10StepsBook Marketing Illustration Art

10 Steps to Powerful Online
Self Promotion for Creatives
An in depth guide to effective marketing, winning

regular clients and making sales using the Internet.
Alex Mathers
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10 Steps to Powerful Online Self Promotion for Creatives • Alex Mathers
Contents
Introduction .......................................................................................................6
Building a Sales Cycle ...................................................................................8
The 10 Steps ...............................................................................................13
Step 1. Adapt ...................................................................................................15
Establish Your Target Market .......................................................................17
Building Your Personal Brand ......................................................................20
Etiquette ......................................................................................................25
Transfer your stuff over to the web ..............................................................28
Develop Trust and Credibility ......................................................................29
Step 2. Establish a Base .................................................................................33
Elements included on an online base ..........................................................36
Copyright Issues ..........................................................................................46
Building Your Site ........................................................................................48
Kickstart Your Base Promotion ....................................................................55
Step 3. Create a Blog ......................................................................................60
How to set up a blog ....................................................................................67
What to include in your blog ........................................................................70
Content ........................................................................................................73
Writing Technique ........................................................................................75
Blog Promotion ............................................................................................78
Step 4. Build a Mailing List ............................................................................84
How to set up a mailing list ..........................................................................89
The on-going mailing list process ................................................................95
Step 5. Get Hooked Up to Social Media ........................................................96
Getting set up with Facebook ......................................................................99
Set up your personal profile .................................................................100
Customize your Facebook homepage .................................................105
Set up your fan page ...........................................................................106
Getting set up with Twitter ..........................................................................111
Set up your Twitter profile ....................................................................112
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Automate ..............................................................................................114
Getting set up with MySpace .....................................................................116
Create Your MySpace Profile ...............................................................116
Designing your Profile ..........................................................................118
Getting set up with LinkedIn ......................................................................121
Set up your Profile ...............................................................................121
Step 6. Network and Engage ........................................................................124
Contact Building and Networking through Facebook ................................130
Engagement on Facebook ........................................................................132
Contact Building and Networking through Twitter .....................................135
Engagement on Twitter .............................................................................137
Contact Building and Networking through MySpace .................................139
Engagement on MySpace .........................................................................140
Contact Building and Networking through LinkedIn ..................................142
A Note on Referrals ...................................................................................144
Step 7. Bring in Targeted Traffic ..................................................................145
1. Forums ..................................................................................................149
2. Press Releases .....................................................................................150
3. Squidoo Lenses ....................................................................................152
4. Online Directories ..................................................................................153
5. Video Sharing ........................................................................................154
6. Joint Ventures ........................................................................................156
7. Podcasting ............................................................................................158
8. Links ......................................................................................................159
9. Social Networking ..................................................................................160
10. Article Writing ......................................................................................161
11. Creative Communities .........................................................................162
12. Ezines ..................................................................................................163
13. Search Engines ...................................................................................165
14. Classifieds ...........................................................................................166
15. Social Bookmarking .............................................................................166
16. Blogs ...................................................................................................168
17. Link and News Submission .................................................................171
18. Review and Answer Writing .................................................................171
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Step 8. Direct Advertising .............................................................................174

1. Mailing List Advertising ..........................................................................176
2. Direct Contact Emailing .........................................................................177
3. Local Online Business Directories .........................................................180
4. Classifieds .............................................................................................181
5. Forums ..................................................................................................183
6. Portfolio Sites ........................................................................................184
7. Freelancing sites ...................................................................................186
8. Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising ...........................................................187
9. Targeted Banner Ads .............................................................................189
10. Press Releases ...................................................................................190
Step 9. Do More Free Stuff ...........................................................................191
1. Working on more self-initiated projects .................................................192
2. Offering discounts or free work to ideal clients ......................................193
3. Mutually beneficial deals .......................................................................194
4. Create products .....................................................................................195
5. Collaborate ............................................................................................197
6. Competitions .........................................................................................198
7. Submit to stock sites .............................................................................199
Step 10. Maintain! ..........................................................................................201
Base maintenance .....................................................................................202
Blog Maintenance ......................................................................................206
Social Networking Maintenance ................................................................208
Traffic Maintenance ...................................................................................209
Advertising Maintenance ...........................................................................212
Do More Free Stuff: Maintenance .............................................................214
Final Words ....................................................................................................215
Resources ......................................................................................................216
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Introduction
I’ve been freelancing as an illustrator and a graphic designer on and off for a
few years, but have made it a full time source of income only recently. It was
always my aim to get reliable paid work to cover those important bills. Now,
armed with better knowledge of the Internet as an effective tool for promoting
myself, I’ve been able to make those wishes a reality. In fact, through spending
considerable time researching the methods for using the Internet to promote
one’s work, I’ve been surprised at the power and sheer variety of ways to do so.
I believe that all of you reading this will get much closer to your ambitions, by
actively using the tools and steps provided in this little book.
Whether you are going it alone, or joining forces with others, the quality of what
you are producing is as important as it always has been. What sets successful
creative people apart in today’s marketplace is being able to promote their work
effectively.
The danger is for you to see self promotion as something you needn’t do, either
because you don’t see it as important or that it uses up time and energy that
could otherwise be used in the creative process, or because it is considered
arrogant to toot your own horn and that a true artist should have their work
speak for itself. I’ve been through these doubts. If you truly want to see success
come from your work and your creations, it is time to ditch this mentality.
It’s time to use methods to promote what we have with confidence.
I have spent considerable time learning about creativity, sales, marketing, the
Internet, self-branding, self-promotion, and the importance of carving a niche.
The most important thing I’ve learnt that will get creatives regular work, better
exposure, and possibly fame, whether going it alone, or working for a collective
or company, is this:
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For success, you need a combination of being unique in your field and
having an effective marketing plan.
To go a step further, it is the fans you make from focusing on these two
elements that lies at the heart of your success in promoting yourself. Your main
goal should be in transforming as many people as possible into your fans. As
well as fans being people that rant and rave about you, refer you and buy your
products, your clients themselves can be fans to start with too.
This book reveals how to do all of this, with an introduction to building your
unique ‘brand’, but with more focus on the actual methods of online promotion,
both in attracting new clients, as well as in promoting work you already have.
This is all covered within the ten steps that should see your self promotional
efforts boosted dramatically.
Before we start on the first step, I want to run through an important cycle that is
set in motion in attracting each and every client who uses your service or buys
your product in addition to creating lots of exposure for yourself.
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Building a Sales Cycle
Marketing expert Michael Port calls the sequence of attracting clients and
customers a sales cycle. I have based my slightly adapted sales cycle on what
he has taught me.
This cycle will be addressed through working on each of the steps provided in
this book.
The following diagram shows a simplified version of the cycle:
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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.
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 stage is a big one, and covered by several of the steps we’ll be going into.
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, leaving blog comments, guest blogging and so on.
Of course, there may be instances where others will do the work for you, such
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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.
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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.
Keep in mind that you don’t even have to be offering anything that costs others
money. You can be giving away something for free here. It doesn’t matter how
many stages it takes you until you exchange money with a customer or client,
because building trust is the important thing.
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
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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. Having an official referral policy will be discussed in
Step 2.
It is important to be aware of this cycle as you go about the steps we discuss

in this book if you are interested in consistently and effectively selling your
products or services.
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The 10 Steps
All of the following ten steps will not only help you promote yourself effectively,
but will directly address the four stages within the cycle. How much so will be
made clear as we move through each step, and it is up to you how much work
you want to put in for each step.
For some parts, it will require a bit of independent thinking on your behalf as to
how much time you’ll spend on them, depending on what results you desire in
your particular field.
The tactics in each step that you decide to use, particularly when it comes
to deciding on forms of advertising, will also depend on your target market
(discussed Step 1).
Here are the ten steps:
1. Adapt
2. Establish Your Base
3. Start a Blog
4. Build a List
5. Get Hooked up to Social Media
6. Network and Engage
7. Bring in Targeted Traffic
8. Direct Advertising
9. Go Free
10. Maintain
You don’t have to do every step in detail or even in the order I’ve given. Taking
action on any part of each step will add to promoting yourself more. The format
of the steps should act as a guideline, but it is advisable to at least start on
addressing Step 1.
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I recommend that you go through every step and take action all the way in the
order provided for best results and for the most effective self promotion.
See the process of working on these steps as a gradual and organic process,
and not something that will see instant change, although you can see real
changes very quickly. Patience is a a big virtue when it comes to effective self
promotion for the long term as they are presented here.
So, without wasting any valuable time, let’s get started on Step Number 1.
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STEP 1.
ADAPT
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Before we go into detail discussing all the specific methods behind promoting
yourself online and seeing results, you need to be in the best position
possible for this to work as best it can.
You need to be prepared, and you need to be able to transfer what you have
to show for yourself in real life across to the web in the best way. You will thank
yourself later for addressing the points in this step.
Preparation in this way should cover the following:
• Establishing a target market

• Building a personal brand
• Transmitting the right attitude
• Transferring your work to the web
• Developing trust and credibility
Many of you will be more prepared than others in certain or all of the areas
here, but I’ll be looking into all of them to drive home the relevance of each.
Let’s first look at what I mean when I talk about establishing a target market.
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Establish Your Target Market
One of the main things that creatives and other freelancers overlook when
taking action in attracting new clients and getting their work seen is the impor-
tance of knowing who it is that you are producing work for.
If you produce work to please anyone and everyone, with no target market in
mind, you will have trouble maintaining high quality, focused work. You will also
create too much work on for yourself, and you will have difficulties promoting it.
If you have no idea who you are promoting to, your strategy of promotion will be
aimless, fluffy and ineffective.
Don’t think that by narrowing down the size of your potential market will reduce
the chances of getting more work. A more focused market that you are pas-
sionate about will benefit your own promotional strategy hugely by helping you
identify what is and what isn’t important, as well as energizing you and helping
you focus on all your tasks more effectively. Knowing your target market will
better equip you for the tasks required for the first stage in the sales cycle.
You need to decide on a group of people you would be passionate about

working for. This is the group of people who will come to enjoy and experi-
ence your work upon its completion, such as people wearing the t-shirts you
designed, or buyers of your paintings.
Because these end-users are not necessarily the people you will work with
directly, you’ll want to keep in mind those people who hire you in an evaluation
of your ideal target market. You should be aiming to work with people that you
are likely to work well with.
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Here’s how to brainstorm your target market by thinking about the answers to
these questions:
1. Who are the various groups of people who might use your creative services?
2. Which of these groups do you feel would lead to exciting projects that work
with your own interests and working style?
3. Which group(s) do you already know people or clients in?
4. Which group(s) do you have the most knowledge about or would like to learn
more about?
5. What are you most passionate about as it relates to your work?
6. What are your strengths and talents?
7. What do you know a lot about within your field?
If you have energy about the people you provide for, success will be inevitable,
especially if you are on the right track with regards to promoting yourself.
Working for a specific target market will also benefit you in that you will become
known, amongst those people, for what you can provide, and a great deal of
marketing will be done for you, through word of mouth.
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Here are some examples of target markets:
• University students
• Service professionals
• Fashion design firms
• Trendy London teenagers
• Working mothers
• Web design agencies
• Book publishers
• Government agencies
• Wealthy business leaders
• Children
This exercise isn’t expected to take 5 minutes. In fact, it can take a while before
you are really set on your target market. Give this as much time as you need.
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Building Your Personal Brand
As a creative professional, the requirement to stand out and be known for

