I have yet another new website up and running now – it’s at www.ArtisanPLR.com and it’s home to a ton of PLR articles that I’ve been working on. I’m hoping to get it a nice kick in the backside in the weeks to come, so if you know anyone that needs content for their marketing campaign (or have any PLR topic requests), let me know. It’s just getting started, but expect big things from this new venture.
I’ve had a few people ask me in the last few months about self-promotion and networking. Well, most people ask me about networking, but I tend to see it all as the same basic process – you need people to find you, you need them to want you to do their work, and you need to be the one they see instead of someone else. That’s not networking; that’s self promotion.Â
I’ll probably post a few of these little posts about the idea behind self promotion in a Web 2.0 world – meaning that you can basically do it all yourself. Whether it’s printing your own books, making your own videos, recording your own podcasts, or building your own website, you can pretty much do it all alone these days if you know what you are doing.
One of my favorites though has been the influx of self promoting videos in recent years. To be perfectly honest, I have never made a self promotional video for myself – sure, I’ve fooled around a bit on YouTube and even used it to promote some products for clients, but I’ve never done anything as direct as a structured video for my business or anything like that.
But, I’ve seen them work – over and over again. It’s pretty simple really. You make something other people might want to see, ensure it’s entertaining and then you add something to make sure they see your product, your face, your website – whatever it is you’re promoting – and boom, you’ve got ongoing publicity for a good long time. It’s pretty simple.
Viral marketing works for a lot of things really, and while I’m whole heartedly behind it and have written my fair share of scripts for those videos, you’re probably wondering how any of this has to do with you and your freelancing. Well, it’s all about thinking creatively. While it doesn’t have to be a viral video or even a video clip, the idea is the same. Promotion today is not just about telling people what you write about and asking them to visit your website. You need to entertain them and draw them to you.
This means you need you create a viral interest in what you’ve produced – and then twist that interest into a targeted approach to your site. Video is the best example of how this works. You might produce a web comic or animation about what you do, video blog your exploits, or simply create a short sitcom or clip show and then mention your website at the end. Whatever you end with, it’s going to work if you manage to gather attention, regardless of why you gathered that attention.
It’s no secret that there are seemingly unlimited ways to promote yourself on the Internet these days. Yet, it still manages to surprise me when someone does not use them all to their fullest potential. There are just too many options not to actively seek out and take advantage of them.
Starting with the most basic methods of blog promotion, I frequently tell people that they need to start and operate a blog – it doesn’t matter if it is the simplest, least detailed project you have worked on, you need to have a blog. Start one on Blogger if necessary and start posting every day (I know, I’m one to talk, but it’s a good habit to start). Once you have started your blog, you have unlimited options to reach people. You can start memes, contact other bloggers, start conversations with your commenters, and much more.
Another necessary promotional method is to start and maintain social networking profiles with all of the major sites – Facebook, MySpace (unfortunately), Friendster, etc. These sites offer you something no other option does – a built in audience of millions that you can reach with a single click. You can be sly or you can be explicit, but always remember to present yourself as a well polished person. On these sites, you are not selling things, you are selling yourself.
Which of course brings up the matter of salesmanship. I have had this conversation with a dozen other writers and many of them do not enjoy the idea of “selling” themselves to their clients. But, it is a necessary task and when you think about how things break down, it makes good sense. The Internet is full of people who sell themselves before their services. In fact, the Internet is just a bit too impersonal not to do so. If you try to go faceless and tell people that they can trust you when they don’t know who you are, they will often ignore your suggestions. If you tell them who you are, provide ample opinions and open conversation, and draw them into the fold, they will begin to trust you more outright and you will be much more successful in reaching them.
I won’t go into the details of everything you can do to promote yourself just yet. I may continue with a series of future posts about self-promotion, but there isn’t enough room for them all right now. However, keep one thing in mind: you are your best product. Your mind and your ability to write, design, or program are the things that you are selling. If you can sell yourself, you can pick up any project you find and that’s the key to true success as a freelancer.
