5. Invoice on a Timely Basis

Immediately after confirming satisfaction, send your invoice. The transaction and feeling of satisfaction is fresh and rooted in the client’s mind. This will contribute to you getting paid faster.

6. Get Paid

If you diligently adhere to the first five commandments, getting paid on a timely basis is usually a no brainer.

However, if you do not receive payment within your specified payment terms, be proactive about collecting your money. Don’t let your psychology take over. “It’s unprofessional to request payment”. “The client might think I am desperate for money.” Hogwash. Its your money!

Be firm and prompt about collecting your money.

7. Create a Strong Support Network

Being a creative entrepreneur can be lonely. To be successful you need a group of peers who share the same ambition for success. Cultivate these people. Meet with them on a regular basis. Share best business practices. Don’t whine. Motivate each other.

8. Create a Strong Contractor Network

If you are doing good work, making good offers, and keeping your promises, you will encounter a joyous problem…you have more work than you can handle. What to do? Find high-caliber contractors that can help. Its not easy. Most people do not share your ambition or commitment to quality.

Be constantly searching for those people you can trust to increase your capacity to do more.

9. Evolve to Fixed Price Engagements

Billing by the hour is a nice safe place to start. However, to fully leverage your talents, you must evolve to offering fixed price engagements to your clients.

Become an expert at defining the COS and estimating the time involved. Then be bold. Offer a fixed price fee. Clients will love you. They don’t like the uncertainty of open-ended, hourly projects.

10. Niche Thyself

Become an expert in a few industries (ex. healthcare, manufacturing). Build your identity in that community.

Domain experts command a higher price for their services. Why? They remove risk for the client. If you know my business, you will be more productive and your offers will be more aligned with my concerns.

This was a guest post from Scott Miller.

Scott Miller is a serial entrepreneur, having started service and software companies.  Scott is presently founder and CEO of the Bee, an online invoicing and bookkeeping tool for creatives and other small service businesses.  Scott writes about best practices for service businesses at Get the Bee.

Finding contacts on the Internet is a good way of building a network, and having a large and relevant online network is very useful. Taking this a step further and actually meeting some of these people is really valuable because it will cement relationships and trust with others even further.

Particularly for independent professionals like many of you, meeting new people and expanding your physical social network can be hard to do if you don’t know where to look.  Here are ten ways of finding, connecting with and arranging a meet up with people who can take your career to higher levels:

1. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of the major online networking tools for industry professionals, and used correctly, it can work in a very helpful way for you.  LinkedIn allows you to maintain a very decent level of privacy and emphasises the value of connecting with working professionals.

Using the site’s search tools can bring up a whole host of people to add to your network, who can turn out to be future clients, friends and colleagues. The messaging function on LinkedIn will enable you to talk to and build rapport with people that you could eventually meet further down the line. LinkedIn features job search options, tells you how many shared connections you have with people in different organizations and does all this while maintaining a very professional style.

2. MeetUp

MeetUp.com is a great online tool for any kind of social event planning, be it a business network or a friendly game of local tennis.  The site allows you to search by type of event and location.  A quick search tonight allowed me to find a plethora of activities from a “Free Networking Breakfast” in Chicago to a “Learning digital photography” social in London.

Pretty much anything you could be interested in, most anywhere in the world; you will find a group or event that fits the bill for you.

3. Facebook

Facebook is a great social tool, but many of us are only using it to keep in touch with our friends and not taking advantage of its many networking tools.  The Facebook search function is actually far more capable than you may realize, allowing you to search events and groups (the best networking tools on the site) by keywords.

Say, for example, you are a WordPress genius and you want to find online groups or physical events where you can meet other, likeminded WordPress-ites, a group search for “WordPress” leads you to a 4,000-strong group that discusses new plug-ins and themes while also promoting their services to other members.

A WordPress event search, on the other hand, helps me discover that there is a “Create a Free WordPress Site for Your Business” in Minneapolis, MN, that is totally free.  Perhaps offering a free course is the best way for you to promote your business and get new customers.

4. Trade Shows

Trade shows are happening all the time and they are a great opportunity for not only meeting people, but also for developing new ideas and finding new tools that will help you improve your business.  A trade show is your open invitation to introduce yourself to people who may well be in need of your services.

However, remember that trade show exhibitors are mainly looking to sell their services at trade shows, not to buy yours, so make sure you don’t take up too much of their valuable time: Simply walk up, introduce yourself, hand over a business card, explain your services and be on your way.

5. Twitter

Twitter is another brilliant networking tool if you are aware of the best methods to make full use of it, which is explained closely in my book on online self-promotion.  While you can set everything to post on your Twitter account automatically, I find that it’s the personal attention to Twitter that will see your Follower count skyrocket.  Find people with similar interests to you and start following them – they will often follow you back – and then start sharing news about your various activities with them and share useful links.

Then, here’s the most important part of Twitter, take advantage of the re-tweet options and create lists that include all your favorite friends or most relevant business connections – lists help you reach out to large groups without going public.