something amongst heavy competition and advancing technologies is crucial.
Getting regular clients, gaining exposure, and getting referred and talked about
are some of the most important elements of your career. Building a personal,
recognizable brand out of what you do is key if you want these things to work
for you.
A personal brand will guide you in the way you express and communicate who
you are and what you do, as well as who you serve. As marketing legend Tom
Peters says, your brand is who you are. Your brand allows you to distinguish
yourself from others and will help you get more work and get recognized,
without question.
The first and major step in building a personal brand is in identifying your
Unique Selling Point:
Establish a Unique Selling Point (USP)
In marketing jargon, a unique selling point/proposition is what a product or

service possesses that states clearly that it will provide a certain specific and
unique benefit to the customer.
It is a very good idea to know what makes you unique and what people will
remember you for, before going about promoting yourself.
As creatives, one of the biggest challenges we face is in standing out

from the crowd of others all trying to make a name for themselves. Many will be
using the same tools as you do, and this increases the potential for you to miss
out on your ideal projects.
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What is it about your work that will turn the heads of potential clients or
head-hunters?
It’s not enough to simply state that you provide a great service and that you are
highly skilled. People need to see what you do and they need to be sold on your
work.
This means having work standing out in such a way that your prospect would
not consider looking anywhere else for other talent and professionalism.
The way to hook prospects in this way (not to mention fans, friends and people
who will talk about you and promote you) is to create work that people won’t find
elsewhere.
For repeat clients, they will be able to recognize what is yours straight away.
This doesn’t mean that you are stuck with the same materials or tools forever.
You should exhibit your own style in all that you do. This will apply more to
certain professions than others, but the principle still stands.
To go a step further, you not only need to be expressive in the work you create,
but you need to express yourself and the way you are through your work.
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How to Develop a USP
1. Identify your main strength and milk it.
Coupled with active self promotion, success in the creative world comes with
communicating your strengths effectively. Making others aware of what you
are good at should be at the forefront of how you showcase your work as well
as your engagement with prospects and others, but in crafting a unique selling
point, you need to go a step further.
Focus on one single element that you know you are good or skilled at, or what
can be honed to make you stand out more, whether this be in your ability to
create beautiful minimal design, drawing people as an artist, writing descriptive
fiction, or producing black and white photography. Work on it and get even
better at it.
2. Improve your skills in one or two areas.
Identify the skills you need to support your main strength. This could be in
improving your vector illustration skills with Adobe Illustrator, improving your
vocal or copywriting skills or learning more about using automation within Logic
for music production, for example.
3. Find what makes you truly unique as a person.
This might sound cheesy, but it is an awareness of your quirks that will add
depth and personality to your work and the way you go about doing business
with people, including promoting it.
Ask yourself these questions to get you going:
1. What are the three things that make you memorable?
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2. What do people always compliment you on?
3. What are you passionate about that you never get tired talking about?
4. What unique experiences have you had?
Once you have found what makes you unique, work on incorporating it into your
work, and ultimately your brand.
This includes through the writing you do, in the way you describe yourself, in the
way you communicate with others, and, ultimately through your own work.
It is this expression of character in all that you do that will set you apart
from the rest and cement your success.
3. Hone your style.
This is where a bit of hard work and practice comes in. Once you have achieved
a style that people can associate as yours, your promotional efforts will be made
much easier.
4. Make your speciality obvious.
Through the work you produce, and when you display your work on a website or
elsewhere, make sure that your skills and specialties, as well as the main things
that make you unique, are made clear to those looking at it. Most of what makes
you unique will speak for itself through the work you do, but you can emphasise
your strengths and unique selling point in your bio, ‘about me’ section, or site
tagline as well.
Make sure you share past projects that you felt demonstrated your strengths
and showcase and search for testimonials from clients that highlight your skills.
If you’re on a team, make sure you volunteer for work that allows you to utilize
your strengths too, so they don’t go unnoticed and unused.
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A USP is an important element of your own brand. Once you have this set, you
need to go about living up to your personal brand, adding strength to it and
transmitting its message in everything you do.
This is achieved through the design of your personal site, the way you com-
municate with people, the content you share with your network, the enthusiasm
you put into your work, the professionalism you display, and the originality you
bring to new projects.
The importance of your recognisable personal brand can’t be overlooked.
As Tom Peters puts it:
“In today’s wild wired world, you’re distinct…or extinct. Survive, thrive, triumph,
by becoming Brand You!”
I would recommend reading his book: ‘Re-inventing work. The Brand You 50’ for
more information on transforming yourself into your own brand.
Demonstrating the right attitude and acknowledging internet etiquette is a key

part of your personal brand, and is something that will benefit your online self
promotional effort as a whole.
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Etiquette
I’m mentioning this, because a large amount of online promotion involves

interacting with other people, and you want to get dealing with people just right.
Let’s get this out of the way as quickly as possible without me sounding like a
nagging teacher, especially as I know a lot of you are pros at this already.
Particularly when you are engaging with social media, where you want to build
relationships, you need to communicate with people in a way that is respectful,
professional and responsible.
When promoting a product or service, the old method of directly advertising

what you have, has now gone out the window with Web 2.0 (the new phase of
collaborative information sharing the internet is now going through).
If you forget all else in marketing yourself online, remember this:
Relationship building and rapport come first, promotion comes second.
Internet etiquette, or ‘netiquette’ in general, is something everyone should be

aware of before setting out on a journey of effective self promotion. These are
practices used to make the internet experience a pleasant one for everyone you
deal with.
Here are some of the key elements of netiquette to be aware of as you go about
promoting yourself online:
Help ‘newbies’.
It is good netiquette to pass on your knowledge to newbie’s (new users) to the

internet or a particular site.
Don’t promote too widely.
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This usually reflects a misunderstanding of one’s target audience, and will result
in many frustrated people who are not interested in what you have to offer.
Understand the emotion created in writing.
Refrain from using CAPITALS to emphasize yourself. For example, add

character to the way you interact with people with the occasional smiley :-D.
Don’t promote excessively.
Aggressive marketing is not welcome throughout most of the web as it is irritat-

ing and intrusive. Tweeting 20 times a day on the same point will more likely
lose you followers than gain attention.
Be aware of the netiquette of the platform you are on.
When you start using various online platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn
for promotional purposes, be aware that each of them have their own distinct
etiquette, which you need to adhere to, a lot of which you will learn as you go
along.
Research before asking.
If you have questions to ask, minimize disrupting someone else’s time by

looking through FAQs or doing the research yourself first.
Don’t be pushy with following up and nurturing a relationship.
If you do find a contact who sounds interested in a product or service, make

sure the follow up is done politely and reasonably.
When Sending and receiving messages, wall posts and emails:
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Use descriptive subject lines, if there is a subject bar.
This helps people anticipate what they’re opening and help with categorization.
Don’t spam people.
Don’t misspell people’s names.
Use white space.
Stay focused on topic and keep it brief.
Make sure the receiver can handle large attachments with permission.
.Don’t hit ‘reply all’ if you intend to reply to one person on an email that
was sent to many.
Don’t publicize other people’s email addresses.
Don’t send what you haven’t read first.
People are not robots.
Communicate with others like they are human beings, even to those that appear
to be writing under the name of a company or organization.
OK, that’s enough with the rules and regulations!
Next we look at an important part of promoting your work online, which is in

showcasing the media that represents your work in the best ways possible
through your computer and ultimately on the web.
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Transfer your stuff over to the web
To be able to demonstrate your work and your uniqueness in the best way
possible on the internet, you need to have the tools in place to allow for
transferal of what you have, to be viewed, read or heard. With nothing to show
people on the web, self promotion can be tricky!
This should be done properly so that the quality of your work is not tarnished
when it comes to be presented on the web and elsewhere. It’s always a shame
to see a talented person spoil the great work they present online with poorly
executed file formats.
Obviously there is a whole range of creative people out there in different indus-
tries with different ways of showcasing their work; from animators with video,
musicians with audio, writers with examples of copyright, photographers with
pictures, and so on.
Your work can be showcased in image, text, audio and video format and these
need to be created, edited and uploaded properly.
I can’t show you how to properly transfer these forms of media to the internet in
any detail, but a good place to start gaining guidance on things like managing
and editing images for proper use online is through the tutorials and links found
at Dummies and About.
Refer to the ‘Technical Knowledge‘ section in Resources, at the back of this

book, for more places to find help with these issues.
Now, on to an area that will benefit you immensely when it comes to addressing
the third stage of the sales cycle and attracting contacts: building credibility in
yourself and your brand.
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Develop Trust and Credibility
For success as a creative who wants lots of work with great clients, you’ll need
to be perceived as credible, likable and trustworthy within your field and within
your ever-growing network.
Having a personal brand and giving off the right attitude both contribute to this,
but there are a few other important things you need to consider if you want to
appear credible and trustworthy:
Having a professional email address.
Ideally you would use one that includes the domain name of your personal site.
Avoid numbers and punctuation marks. Keep it simple and as professional as
possible.
Example: alex@redlemonclub.com
Use a decent photo.
Pictures of you tend to inspire confidence in clients and other people seeing
your work.
Use a professional photographer for a picture of you that looks decent that you
can use on social media sites, your personal site, as a gravatar or simply an
avatar etc.
If not, get something that looks like you aren’t a weirdo and that you use consis-
tently. If you are camera shy or would prefer it, then use an image of your work
or logo that is recognizable as your own.
Your own domain.
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Whenever the possibility arises for you to use a unique domain name (website
address), and this particularly applies to your personal portfolio site, you should
pay the small yearly fee to have one. Use a service called Ajaxwhois to search
for available names, and I personally recommend Godaddy to buy one from.
Obtain specific testimonials.
Try to get hold of positive feedback and testimonials from previous clients or
fans that you can showcase on your personal site. The more specific the better,
as this builds trust in those reading them.
Demonstrate site popularity.
Even if your site isn’t a traffic hub yet, make sure you showcase any positive
interactions people are having with your online presence, such as by showing
popular posts and comments on your blog, revealing the numbers of retweets
posts your portfolio has received and displaying your RSS subscriber or Twitter
followers.
As shallow as this sounds, this will have an effect on how people view you and
your credibility, even at a subconscious level.
Quality business cards.
Get hold of a pack of well made business cards with your site and email
address on that don’t have the printer’s name on. A great company that can do
this for you is Moo. Budget cards with adverts on will subtract from your cred-
ibility as a creative professional.
Quality methods and tools.
Make sure you invest in using high quality tools and programs in putting your
work together if you want to attract the best clients. This is what is expected of
an outstanding freelancer.
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High quality of service.
Give all your clients a high quality service. This includes meeting deadlines,
replying to them promptly, treating them as important, being courteous etc.
Charge a reasonable price.
Charging the lowest price amongst your competitors or lower isn’t necessarily
going to improve your credibility. In fact, it will often undermine it. If you’re truly
good, you’d be charging more.
Strive towards likability.
Make an effort in your dealings with clients and members of your networks to
be a likable person. This doesn’t mean being a suck up. Just aim to be positive,
helpful and friendly when communicating with others and you’ll see how this
benefits your credibility and the growth of your network.
Establish yourself as a category authority.
Michael Port, in his book ‘Book Yourself Solid’ talks about how becoming
someone who knows a lot about a particular area (‘a category authority’) will
greatly enhance your credibility.
Becoming an expert at something needn’t mean knowing everything there is

