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

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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.