6. Stock Sites

For creative professionals especially, stock sites like iStockPhoto.com contain a wealth of creatives like photographers, illustrators and web designers that you could network with through the site’s message capability and forums. If you are a contributor, say of vector illustrations, you can find many other people who you share a commonality with. I know iStockphoto.com organise regular get-togethers for it’s photographer and artist contributors.

7. Gallery Openings, Launches and Exhibitions

A Google search will reveal plenty of gallery openings, exhibitions and other social events attended by creatives.  There are sites that exist like Artslant.com which provide information on various events like gallery openings that you could pencil into your diary and go to.

Facebook provides a particularly good source of exhibitions that are happening all over the world, and these can be searched for within the site. Exhibitions which showcase similar work to your own could attract the kinds of people you’ll want to meet, so go along with a friend, a business card or two and start up conversations with people.

8. Company Social Events

As an independent contractor or freelancer, you will not necessarily be invited to any of your own company socials, but if you can, try and get on a social level with the companies for whom you freelance, if they are local.

Do this by developing a strong relationship with them so they almost think of you as an associate.  You will also find good networking opportunities at company events of your friends and family, so if they’re looking for someone to accompany them to their social events, consider this a good opportunity.

9. Online Forums

Find a discussion board or forum online, such as DesignersTalk.com, and begin to engage in some of the discussions going on and make friends through there. You can nurture relationships here over time with other regular users of the forum and eventually arrange a meetup or social gathering. You can also use a forum to ask about events happening near you that others in your industry visit.

10. Business Networking Groups

A quick internet search will reveal plenty of networking groups in your area. Some will be industry- specific, like the many real estate networking events, while others will be more general. The great thing about networking events is that you know everyone is there for the same reason, so there’s no way you can be a nuisance, but you might find that there are too many freelancers like you and not enough clients to go around.

I know there are plenty of other resources that bring people together, so share those with us in the comments!

This might be all good and well, but if you have any interest in staying afloat in the industry over a substantial period of time, it is essential to understand a system that allows for winning new projects and selling products regularly over the long term.

Marketing expert Michael Port introduced to me the concept of the ‘sales cycle’, which takes the essential elements of self promotion, and places them within a system that you can use to set out a strategy of effective long term self promotion.

A sales cycle simply highlights the key stages that need to be incorporated into your campaign of promoting yourself and your work in order to secure bookings with new as well as previous and ongoing clients.

The crucial elements of a successful promotion strategy for not only service professionals but all businesses and corporations are:

Getting your product or service noticed.

Attracting potential customers or clients.

Becoming credible.

Building trust.

Developing a strong relationship with those contacts.

Bringing clients to take action in using your services.

I have used the concepts introduced by Michael Port and formulated a straight forward sales cycle that brings in all these important elements to allow you to attract great clients and regular work (as well as sales if you have a product).

The ten steps described in my new ebook address and put into action all of the stages of the cycle I will describe below.

These stages are what a client moves through when deciding whether to use your services or buy one of your products. A potential client or buyer can drop in and out of this cycle, and they don’t necessarily have to start from the beginning in order to hire you.

Addressing all the stages in your campaign is important in ensuring a steady stream of work and sales if you sell products.

You’ll need to keep this cycle in mind as you go about promoting yourself if you want to see optimum results in attracting new work from clients or in selling to customers.

The stages are as follows:

Stage 1. Get Seen

Perform tasks that will get your name in front of your target market.

This covers any activity that introduces new people to your work, or reminds people of it.

By itself, activity addressing this stage will potentially bring new fans, clients, advice givers, collaborators, buyers and more, to you and your work.

This can include social networking, bringing people to your website, setting up referrals, writing articles, sending out mail promos, leaving blog comments, guest blogging and so on.

Of course, there may be instances where others will do the work for you, such as featuring your work on their blog having seen your work, or someone sharing a link to your site on Twitter, for example.

It is possible for you to get work with clients or sell products through this stage alone. This is also possible at instances anywhere into the cycle. However, stopping at this stage in the cycle, will make it harder for you to secure long term work and/or sales at a consistent rate.

Stage 2. Link Up

Secure contacts that you can build a relationship with.

This is where you establish a secure link with a targeted contact that will enable you to communicate with them over time and build a relationship with them.

A secure link can be in the form of attracting a Twitter follower, adding a Facebook friend or fan, and ultimately and ideally, adding targeted people to your mailing list.

There are no risks for your contacts here. People are not expected to hand over their hard earned cash at this point.

Before securing a link with the right people, it helps to demonstrate a positive reputation, credibility and value as a creative worker. This includes things like being the author of a useful and original blog, having an accomplished portfolio of work, showing client testimonials and adding good, readable content through Twitter and Facebook.

These are the things that will provide an incentive for people to secure such a link with you.

Stage 3. Keep in touch

Work on developing a trusting relationship with your contacts.

This is the stage that cultivates trust, rapport and a long-term relationship between you and your target contacts that you have already created a secure link to.