to know about something, but begin learning about something you wish to be
known for. This would be something that relates to your work.
It’s an excellent way of attracting people to you, building trust and having
something to center on as part of your strategy of self promotion. Whatever you
choose to become an authority on, be it digital drawing techniques, photo re-
touching or electronic music production equipment, you can use this knowledge
(both your own and from other sources) as the focus of content you provide
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through social media sites, your blog and through the other places where you
have an online presence.
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STEP 2.
ESTABLISH
A BASE
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The guiding framework behind the promotional strategy developed in this

book is for you to have a core internet presence or base, to which visitors are
directed, in the form of potential clients, previous clients, fans, potential fans,
and others, as shown in the diagram below.
The vital first stage of the sales cycle we talked about at the start of the book is
reliant on you completing this step. Performing tasks that will get your name in
front of your target market should ultimately lead to people seeing what you can
do as a creative.
Your online base should allow for this.
So, what is a base?
It is your own personal web presence, website and/or portfolio where you
showcase your own work.
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Your site should closely represent you and your work, showcasing the very best
of what you have to offer, including anything that adds to your credibility such as
testimonials and how you can be contacted.
Your base will effectively be an online gallery space, showing off your best and
most recent work to visitors who are allowed in with no barriers to entry, like you
would have on a high street.
At a simple level, your site will be a place where people have access to:
1. Archives of your work (in the form of text documents, images, video and
audio files).
2. Your contact details.
These are the very basics, and all you really need. To add further value and to
help your visitors get more of a sense of who you are and what you can provide,
you have the option of adding more information, testimonials, a mailing list,
more details on the service you provide and your USP, your mission statement,
and so on.
Any products you might have for sale can be displayed through your personal
site.
Anything that adds to the overall picture of you as an individual, and as a brand
is what is important in creating your online base.
Be careful not to over-emphasize your skills, credentials and abilities here,

in trying to impress, as this can turn awkward later on, if you find you cannot
provide proof for your claims when you do get work.
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The following are the elements you can include on your online base:
Unique Domain
Ideally your site will be self hosted and have a unique domain name, which is
the web address of the site, like redlemonclub.com (except the www.http://).
In the case of your base, your own name, or if necessary, your pseudonym
should be included in the domain. If you work as part of a collective, use the
name of the group.
Use any name that your work is best associated with and make this the domain
name. Ideally, you want a .com or .net domain ending for recognition and pro-
fessionalism.
Logo
This is usually the first thing people see, and it makes sense to put one up on
the top left of your site, especially for those used to reading left to right. Your
logo can be your name or an image that goes with your brand.
Logos add professionalism to your personal site and can add to a memorable
experience for visitors. A logo is also something that can spread over the web
and serves as a strong visual trademark/representation of your brand.
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Tagline
Once your site visitor sees your name, your collective or your logo, they will
want to know more about what you do. A short and to the point tagline is a good
way of an introduction to your stuff, with further detail being included in your
‘about’ section.
Things to include in your tagline include your skill (web designer, illustrator,
photographer etc), your speciality (web designs, urban photography etc), where
you are from, and whether you are freelance or work for a studio.
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Gallery
The format, appearance and layout does not need to adhere to strict rules, as
long as media files are easily accessible and the way you showcase your work
is generally good aesthetically.
Avoid using tiny, hard to load thumbnails so that the viewer has to play a
guessing game to work out what he/she will click next, and make your best or
most recent work the first thing people see.
A gallery can be a page on its own accessed from the homepage, or part of the
homepage itself.
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Services
If you offer several services, it is worth having an area or page that clarifies
each one. Don’t hold back on the detail of each. Further explanation on how
these are delivered and so on can be left to questions further on in the project
process.
Contact link or page
This is a key feature of your personal site and is often neglected. Your contact
information should be obvious and easily accessible. You can also incorporate
this into your about/bio page.
The best way to allow people to contact you is to provide a contact form or a
list of the ways you can be contacted. If you choose to use a simple email link
consider making the link an image file to avoid spam robots using your address.
It is worth considering a form over a link because it saves on the user having to
copy down the email to use later or having an unwanted email platform pop up
when clicked.
About/Bio Page
About pages are a good idea because they give you a chance to transmit some
personality, instilling trust to your visitors, as well as allowing you to describe
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your vital unique points.
Here is where you can reveal your client list, drop in any credentials of yours
(alternatively this can be put in a ‘news’ page), or any testimonials you might
have received. This will add considerable value to the service you provide, and
will increase the chance of you being hired.
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Tell the visitor exactly how you can make their lives better for them through the
work that you do. Demonstrating good communication skills through writing is
something I would suggest including on everyone’s personal site. This kind of
thing is really noticed as a plus by potential clients.
Include your picture here, or a photograph or more of your work space. This will
appeal to many clients and fans in a strong way, and build a sense of trust in
them.
Mini-Blog
When it comes to incorporating a blog onto your site, the best strategy involves
having a focused, standalone blog away from your personal site, which draws
visitors to your site.
This is why I refer to the blog you might incorporate into your own site as a mini-
blog, because it would ideally be secondary to your main, separate blog.
If you do have a blog on your base, I would advise to have only updates pertain-
ing to your personal work and perhaps industry, including things like portfolio
updates, happenings in your studio, information on the tools and materials you
use, industry news and so on.
This mini-blog essentially covers anything that directly relates to the work you
produce, because your base should be an extension of you and your work,
and nothing else. Don't refrain from adding personal touches, however.
Mini-blogs are useful for attracting repeat visitors. These are those who are
interested in what you do and those who would like to or require to keep track of
you.
Another reason you might want to use a mini-blog on your base site is because
it will have a positive effect on the way your site gets ranked in search engines,
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as search engines like Google will favour sites that are regularly updated with
new content.
It is not the end of the world for you to blog about anything and everything on
your personal site’s blog. It will benefit your site in adding fresh content, and will
reveal a few things about who you are and what you are passionate about. I
recommend keeping it focused and relevant to your work, alongside a separate
blog, for best results.
Calls to action
A call to action is something you say or suggest that aims to lead the visitor of
your site to taking some form of action. This can be a button saying: “Hire me”
leading to your contact address, or links that join pages within your site, such as
a link to ‘portfolio’ within your about me page and vice versa.
This is often overlooked, yet is one of the most important elements of a suc-
cessful website in getting people to take further steps towards working with
you or buying your products. Calls to action directly address activities to take in
stage 4 of the sales cycle.
A Referral Policy
When it comes to attracting referrals as you network and interact with your
contacts later on, having an official referral policy in place is one of the best
ways you can attract more clients and more work.
This could mean having an area on your site which informs clients and visitors
that, in return for them finding referrals for you, you will make an effort to refer
them to future contacts that will be beneficial to them. This directly addresses
the fourth stage of the sales cycle. You can also simply state that you appreci-
ate any referrals that people could forward to you. Consider describing the kinds
of clients you are looking for within this declaration or statement, so that people
know who to refer you to.Think about your target market here, even if they are
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not your clients.
You could include provision of a form that allows people to describe the contacts
they might be looking for, which they can fill in when they have found a suitable
referral for you. Also consider providing further details of a reward system you
might provide for people who find you leads that prove successful.
People can be brought to this page or area from elsewhere, including your blog,
social network sites and mailing list. With many people coming to this policy
declaration, this could prove to be a very powerful way to secure regular work.
Shop
If you have things for sale, here’s a place to do it. There are many ways to
incorporate a shop and shopping cart into a basic site.
There is also the option of providing a link on your site to an external shop front
like Etsy or Big Cartel, which handles all the complicated stuff associated with
setting up shop online.
Press and Testimonials
A place for testimonials, lists of awards and publications. Anything that serves
to add to your credentials and credibility as a professional. This can be incorpo-
rated into a page, such as the ‘about’ page or listed separately, depending on
how your website is formatted and set up.
Freebies and Downloads
Here’s a place where you can provide free things and downloads for your
visitors as well as things for sale. A lot of this can be for further self promotion
purposes such as giving away iPhone backgrounds, postcards or merchandise
or information products. Freebies are a good way to attract people to your base.
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Communication
Allow your personality and positivity to come through any form of communica-
tion on your site, but also keeping rambling to a minimum and only write what
has to be written.
Internet surfing is a fast-paced business, and long pieces of whaffling writing will
put people off. Keep what you write clear and professionally written. Refer to a
Red Lemon Club blog post on tips for writing effectively.
Keep it simple
Consider the effectiveness of simplicity in every self promotional activity you

carry out. This is particularly the case when it comes to your personal site.
Simplicity works because:
• It allows for the brain to digest things with greater ease and clarity.
• It keeps the reader focused on content.
• It makes visible content more memorable.
• It is low maintenance in running the site.
• Search engines love simplicity. Even Google gets confused by
complex sites!
• Simple design ages well.
A word on design
Your site design should be simple, fast and accessible. These three things will
all feed off each other. A personal site, on the other hand, needs to be attractive
and stand out. As such, you or your designer need to strike the right balance
between simplicity and accessibility and good quality, interesting design.
If done well, your site will present you, your brand and your work clearly and
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effectively whilst being memorable. This means minimizing things that detract
from this, such as a non-unique domain name and advertisements unrelated to
your work (these are ok on your separate blog).
If you do consider a design that is really far out, make sure it is necessary and
in keeping with the personal brand that you are aiming to transmit. The design
should compliment your own working style and your personality.
For the most part, a simply laid out site will be all you need, and the work that
you showcase will speak for itself.
Be also aware of the need for sites to be mobile phone (such as iphone)
compatible. Many art directors, for example, are now searching for new work
on their phones.
Extra Tips
It is hugely beneficial for you if you link to any relevant social networking sites
like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, ideally from your ‘about’ page to help
spread the word about your work.
Make sure the site works on all browsers, so that all visitors an view the site
properly. This might mean downloading a selection of browsers and testing
them out yourself.
Also make a point of revealing to visitors where in the world you are from, as
this is interesting for people, adds to the personalisation of the site and might
appeal to certain prospects who want local work.
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Copyright Issues
Several books could be written on the topic of intellectual property, web security
and other legal issues, so I’m going to share with you the very important things
you need to be aware of in this area, as they apply to the work you showcase
on the web.
The following points will help clarify how your work is protected.
The vast majority of original work produced by people in creative industries,

from paintings to film scripts to photographs to musical compositions, will auto-
matically be granted statutory protection. This is copyright.
The copyright owner has exclusive rights to reproduce or sell the work, distrib-
ute copies and display/perform the work publicly, as well as creating derivative
works.
If you work within an agency or for an employer, the copyright of your work
always belongs to your employer.
You don’t need to officially register to copyright work you produce or place a ©
symbol (or a (p) symbol for musical performance) near your work. But, you can
do this to establish a public record of the copyright ownership, which will add
protection to your creations.
You can give permission to individuals or companies to reproduce your work

in certain ways using a license. Read about the Creative Commons system to
read more about this.
If your work undergoes copyright infringement (i.e. someone copies or steals

your work for illegitimate use) you need to take action yourself. You are entitled
to damages; perhaps an injunction to stop the infringement and on occasion
Please double-check with the laws pertaining to your country, as the following mainly deals with US copyright law,
although much of it can be transferred to other countries.
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the infringing copies delivered to you.
You can sell your copyright, meaning you have no further right of reproduction in
your own work.
Your Rights
You have a right to be identified as author of your work. As such, you are able to
object if your work is adapted or altered.
For more information on rights for creatives, have a look at a useful site, cre-
atorsrights.org.
What you can do about copyright issues:
When it comes to protecting media showcased on your site such as images,

it is up to you how you want to do this. You might want to label your work as
copyrighted material, although you automatically own the copyright to anything
you create and have a right to claim against work you find that has been taken
without permission.
I would avoid using watermarks on images to deter copying. This dramatically

detracts from the aesthetic and professionalism of your portfolio. There are
other ways of protecting such media worth looking into, such as image splicing
and embedding your pictures as flash on your site. Copyright theft is unfortu-
nately an inevitable part of the online experience for some of us, and we will
have to try our best to work around such problems.
I do feel positive about these issues, however, as the Internet and its network
format mean that work that might have been stolen is traceable and reportable,
and getting more so.
Further resources on legal and copyright matters for creatives are provided in
the back of this book (R2).
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Building Your Site
Getting a site set up doesn’t have to be a huge chore, and, apart from designing
one and building it yourself, the methods for getting one built don’t require
much, if any, technical knowledge. Some might come in useful however for
making adjustments and in giving instructions to designers if you want to get
specific about how your site will look.
If you are steering clear of a personal site, you could have your work solely on
portfolio or creative community sites (like Behance). You will find a list of these
in the Resources (R3) section at the back of this book.
You can also use the traffic driving methods that I will describe later in getting
visitors to your work on these sites. However, your most effective online self
promotion strategy will make use of a personal and separate website because
of the flexibility, uniqueness and professionalism this affords.
Personal study
If you are interested in learning more about the basics of web design (I espe-
cially recommend you learn a little HTML: the basic code behind websites), I
suggest having a look at the information and tutorials here (also see R1):
WebDesignFromScratch.com - Good information and tutorials.

W3Schools.com - Focuses more on html and coding.
For learning the software for building websites, such as Dreamweaver and
Frontpage, I would recommend trying the training videos from Lynda.com or
TotalTraining.com. I learnt how to use Adobe Illustrator from scratch using the
excellent resources at Lynda.com.
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There are 5 ways to build your base site:
1. Through a free site-builder

2. Through a paid site-builder
3. Through a blog platform
4. Through a web designer
5. Designing and building the site yourself
1. Through a free site builder
The best approach to having a personal online presence is in creating a site

that is unique to you and your brand. Because of this, be aware that some of
the free site builders will not make it possible to have a completely personalized
feel.
As a start, and until you can afford it, you might find it’s your only option, in
which case go for it. Many of the free site options provide excellent, hosted, high
quality websites anyway.
Many site builders will be technically very straight forward and should allow you
to get your personal site up and running within hours.
Others, usually in the form of Content Management Systems (CMSs) require

a little more technical knowledge, but not in all cases, and these can lead to
websites with a very professional feel.
CMSs
A content management system is software that keeps track of all the content,
such as text and images, on your website. They make updating things like
portfolio sites much easier owing to this. They can be used to build sites,
amongst other things. Most CMS site-building systems are free.
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Here are some site builders that were free to use at the time of writing:
• Coroflot
• Devhub
• Moonfruit
• Indexhibit (CMS)
• Cargo Collective (CMS)
2. Through a paid site builder
Paid site builders, apart from CMSs, will come with a few more features in
general over free builders and, like with free builders you don’t have to worry
about hosting, which is covered for you. They will allow you to transmit a little
more of a unique feel, although don’t give you as much flexibility as you would
have with some knowledge of web design and code.
You’ll find them to be simple, straightforward and provide decent-looking sites.

Many providers will put in some of the promotion leg-work, which is something
else to consider when paying a fee for a site building system.
Here are a few recommended site builders to consider paying small

monthly fees for:
• Carbonmade
• MosaicGlobe
• OtherPeoplesPixels
More sites like these are listed in Resources (R4 and R5).
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3. Through a blog platform
Using a blog platform like Wordpress.org or Typepad to host and build your
website is an excellent way of having a quality site at little or no cost.
The blog layout that comes with using a blog platform to host your site doesn’t
mean that the main use of the page is as a blog. You can use all kinds of
templates to create decent sites, with a gallery and all the other key elements
we’ve mentioned.
Setting up a blog platform is usually a very intuitive way of working with a site,
and there is a range of add-ons, plugins and widgets you can put onto the site
for added customization.
With Wordpress.org (the blog platform I recommend) you can choose and add
new templates or design new ones from scratch to make your site look the
way you want it, but you’ll need to get a bit technical to do it right. Other blog
platforms are listed in the back of this book.
To get set up with Wordpress.org and have your own site built through their
platform for free (you only pay for the cost of your own domain, if you choose to
have one and the hosting), refer to the bonus Wordpress guide that came with
this book.
This is the way I have set up many of my sites in the past. This knowledge has
enabled me to have my own professional-looking website base, and blog at a
very low cost.
Have a look through Step 3 for closer detail in setting up a blog site and see R6
in Resources for more blog platforms.
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4. Through a web designer
If you are not a fully proficient web designer or lack time, and want a unique
personal site with a bit more quality and flexibility than what you’d get through
free/paid site builders, it is worth looking for a web designer to put one together
for you.
Many designers should not cost you the Earth, especially if you ask around a bit
and put the research in. The best places to start are online discussion forums
where you can get recommendations and quotes from others, as well as access
to job boards, where you can post design jobs.
Forums to find web designers and job boards include:
Webdevforums.com
WebDesignerForum.co.uk
Alternatively you can have designers bid for your job on freelance sites like
Elance, which is very good and affordable, or Guru.
5. Designing and building the site yourself
If you have the time and technical ability, by all means, design and build your
own site. Obviously if you’re a web designer you can use your site to showcase
the kind of work you do in itself.
You can use a CMS like Joomla or Indexhibit to put something together, or use
web design software like Dreamweaver. Again, Lynda.com is my recommenda-
tion of a place to go to learn about these packages, including CMSs.
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Sign up with Google Webmaster Tools
Once your site is complete, it is important to verify site ownership and submit
the site’s sitemap with Google Webmaster Tools. This will prioritize the indexing
of your pages by Google, and allow you to view useful site statistics when you
come to monitoring and tweaking your site later on.
To verify your site, you need to first sign up for a Google account. Then login,
and follow the link to Webmaster Tools. Put the URL of your site into the Add a
Site box and hit return. Verify your site by copying the meta code it supplies you
with, and pasting it into your site’s header code. Then click verify, and your site
should be good to go.
You should add a Google XML sitemap to your site, usually through installing
a plugin, which you can get someone to help with if you’re not sure. Here is the
Wordpress sitemap generator to use if you have a Wordpress site.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/
You should add your sitemap to Webmaster Tools so that Google can better
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index your site pages. To add it, you need to identify what your sitemap is called
on your site, which will be something like ‘sitemap.xml’. In wordpress, you can
find it under settings once it has been added. Go to Submit a Sitemap within
Webmaster and follow the instructions from there.
Refer to R10 in Resources, for a list of other search engines you might
consider submitting your sites to.
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Kickstart Your Base Promotion

Once you have a personal site designed and completed there are a few things
I would recommend you do to build some momentum into its exposure and
ultimately the promotion of the work showcased in it.
These suggestions also apply to your base/personal site at any stage, including
well after it has been completed and launched, and can be re-applied regularly
over time if you want to boost the site’s exposure further.
• Submit numerous press releases detailing the launch or update of your

site.
See the section Press Releases in Step 7 for more detail on this.
• RSS submission.
RSS or ‘Really Simple Syndication’ is a set of web feed formats including blog
entries and news headlines, that is standardized into a single format. This can
then more easily be re-distributed through the web through RSS readers that
pick up your updates. Submitting your blog’s RSS feed is important because it
can potentially provide a great deal of promotion as it is distributed throughout
the web, and will allow your blog to be picked up by people who choose to
subscribe.
First, set up your feed at FeedBurner by submitting your site web address and
following the instructions. This only need be done once.
Once you have your site’s RSS feed, which should be something like yourad-
dress.com/feed, submit it (or find a service that does this for you) to ideally the
hundreds of sites that accept RSS submissions. These are listed in Resources
under R7. Also consider placing an RSS button on your blog so that people can
subscribe to your feed. FeedBurner provides a selection of buttons, which you’ll
find in the Publicize area in your FeedBurner account.
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• Submit news of your new site to at least 5 news and link submissions
sites on relevant creative sites like DesignBump and Little Chimp Society.
A large list of these sites are at the back of this book under ‘Creative News and
Link Submission’.
• Set up complimentary portfolios on four or more free portfolio or creative