This involves tasks that maintain visibility in front of contacts at the very least, but also tasks that build trust and familiarity, and allow positive interaction with your key contacts.

Such tasks include sending blog post updates to members of your Facebook fan page, ‘tweeting’ through Twitter, interacting with people on social media sites, sending out status updates on Facebook and broadcasting a newsletter containing tips and new updates to members of your mailing list.

Stage 4. Strike a Deal

Create an offering that will lead to work.

The next step is to move your potential clients or buyers into the next stage of the cycle, which is in hiring your services or buying from you. Although creating an offering in this way is an element of selling products, it is also an important step to take in selling your services.

For most creatives, an offering in this way would simply involve reminding your contacts that you are available for work, and that any referrals that can be sent your way would be appreciated. ‘Calls to action’ in the form of a link on your site that suggests prospects ask for a quote is another example of an offering.

What your offerings are is up to you here and will depend on your area of work.

An offering to attract work, such as a discounted service, or offering tickets for an exhibition, for example, as well as discounts on any products you sell are also options here. They are not essential, however, because the important thing is that people are simply aware of your work. This alone can lead to paid projects.

Prospects who would like to work with you will hire you if they want to, or they may act as vital referrers.

It is important to be aware of this cycle as you go about the steps discussed in my ebook, if you are interested in consistently and effectively selling your products or services.

Your thoughts as comments are always welcome!

A referral is when your services are advertised for you through word of mouth through other people. For example, someone might have stumbled on your online portfolio, seen the quality and the professionalism behind your work and told a friend they knew who subsequently hired you.

In the business world, 80% of companies get 70% of their business through word of mouth marketing (Vince Golder). If you provide a service, you are a business and you should view yourself as such and see the importance of referrals. The Internet has enabled word of mouth marketing to be more effective than ever before.

This is why you need to take referrals seriously and why you need to be referrals-oriented as you go about using the Internet.

Make sure you take into consideration the following if you would like to attract more people to refer your work:

1. Have a referral policy in place

This means actively making people aware that you are seeking referrals, publicizing this on your sites and email signatures, and let relevant people know at all opportunities. You might say that you will look for referrals for others in return for the referrals they can get for you.

You’ll be surprised how many people can find work for you, but who don’t because you don’t prompt them. You might even consider giving out awards to those who successfully provide referrals for you.

2. Have a unique selling point

Always be working on an image that sets you apart from the others and makes you memorable. This includes your own style, your website, what you know about and can provide expertise on, even the way you interact with others. Being memorable in this way will attract more referrals.

3. Act as a referrer for others

Going out and finding clients and work for others tends to bring with it good karma in the form of referrals back to you. You’ll find most people will try to reciprocate in finding referrals for you if they know you have helped them initially.

In my view, this is one of the best ways to get work. As Saint Francis of Assisi said: ‘For it is in giving that we receive‘.

4. Be professional

Transmit a professional attitude when coming into proximity with people who are potential referral-givers, especially the clients you work with. Clients who leave with a positive feeling with having worked with someone who acts honestly, maturely, effectively and politely are more likely to refer you.

If you over-deliver on being professional in this way you stand a chance of being memorable, and thus more likely to win a referral.

5. Make your work viral

The Internet has made it possible for news of the services or the work of creatives to spread very quickly. Make sure you provide the means for this to happen by linking up the work you showcase on the web to social media, and introducing your work to places that provide for interaction. These include online forums, discussion boards, blogs, and creative communities like Flickr, last.fm and Deviant Art.

By allowing word to spread of the work you do, you are fueling the potential for referrals to come back to you.

6. Work for a target market

By creating work that appeals to a particular market, as opposed to trying to win over everyone, you’re potential referrers are more likely to understand for themselves who it is they can refer to you.

I believe the main problem restricting getting more referrals is that people don’t know who you want as a client. Make sure you transmit an idea of who your ideal client is. You can even put this in writing on your site or when you ask for referrals.

What do people think? Am I giving people some ideas?

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy commenting!

Don’t hesitate to comment with your thoughts below.

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

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

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

3. For constant and regular free exposure

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

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

6. To drive traffic to your site

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

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

9. To build rapport and establish and build business relationships

10. To keep in touch with old clients

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

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

13. For spreading referrals to and from others

14. To facilitate direct marketing

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

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

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

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

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

Here they are:

1) A network of relevant people

2) A database of accessible contacts

3) Direct marketing

4) A referral system

5) A regular flow of unique visitors to your work

6) Radical Strategic Visibility

–

1) A network of relevant people

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

a) are fans of and love your work;

b) have worked with you in the past;

c) share your interests;

d) respect and admire what you do, and;

e) are your prospects themselves.

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

2) A database of accessible contacts.

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

3) Direct marketing

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

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

4) A Referral System

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

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

5) A regular flow of unique visitors to your work

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

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

6) Radical Strategic Visibility

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

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

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

Please use the comments below to contribute your thoughts.