community sites (listed in Resources) like Folioplanet and Behance and upload
files to social file-hosting sites like Flickr and DeviantArt. Now link the files and
images within them to your main base site through image descriptions, links
within your profile, and so on.
• Announce to forums.
Let others know of your work and site in the announcement areas of relevant
forums.
• Announce through mailing list.
If you have a mailing list, make sure you mention the site launch or update/
redesign here. If you know other creatives with lists, come to a mutual
agreement with them to allow them to announce your site on their list in
exchange for sharing their own news on your own list. More information on
mailing lists is provided in Step 4.
• Make helpful and useful blog comments on at least four blogs that will
attract members of your target market. This may sound like having little impact,
but if you leave comments with some personality with the intention of develop-
ing a relationship with the blog writer and its readers, you will see good attention
directed to your work. Make sure the comment links back to your site through
what is usually your username.
• Make announcements through social networking sites.
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Share your site to followers and contacts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr
and so on.
• Social bookmarking.
Bookmark the homepage and blog of your site on sites like delicious and reddit.
Bookmark your blog or URL of the blog post on sites like Delicious and Reddit
(see RResources for more social bookmarking sites). Use services like
OnlyWire to submit to multiple bookmarking sites quickly for a small monthly
fee.
This can all be repeated to build exposure to your work over time. The best
strategy is to bring traffic to a focused blog, and then ultimately to your base.
These traffic building methods will be discussed in detail in Step 7.
Examples of Excellent Bases/Personal Sites:
Marek Levak
Page | 57
Pietari Posti
Shannon Moeller
Page | 58
Brad Candullo
Oliver Nieder
Page | 59
STEP 3.
CREATE
A BLOG
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You have now built a site that serves as your core online base; where
visitors, including friends and prospects, will be driven to ultimately land.
Although some of you will have incorporated a ‘mini-blog’ into your personal
site, the more effective strategy for marketing your work, and in addressing the
first stage of the sales cycle, will make use of a standalone blog.
Why have a standalone blog?
A separate blog acts as a core site to which people are brought in large
numbers. Once people have been attracted to your main blog in this way, you
will bring targeted exposure to the work in your base site by bridging a link to it.
Unless you are extremely well known already, it is unlikely that large numbers
of people will come to your personal site based entirely on the work you do, the
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content of your personal mini-blog, or because they have heard of your name.
This is meant in the nicest possible way!
Traffic coming to your blog and base:
Why use a blog to attract people?
Blogs are an excellent way for gaining publicity into the long term as long as
you provide good content consistently. Blogs create a position from which to
build and develop your personal brand, which fans, clients, friends and potential
clients will begin to recognize you for.
Blogging will add to your credibility as a freelancer and creative worker, whilst
building trust and respect amongst readers who see the passion behind what
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you have to say.
People will be drawn to the highly focused and fascinating content you provide
on your main blog in potentially large numbers. I say fascinating here because
it simply has to be. There is a lot of information floating around on the web.
No one settles for mediocre content. It has to really stand out for it to attract
eyeballs.
The best strategy is to focus the content of your blog into one niche or
topic that directly relates to what you do.
This can be something like good logo design (or bad design!), dubstep music
production, minimalist architecture or short story writing, for example, if they
relate to what you do.
Having focused and specific content will increase the chances of your blog
being memorable. Be careful in getting the balance right and not making the
content too focused. You want enough content to share that will last.
Having it relate to what you do is important from a promotional point of view

because it will attract the right kinds of people to your site, including dedicated
friends and fans, as well as potential clients.
Directing your focus to a specific niche will also help you in getting focused
about what you need to be writing about, which will definitely help motivate you.
Here are some questions to ask to help you choose a niche for your blog:
What genuinely interests you?
If you are not fully interested in what you are writing about, then this will show in
your content, and put readers off. It is unlikely that you will be able to sustain a
blog for a long period if you run out of enthusiasm for it either.
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What do you know a lot about?
It really helps to have some knowledge on the topic you choose for your blog.
Certainly don’t go for something that you don’t understand.
It should be at the back of your mind to use a blog as a means to becoming an
expert at something too.
What would interest people already in your network?
There is no point starting a new blog that shares information that won’t interest
people you have already as contacts.
Take advantage by focusing on a niche that the fans and contacts in your
network already like to engage with. You’ll find these people will be helpful in
spreading the word about your blog from the start.
Will you have enough regular content?
The topic you choose has to have enough potential for providing ongoing
content, otherwise your blog will end up with the thousands of other blogs that
never made it because content simply petered out.
What’s the competition like?
Have a search around for other blogs that feature similar content to what you
are planning. Look for what other people are leaving out or choose a blog you
like, take the content and give it a twist. You can use the following sites to find
sites based on similarity and topic:
Xmarks
SimilarWeb
SimilarSites
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What’s the search volume like?
It’s useful to have a sense of what is being looked for on the Internet, before
settling on a blog niche, so that you know that there is at least some demand for
what you’ll be writing about.
You can use online tools like the Adwords Keyword Tool or Wordtracker to
type in a keyword or phrase that you might use a great deal in your blog. It will
indicate how many people searched for those words over the last month, for
example. This will give you an indication of what content will have an audience.
You can also use Technorati or Google Blog Search to see what other bloggers
are writing about that relate to your chosen niche topic. It has tools that gauge
popularity levels amongst blogs and blog content.
Google Trends is useful for looking at the search volume for various words and
terms on Google. This is great for seeing which niches are growing or declining
and whether it is worth proceeding with an area that is losing popularity.
By now, you might be asking this question:
How does this blog bring visitors to your base?
Before explaining this closer, I want to reveal to you one of the most vital
elements of running a blog that brings traffic to your base:
Make your blog express your brand.
What do I mean by your brand here?
Your brand encapsulates not only what your service is, but the way in which you
work and interact with others. It includes your personality, and what you appreci-
ate and what you ignore. It covers your enthusiasm for the work you do as well
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as the work of others, and it includes your general awareness of fashions and
trends.
When your blog expresses your brand in its design, your own work, and in the
words and pictures you share, you are using it to express your own personality,
your passion, your character, your professionalism; and that of your brand’s.
This will be picked up by the reader.
When you combine this brand expression with interesting and relevant content
and evidence of a level of expertise on your chosen niche (therefore credibil-
ity), you have a powerful effect that will benefit your self promotion.
This effect is that, apart from seeing some personality, which is important,
visitors begin to associate credibility with your brand and you yourself.
People are more likely to invest in your brand, use your services and buy your
products, especially amongst heavy competition, if they make this association
with you.
Positive association with your brand is the magic potion here.
Once people see this association between your blog’s content and your brand
and see the character behind it, they are much more likely to be interested
enough to click over to your base from you blog.
This is the real secret behind a successful blog that brings people to your base.
It is running a blog in this way that addresses the third stage of the sales cycle,
which is in developing relationships with people and building credibility.
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How to set up a blog
In getting set up with a new separate blog you need to first decide on the blog
platform you will use.
Blog Platform
There are two main types of platforms for blogging: hosted and self-hosted.
Hosted platforms like Typepad, are online services that will deal with everything
to do with blogging for you. Self-hosted platforms like Wordpress.org (different
to Wordpress.com) require software that you download, install and host yourself
using a hosting service such as Hostgator.
There are a couple of things you need to be aware of before deciding on a

platform to choose.
• How technical are you?

• Are you willing to spend money on it?
Self-hosted Platforms Hosted Platforms

Wordpress.org Typepad
b2evolution Wordpress.com
Lifetype Eponym
Moveable Type Blogger
Refer to more blog platforms in R6 in Resources.
To help you to decide on whether to go for hosted or self-hosted:
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Hosted
If you have never used a blog before and aren’t very technically aware, you’re
better off using a hosted platform for now. They are cheap, free to run, and are
pretty simple to set up. Any required updates tend to take care of themselves,
and will be better positioned on the search engines because they are already
tied to established sites.
The drawbacks of a hosted platform are that they are not very flexible to the
way you want your blog, and are restricted in terms of their design. You won’t
have as much ownership as on a self-hosted platform through not officially
owning the content you put on it, and having a URL that is shared with the host.
Self-hosted
These platforms give you full control in terms of their design; are highly custom-
izable, and you get your own unique domain name, which is very important in
giving your blog a unique and professional edge.
On the down-side, self-hosted platforms can be complicated to set up and

require some technical knowledge. You will also need to pay the small domain
name fee as well as the hosting fee. You will be at the mercy of your own host if
they experience difficulties with servers, although I have so far had little difficulty
with Hostgator.
The really useful thing about blogging and choosing a platform is the help and
advice available for you on the internet. A brilliant place to get hold of more
information on blog platforms is the Authority Blogger forum.
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Get on Wordpress
The platform I recommend personally is the self-hosted Wordpress.org platform

to host your blog through.
If you aren’t very technical and a newbie to blogging, but are still keen on using
a flexible and professional system for your blog (as well as for your portfolio and
base site), you can follow the bonus guide to Wordpress blogs that came with
this book to get set up quickly and easily.
If you decide to go for the hosted platform option, follow the instructions given to
you on the website of the platform you decide to go for.
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What to include in your blog
The following are elements to consider as you go about putting together your
blog:
Your Blog Domain Name
If you’ve chosen to go self-hosted, you’ll need to register for a domain name,

which I recommend buying from Godaddy, but you can also consider other
domain name sellers like 123-reg.
Things to consider when choosing a name:
• Keep it short
• Keep it memorable
• Consider having keywords in it that relate to your blog topic, but I
would go for something memorable or brandable over keywords.
• Make sure the domain is quick and easy to say and spell.
• Try and find a .com over anything else. If you can’t find one and must
have the name you’ve chosen, go for other top level domain endings
like .net or .org as they are more recognized and associated with more
value.
Refer to the bonus booklet for further steps to take on setting up the blog,
including signing up with a host service, adding your platform to the host, adding
plugins and more.
About/Contact Page
Having a page that explains what the blog is about and who the author behind it
is in some depth is important. This is because many readers like to know what
the focus of the content is, so that they know what to come back for if it is of
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interest. Knowing about you and/or your co-writers is important, especially as

your blog should be viewed as an expression of your brand. Consider including
a picture of yourself to add further character and more a human quality.
You can include a means of being contacted within the ‘about’ page, in a
separate ‘contact’ page, or somewhere viewable on the main blog page.
A link to your base
Have an obvious way for your blog readers to find your base site. This should
be a clear link on the homepage above the ‘fold’ (bottom edge of the visible
screen) and perhaps also incorporated into your about page and in any other
‘calls to action’ on any other pages you might have.
Social Network Links and RSS
Include ways for your readers to connect with you on social networking sites like
Twitter and Facebook with a clear button or link above the fold. These would link
directly to the profiles you have set up on these sites.
Also have a button that enables readers to subscribe to your RSS feed, which
you create through FeedBurner. Once you have burnt a feed based on the blog
address of your site, go to Publicize to find out more about putting RSS buttons
on your blog.
This will all tie your readers closer to you and your blog content.
Consider also displaying follower counts for things like your RSS feed and
Twitter, as this adds value and credibility to your site and encourages repeat
visitors.
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Popular Posts
The likelihood of your visitors appreciating the value of your content, subscribing
and returning, will be increased by seeing your popular and best articles on the
front page. Include an area that showcases highly viewed/commented posts.
Subscribe to Comments
Without the ability for people to be alerted of follow-up comments to comments

they have left on the blog, there is less incentive or reminder for them to return.
You can install the Wordpress plugin for subscribing to comments here.
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Writing and Maintaining Your Blog
Consider the following points when going about on your ‘journey’ of writing and
keeping up a blog. It’s not going to be easy all the time, especially in staying
disciplined to keep adding content, but stick with it. You’ll soon see how effective
a tool in promoting yourself blogging can be.
Content
You will hear most, if not all successful bloggers, as well as experts and keen
readers of blogs, say that it is the content of what is written on a blog that
makes it successful, in other words, “Content is King”.
What you discuss in your blog posts needs to be unique, and it must be useful
to readers, for it to stand a chance of attracting many readers.
According to Technorati, the major blog directory, a new blog is published every
second. So you can imagine how much competition you are facing, although a
lot of it will be low quality.
The content you include should be original, or presented in such a way that
delivers a unique perspective on the topics you choose. This means having
content that educates and informs, and/or provides news of some kind. Content
can also be for entertainment, debate, as well as simply connecting people who
share similar, ideally niche, interests.
Flagship content
If you are about to launch a blog or have been blogging for a while, you want
to think seriously about putting in four or more posts or articles that one would
consider ‘flagship’ content. This is material that will be returned to over and
over again by visitors for its value and use. This might be a post in the form of a
useful tutorial on digital art, a valuable interview, a list of resources, an original
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and important article, and so on.
It is this content that will get people talking about your blog, and returning for
more, so make sure you put some thought into these posts. Have a look around
other popular blogs that you like and see what they post that has real value for
you and is clearly flagship. Don’t worry too much about publishing material that
is 100% unique, as you could put mash up posts together, taking information
from elsewhere and presenting it in a different way, for example.
Post frequency and length
When it comes to the rest of your content and your regular posts, make sure
you keep it consistent, whatever the frequency. Blogs tend to find more success
through having frequent posts (such as Drawn), as this will inevitably get picked
up by more people if the content is good, but many blogs have become popular
even with infrequent posts (like Tim Ferriss’ 4HWW).
Be realistic about how much you can and want to post, as it is often a problem
that you might run out of ideas in the form of ‘writer burnout’. You don’t want this
to happen.
Read Darren Rowse’s blog and book, Problogger, for more ideas on writing for
blogs.
It is definitely wise to incorporate some of your own work into your blog,
as long as it relates to the blog’s niche. This is because you want the blog to
reflect your brand as well as promote your own stuff amongst it’s other good
content.
Get people involved
One of the best things you can do as you write posts and articles for your blog is
to encourage reader participation including bookmarking posts, ‘retweeting’ and
contributing to the discussion within the comments.
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Evidence of feedback in this way adds value to your blog, provides you with
feedback, and will bring in further traffic.
Writing Technique
Writing for blogs doesn’t necessarily require the same technique or style
as writing for other platforms or media. You can be casual and expressive,
depending on what kind of image you want to project to your reader.
Keep in mind, however, that well written words are your most powerful tool of
engaging people visiting your site and keeping people coming back.
Here are some things worth considering when writing for your target market.
Headings and subheadings
Headings are useful for breaking up posts and drawing the reader from one
point to the next.
Intriguing opening lines
Readers will make a judgement as to whether they will continue reading a post
based on how it starts, so try to grab people through an attention-grabbing
opening line.
Formatting
Use a mixture of bold, italics, font sizes, underlining and bullet points to clarify
and emphasize the points you make. Also break up the writing to make it more
digestible to read. Space between paragraphs can often be the difference
between a reader deciding to stay or hastily retreat from your written posts.
Don’t waffle, and keep sentences generally brief
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You don’t need to needlessly complicate things to make a point.
Be positive, not negative
State something that is, instead of what is not. Studies on the psychology
behind this show better absorption of the message by the reader for written
material delivered in a positive frame.
Use space
Break up paragraphs and blocks of text with well-defined breaks, so that

reading is more digestible and easier on the moving eye.
Use short first paragraphs
This applies to longer pieces of copy like articles and blog posts. These will
bring the reader in to read and read on.
Take grammar, punctuation and spelling seriously
Try and keep this area in shape, even if it is not 100% accurate. Even if you
tend to write in a more casual tone, still treat this area with importance. This will
transmit a professional and ‘with it’ image associated with you and your writing.
All the small details like apostrophe use are important too!
Keywords
Including a smattering of keywords that relate to your niche (for example, the
word ‘vector’ if you write about digital illustration) in your copy is good for search
engine rankings, and will bring more targeted visitors to your writing.
Keywords are especially effective in titles and opening paragraphs.
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Repetition
Without overdoing it, repetition will emphasize key points. Repetition is an

important element in persuasive writing too. Be sure to express the same point
in different ways to avoid monotony.
Use lists
Bulleted and numbered lists have been shown to be a popular and very
readable writing method.
No passive-voice
This is when the subject of a sentence is swapped with the object. For example:
“The boy hit the ball,” is in the active voice. The passive voice would be: “The
ball was hit by the boy.” Passive writing tends to add unnecessary words to an
otherwise clearly written sentence.
Pictures
These tend to be successful elements of good blogs. A picture will can draw in
readers at the openings of posts and break up longer posts. Pictures can also
make articles and posts more memorable.
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Blog Promotion
I’ll be talking in detail about how exactly you can bring traffic and gain exposure
for your blog and base further on in this book. I’ll briefly run through some of
the key things you should do after you have built a blog and after you publish
key posts (or all posts if you have the stamina!).
This is quite an extensive list, and don’t feel you need to do everything within it.
However, you should consider doing the highlighted (in red) activities
after every post you publish.
Here are some methods, in no particular order:
• Blog directory/RSS submission
Submit your blog to the suggested directories listed in Resources section under
Blog Directories. It’s up to you how many you want to submit to.
Refer to the section in Step 2 on how to submit to RSS sites in base

promotion.
• Submit press releases
Submit a press release describing your blog, detailing its focus and benefits,
just before you launch the site and consider doing so whenever it goes through
a redesign or major update.
Further details on how to do this are found under Press Releases in Step 7.
Like with your base, you should submit your blog to Google through Webmaster Tools, explained in the
previous step.
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• Pinging
Submit your site to a pinging service like Pingomatic and Pingler so that various
‘ping servers’ are notified of your recent blog entries and filter through the web,
notifying blog aggregators and more of your entry.
• Post to forums
Let others know of your work and site in the announcement areas of relevant
forums.
• Pitch to other bloggers
It’s definitely worth contacting other bloggers in similar fields who you have
previously built rapport with of your new posts, which they may well mention in
their own blogs, retweet, promote through social bookmarking sites, share in
their mailing lists, and so on. They may ask you to contribute to their own blogs,
whereby you could get further exposure by doing so.
• Social networking
Share your site to followers and contacts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr
and others. Use su.pr to submit updates to Twitter and Facebook, as this will
automatically be bookmarked to StumbleUpon.
• Social bookmarking
Bookmark your blog or URL of the blog post on sites like Delicious and Reddit.
Use services like OnlyWire or Socializer to submit to multiple bookmarking sites
quickly for a small monthly fee (also see R14).
• Internal links
Link to other posts within your blog in your blog posts, to promote more of your
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own content.
• Newsletters
Mention your blog to your mailing list subscribers in your newsletter.
• Other blogs
Mention your posts and your blogs on other, related blogs’ comment and discus-
sion areas.
• Email signature
A link to your blog in your email signature is an easy step that is just simple
marketing.
• Follow up posts
Write a second post extending the original in some way. This will draw attention
to your previous post.
• Advertise
Consider some of the tactics discussed in Step 8 of this guide, including paid
services, such as highly targeted traffic you can get through Stumbleupon’s
advertising service. You might want to use paid advertising to build some
momentum of targeted visitors to your site, before cutting it off when you have
more organic traffic coming in.
• Article marketing
Write articles as outlined in Step 7 (No. 10) to gain exposure for your blog
through article directories, and even in the form of guest posts on other sites.
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• Submit to news and links sites
You can notify certain highly-visited creative sites of your blog post link, which
often yields good results in terms of people coming to your site. See more
details of this in the traffic building Step 7 (No. 17).
• Zemanta
Zemanta allows you to find related stories to your content that you have at the
end of posts provided to your readers. With your blog on the system, other sites
can promote your blog entries when they recommend your story.
Blog Examples
Here are some great examples of successful blogs with focused topics and
great, original content:
Four Hour Work Week: Focusing on ‘Lifestyle Design’.
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WallStats: Focused on Infographics
Tokyo Fashion
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The Ampersand: Blog focusing only on ampersand typography
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STEP 4.
BUILD A
MAILING
LIST
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One of the must-do things you can do as a creative is to build a list of

accessible contacts. By accessible I mean that you have a record of people and
a means for each of them to be contacted.
Having an address book full of your contacts that you can call or email is a good
thing. What we will be discussing in this section, and what is a step beyond this,
is in compiling an email mailing list.
What is a Mailing List?

This is a collection of stored email addresses that people have agreed to hand
over to you, usually in return for something of value. This is often a regular
email from you that will be of interest and value to them.
Establishing, building and using a list is an excellent way of keeping people tied
to you and your work. An email list should still be regarded as the king of rela-
tionship-building, even over social media marketing, because it creates a ‘quiet’
and dedicated moment with your subscribers, away from noisy social media
environments.
As long as you can provide your mailing list with content that will keep them
interested, you will have a group of people that you can bring into your long-
term self-promotional sphere.
They will be made regularly aware of you, reminded of you and will hopefully
click on links you provide to your site, to projects you are working on, things you
are selling, and so on. These are the people that you will build your own trust,
respect and credibility amongst, whilst developing relationships with. This is why
it is so important to set up a mailing list for your business and keep building it
up.
The ability to promote your products and services lies in this system of main-
taining long-term interaction with the people on your list. You are not, however,
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using the content you provide to constantly hard sell.
A mailing list actually addresses all four of the stages I talked about in the sales
cycle, in that it keeps you visible and allows you to develop relationships with
people before making offerings. You should view email marketing as the center-
piece of your online communications with prospects and fans.
What should you provide to your subscribers?
It is always up to the reader to decide on what to do with an email they receive,

including in unsubscribing if they feel the need to do so. As such, it is your job to
provide material that keeps them interested and is intriguing enough for them to
take action when you want them to.
To keep people on your mailing list and to attract new people to join, you will
need to provide something that is informative, fun and/or fascinating, which is
not overly intrusive.
This can be a newsletter or ‘broadcast’ containing...
• A weekly tip;
• Tutorials;
• Notable things your are working on;
• Short writings;
• Music previews;
• Short articles;
• Story installments;
• Videos;
• Round ups of useful new resources;
• Poems;
• Games;
• Quizzes;
• Polls;
• A serial comic strip;
• Competitions...and so on.
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Content should be relevant, depending on what you are blogging about, what
your profession is, and what kinds of people you want on your list.
In order to attract potential clients to your list, you’ll need to include occasional
content detailing your own work, exhibitions etc, and make sure this is made
clear on the landing page (a separate page with a description of the benefits of
the list and the sign up form). This is also important for those who found your
landing page, who didn’t come through your blog, who are interested in keeping
up with the work you are doing, and any products you might be selling.
Apart from creating an awareness of you through the content you provide, one
of the main ways you can use a mail-out to a mailing list to promote yourself is
by providing a ‘call to action’ at the bottom of your emails. A ‘call to action’ is
something that will draw the reader to do something in particular such as visiting
a website or filling in a form.
Where do people sign up?
You can provide a mailing list form anywhere that you think will be seen by the
most relevant people. You can even provide several, including one on your
Facebook page, for example, which will be discussed later.
An option is to advertise your newsletter on your blog and link over to your
base. This means that people will be brought to your site at the very least if they
don’t end up signing up for that visit. This also means people seeing your more
professional web presence, which might make them more inclined to sign up to
your list. You will need to make it clear that visitors are leaving the blog at this
point, however.
If you put a button on your blog linking to the landing page on your base, make
sure your subscribers receive content that is related to the topics on the blog,
because landing page visitors will have come from there too.
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I personally think the best set up is to have a landing page on both your
base and on your blog, though you can use the same text and form in each.
This avoids transferring people between sites who don’t want to be transferred.
It is possible to have an area incorporating a condensed version of your mailing

list introduction and form on your site or blog’s header or sidebar, and this can
be in addition to a separate landing page.
Don’t worry at this point about how much work maintaining a newsletter or
similar will create for you, as you need only provide a small amount of informa-
tion every few weeks, or even months. You don’t even need a standalone blog,
but as you’ll see as this book develops, a blog can be your main source of traffic
to your online base.
If you’re completely confused at this stage about where to put your sign up
forms, stick to the following (you can always change things later):
• Have a link saying ‘subscribe to the mailing list’ on the front of your
blog.
• Have this link to a landing page and sign up form on a separate page
on the blog.
• Link to your base site/portfolio through a link on the front of your blog
saying ‘John’s personal site’ or similar, as well as building the link into
the ‘about’ page on your blog.
• Have a similar landing page on your personal site.
• Link back to your blog from your base.
The important thing is in getting relevant people to either sign up to the

list or to visit your base site.
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How to set up a mailing list
1. Come up with a focus for the content you’ll provide.
Apart from the updates on your own work that you might choose to include, your
focus for the bulk of your content will be based on the following criteria:
• Your skills.
• The content of your niche blog (if you choose to link the list to it).
• Your knowledge or expertise on something (it’s easier than you think
to get knowledgeable on something through a little reading).
• What you are passionate about that you can share with your
readers.
Here are some more specific examples of what you might provide to your
mailing list in the form of a newsletter:
• Regular tips on how to get the best out of photoshop

• A poem every two weeks if you are a writer
• Tutorials on using oil paints
• A monthly video on DJ scratching techniques
• A new weekly graphic novel installment (possibly leading up to the
sale of a book, for example).
2. Create a free giveaway.
Providing something potential mailing list subscribers can download straight

away on signing up is a great way to getting people off the fence in their
decision to sign up in addition to attracting new people to your list.
A free pdf ebook, guide or report is always a good bet. An example could be:
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“10 must-know night-time digital photography tips”.
The giveaway needn’t be written; it can be a free song, or a downloadable il-

lustration that can be printed, for example. You can be creative here.
If you’re having trouble thinking of something, ask your audience (such as blog
readers) what they want and have a research session looking into what other
people want through forum discussions or what others writing similar blogs are
giving away.
3. Plan your welcome message and first broadcast.
Your welcome message and introduction to the newsletter (or whatever you
choose to regularly send to your list) will be received automatically by those who
sign up. Therefore you need to have this prepared before setting up a sign up
form.
A broadcast is any email you send out to your list. You will need to send out
your first broadcast following your specified period between broadcasts from
the day you get your first sign up. For example, if your first subscriber signs up
on a Monday and you have a weekly newsletter, you would ideally submit and
broadcast on the next Monday. As such, you’ll want to be prepared so that you
can send out emails on time.
4. Sign up with an auto-responder provider.
Having an online service like Aweber perform most of the tasks associated with
having an online/digital mailing list is a must, and will save you a lot of time and
hassle in the long term.
These providers will enable automated initial messages, building forms,

automated broadcasts, statistics provision, database compilation and more.
Aweber is my weapon of choice here, although it will attract a small monthly fee.
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There are other free providers that will provide similar functions like Aardvark
and Bravenet, although I would advise against free providers as they may send
out ads with your mail outs, and you could risk losing subscribers.
5. Design and write your landing page.
As was discussed earlier, you don’t need a landing page, but having one can
help attract more people to leave their details with you.
This is normally a separate page that contains some text designed to describe
what your readers will be getting, any extras that come with subscribing, and the
sign up form itself.
For your landing page, you need to provide a brief ‘pitch’ that shows people why
they should sign up to your newsletter. Write a simple paragraph giving details
on what subscribers will get out of the newsletter including mention of the free
gift (if you provide one). Emphasize the benefits that your target subscriber will
receive.
Here is an example at Red Lemon Club.
6. Design the newsletter.
Your newsletter need not be too fancy, and can simply be a block of text that
you copy and paste from a text document. Make sure the text appears as a
readable block, and not written out with lines that go on for too long on one line.
You might need to use the return button for this to work.
You can also add to the professionalism and aesthetic of your newsletter by
incorporating a design, images and a better all round structure.
You can get this done (or have someone else do this) using web design
software like Dreamweaver, or you can use an existing template into which you
can input images and text. Aweber provides a set of templates you can use. The
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code is placed inside the message box through your auto-responder service.
Little Chimp Society Sample Newsletter:
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7. Run through the auto-responder set up.
Follow the steps you need to go through that lead up to the provision of the
code that you will use to place into your landing page, or elsewhere.
8. Input the form onto web/landing page.
Make sure the landing page has been invisible to visitors up until this point.
You can either disable the page, keep it from being published, or have the text
prepared in a separate document, so that it can be copied over.
The opt-in form is easily created through something like Aweber. You place the
code into the page by copying from Aweber and pasting.
You can also embed the opt-in form into your blog homepage, so that visitors
see it immediately, and when any other pages are open as well. Make sure the
opt-in boxes are above the fold for a better chance of being seen.
Look around at other successful blogs to get a sense of how they use landing
pages and opt-in forms to get more ideas.
9. Attract subscribers to your list.
Now that you’re all set up, it is important to put your landing page and sign up
form where it can be seen, and by the right people. The best way to do this is
by letting people know of your free giveaway, and leading them to the landing
page.
You could have a button or link on your blog offering your free product, leading
them to the landing page and the sign up form. It’s good to be honest about you
providing the giveaway in exchange for a mailing list subscription as early on as
you can.
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An alternative is to simply provide a ‘mailing list’ button or link, and then seal the
deal once visitors are on the landing page by offering the giveaway there.
This will be in addition to a link from your blog to the front page of your personal
site as well, for those who want to see your own work.
The key thing is that blog visitors and other external traffic have the choice of
either seeing your personal site or signing up straight away to your mailing list.
The traffic you drive to your blog, which we will discuss in Step 7, should take
care of the majority of people coming to your landing page(s).
Though the traffic you drive to your blog should take care of the majority of
people coming to your mailing list landing page(s), you can directly promote
your list in the following ways:
• Suggesting via email how potential clients can sign up.

• You can provide a link to your landing page as part of your email
signature.
• Incorporating the link (be careful not to spam) into forum discus-
sions.
• Mentioning your giveaway in blog comments.
• Bringing the link into Twitter tweets.
• Ask permission to add someone’s email to your list whenever
possible.
I personally recommend focusing on bringing people to your main port of call,

which is your blog. From the blog and your site, people can learn more about
you and your content, and make their minds up over whether they want to sign
up to your mailing list.
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The on-going mailing list process

The purpose behind sending out emails to your list is primarily to develop a
trusting relationship between you and your subscribers, addressing stage 3 of
the sales cycle. Reminding contacts of the work you do and your existence is all
part of this, and an important part of your ongoing success as a freelancer.
Touching base regularly in this way allows for the opportunity to effectively
advertise yourself, and, not only your sites, but it also enables you to create
an offering that will hopefully lead to work or a sale. This addresses the fourth
stage of the sales cycle. For someone like an artist, an offering might be
something like directing readers to the referral policy declaration on their base
or providing details of an upcoming gallery exhibition.
Because the mailing list system is ongoing, developing relationships and

reminding people of your work is also an ongoing process.
Example mailing list set up:
You have a blog focusing on urban photography. You spend your promotional
effort driving targeted people to your blog. Readers interested in your giveaway
click through to your mailing list landing page on your personal site, and you
explain to them that by adding themselves to the mailing list, they will receive
the free giveaway, content relating to urban photography, as well as updates on
what you are working on. This subscriber signs up, then receives weekly news-
letters from you and eventually refers you to a colleague who hires you.
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STEP 5.
GET
HOOKED UP
TO SOCIAL
MEDIA
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I doubt many of you haven’t heard of the use of social networking sites
like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace in building networks and connecting with
others.
They are of real value in not only this, but in storing, recording and sharing files,
gaining access to information, being inspired, engaging in discussion, advertis-
ing, receiving advice from experts in your field, making announcements and
sharing updates. Of course, all of this will prove very significant for promoting
yourself and your work.
There are so many relatively novel things that has been brought along with
social media that will enable you to put your self promotional efforts into super-
drive.
What is social media, and where does networking fit in?
Social media is media that is shared through online social interaction.
Highly accessible and scalable publishing platforms like Facebook, Digg, and
Twitter have enabled for this kind of interaction to take place on a huge and
ever-growing scale.
Social networking sites form part of the social media arena, but are more
specifically tailored and structured for networking. All social media sites enable
networking and interaction to varying levels, for example, social bookmark-
ing/news sites like Delicious, Digg and StumbleUpon, which are primarily for
internet users to share, search and manage bookmarks of sites, as opposed to
being primarily used for networking (more social networking and bookmarking
sites are listed in the back of this book in sections R13 and R14).
The methods in this particular step focus on four of the current main social
networking sites: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.
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The exciting thing about it all is the rate at which social media sites are growing,
particularly the current big networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
At the time of writing, Facebook is the second most visited site on the planet,
with well over 300 million registered users. Both MySpace and Twitter’s traffic
levels are in the top fifteen of all sites, with Twitter’s rate of growth at a stagger-
ing 1,382% year-on-year in February 2009 (source: mashable.com). LinkedIn
has over 50 million registered users, spanning more than 200 countries and
territories across the globe.
So, you can see that engaging with these networking platforms, having access
to the millions of active and targeted members within them, and addressing all
four stages in the sales cycle in the process, can potentially yield some signifi-
cant benefits for boosting promotion and attracting clients, if harnessed properly.
I’m going to run through how to get set up effectively with each of the main
social networking sites starting with Facebook. You don’t need to get set up on
all of them, but doing so will greatly benefit your promotional campaign.
We’ll look at exactly how to set up and best optimize your accounts on these
sites to best make use of them.
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Getting set up with Facebook
What exactly is Facebook, and why would I use it for promotion?
Facebook is essentially an online means to network with friends, fans and col-
leagues.
It’s primary components are the homepage, containing aggregated updates

from all your contacts, your profile page, containing your information, your
activity and your wall. In effectively promoting yourself through Facebook, we
will be focusing on setting up a fan page as well, which is to have a place to
drive your fans without a limit, whereas there is a limit on the number of friends
you can have (currently 5000).
What Facebook enables you to do is connect with relevant and key people;
build relationships with them; create exposure in front of them; expand your
network; build traffic to your sites; showcase and store your work and other
content, and much more. We will be treating Facebook purely as a marketing
tool here, and don’t worry about mixing private and public elements, as we will
come to that.
With so many members, you’ll need to use Facebook and its tools in just the
right ways, in order to make use of its promotional power.
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Set up your personal profile
It is important to have properly set up a profile page for the purposes of adding
credibility and building trust amongst those you engage with on Facebook. It
also acts as the platform from which you add new contacts as friends, so that
you can grow your network.
If you haven’t yet got a personal profile on Facebook, i.e. you don’t have an
account, go to Facebook.com and fill in the details it asks for.
If you don’t want a personal profile, and simply want to set up a business page,
you can click the link below the sign up area that says: ‘to create a page for a
celebrity, band or business, click here’.
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Add a decent profile picture, ideally of your face and one that you use consis-
tently in association with all your online promotional work.
Add a mini bio in the box beneath your picture. Click on the pencil symbol and,
in the first person, briefly introduce yourself and the work you do. You could add
a brief description of your referral policy and link to your site’s referral policy
declaration on your base.
Fill in the information on the info page including your web links. Put your
links within your website contact details in the info tab, as well as in the sidebar
bio box on the left beneath your personal introduction if you want (not forgetting
to use the full web address including http://, otherwise they won’t work).
I would recommend putting in your interests, favourite films and so on in there,

for the sake of appearing human and building trust. Having a personal feel will
make it more likely for people to confirm you as a friend/contact later on when
they check out your profile before confirming.
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Privacy settings: Go to Account > Privacy Settings > Profile Information to

make sure your profile privacy is addressed. You might want to hide personal
photos from people you add, and you can customize exactly who it is that sees
certain photos.
You can tailor your privacy very specifically with Facebook, so tweak the
settings so that you are happy with everything. I would suggest allowing new
people to post on your wall, as this encourages interaction and relationship
building, and will come up on that person’s news feed whenever they interact
too, creating further exposure for your own wall. You can always delete unnec-
essary posts from others.
Have a look through the other privacy settings including Privacy Settings
> Search and make sure you are visible to everyone searching for you and
that you allow your profile to be indexed in public search results on
search engines (unless you want to remain more private, then have this box
unchecked).
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Put together a photo or video album that contains the best of your portfolio
or other work-related media for all to see. You would do this by clicking on
the Photos tab and choosing to Create a Photo Album or clicking the + tab,
scrolling to the video icon, then choosing to Upload Video.
Get rid of unnecessary clutter from your profile page, especially games and
unnecessary applications. You need to view Facebook as a fairly personal but
still professional web presence for your brand.
Set up options to import content from some sites through the Options
button above your profile wall > Settings then choosing sites you have a
presence on that you want to import from, and entering your sign up details so
that they can be recognized as your accounts.
Import your blog feed to your profile wall. In the search bar, search for
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‘Notes‘and with ‘Applications‘ highlighted, click View Application next to the

Notes application then Go to Application. On this page, go to Import a Blog
and enter the blog site or blog feed address (which you set up at feedburner.
com) into the box and click Start Importing and then once happy with the feed
preview Confirm Import.
Add relevant apps by searching for apps within the search bar and being sure
‘Applications’ is highlighted in the menu on the left. You might want to add your
Twitter feed or your LinkedIn profile to your profile for example.
You can add these newly installed apps to your boxes tab or elsewhere on your
profile. One way of doing this is by clicking the + button on your tabs bar above
your wall, and finding the app to incorporate into your profile. Think about apps
that will add value and relevant content to your profile, as these will ultimately
be seen on the news feeds being seen by your contacts.
Add a mailing list opt-in box to your profile by searching for and installing
the app called profile html. Copy and paste the opt-in box code given to you by
your mailing list auto-responder service like Aweber into the application’s profile
box (as opposed to the tab, so that it appears in your profile’s sidebar), preview
to test, then submit. You may have to play around a bit with the design so that it
fits.
If you find your opt-in box does not appear on your wall, but in your opt-in box’s
tab, just click the pencil that appears on the tab, and select Move to Wall Tab.
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Customize your Facebook homepage
This is the default non-profile area which you see on clicking either the
Facebook logo button top left, or the Home button in the header. This area
shows the combined updates and feeds of all your contacts in a micro-blog
format, with newest updates at the top. It is also a place where you can keep
track of upcoming birthdays and events, as well as various requests.
Set up friends lists
Especially once you have many key contacts, you’ll want to get in front of
specific people and you’ll want to have a news feed on your home page that is
not full of clutter and unhelpful updates.
Setting up lists allows you to sort people into groups, whose updates you can
show or hide as you specify. You’ll want to make a list of people that you pur-
posefully want to interact with and engage.
Click Friends in the menu on the left side of your homepage and click the
button that says Create a list. Add your key contacts to the list from your list of
already confirmed friends. These could be potential clients, key influencers in
your industry, potential referrers, enthusiastic fans and so on. You might want
to leave this until later, when you have more relevant people added to your
Facebook network as friends.
Once saved, this list will appear in the left sidebar under Friends and can be
selected when you want to view the feed of your relevant people, instead of
viewing a mashup of everyone you know on Facebook.
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Set up your fan page
A fan page is an area where businesses and organizations have a presence on

Facebook, which its fans and followers use to stay connected them. A fan page
also applies to you, as a freelancer or your company, as a means to promote
yourself.
Fan pages are great for addressing the second stage in the sales cycle:
securing contacts that you can connect with and building relationships with. I
like to see fan pages as your secondary mailing list, as it allows for contacts
to effectively subscribe to content you are posting up and it allows for you to
contact fans. You should see fan pages as a means to secure new contacts and
remind people of your presence, and your mailing list as a more concrete and
effective means to communicate and share content.
You do not need to be a friend on Facebook with someone for them to be

your fan.
Click on Advertising, at the bottom of any page within Facebook. Making sure
you are in the ‘Pages’ area, click Create Page.
For the category of your page, choose one that suits what you do, for example
‘visual artist’.
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For the name of your page, make sure you choose this well and include some
keywords that relate to your work. You will not be able to change this in future
once this has been saved. The great thing about fan pages, that you won’t get
with groups and events, is that they get indexed by Google, based on keywords
and the activity within them.
If you are a digital artist, for example, you might want the page name: ‘John
Smith, Digital Artist and Photoshop Expert’. Now click Create Page to be taken
to the new page.
Add a picture that represents you or your work, ideally a decent picture of you
if the page focuses on your services.
Get your settings just right by clicking on Edit Page within the fan page, then
clicking Edit under ‘Wall Settings’ and choosing Posts by Page and Fans as
the default view for the wall, as this will allow better interaction with your fans.
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Change your ‘Default landing tab’ to Info, which means that when people
first arrive at your fan page, they will see all your details and juicy information
straight away, before moving to other tabs if they choose.
Have all the boxes within ‘Posting ability’ checked, as you want to encourage as
much interaction with fans as possible.
Have a look through all the other fan page settings on this page and edit them
the way you want if you like, but generally everything should be ok to leave at
this stage.
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Add your information by clicking the Info tab on the page itself, and clicking
Edit Information. Fill in the boxes, including adding your full web addresses,
making sure you introduce what exactly it is you do, where you are based, what
sets you apart and how you will benefit your clients. This will be the first thing
people will see when they come to your fan page, so make sure it provides
information in a succinct and interesting way.
Add a brief introduction to your service in the box to the left, under the picture,
and include your site/s underneath, clearly spaced out, and in full.
Add the best of your work to the Photos tab by uploading an album so that
visitors can see your work within Facebook itself. If you have other forms of
media, consider clicking the + tab and searching for applications (either default
ones or ones you have previously added) that allow you to add in other formats,
such as video.
If you are about to launch your page, you might add some media files to the
wall, so that they are seen for a while when people come to your wall. To do
this, click on the relevant icons under the ‘What’s on your mind’ wall comment
box and attach the media you want, such as a picture that will be posted on
your wall. Remember that your wall acts like a blog, so that new content at the
top of the wall will constantly replace older stuff.
Import your blog to your wall, which is described in the section on your profile,
previously.
Incorporate your mailing list opt-in box to your fan page. You do this
by firstly installing the app ‘Static FBML’, which means Facebook Markup
Language and allows you to add code to your page.
Run a search for Static FBML in the Facebook search bar. Click the app and
add to your page.
Then, go back into your page, (which you can find by typing it into the search
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bar, or going to your homepage and clicking Ads and Pages and finding it
under ‘Pages, and going into ‘edit page’, and selecting the FBML app > ‘edit’.
Name the box and drop in the code you acquired from your auto-responder,
such as Aweber. Click Save Changes.
Your opt-in box will appear as part of the tabs, but you can transfer the box to
the more visible side-bar by selecting the pencil icon and choosing Move to
Wall Tab. Again, like with your profile opt-in box, you might need to tweak the
design for it to fit properly within your fan page.
Now, you should be basically fully set up with Facebook to make the most of
promoting yourself and networking through it, which I’ll explain in Step 6.
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Getting set up with Twitter
Getting properly set up on Twitter is the next part of getting hooked up with
social media. Get started with the following before using the methods in the
next step to build up a Twitter following and greatly boost your exposure through
Twitter.
What is Twitter?
Twitter is essentially a ‘micro-blogging’ site where people follow your ‘tweets’ or

micro-posts and you follow the tweets of others. When people follow what you
have to say, your tweets will show up in their timelines (the feed that is shown
on their homepage). When you follow people, their messages will get aggre-
gated into your own ‘Home’ timeline.
The key thing about Twitter, apart from enabling you to build a network, drive
traffic to your sites and build your credibility, is that it allows you to connect with
people in your industry and people in industries that would use your services.
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Set up your Twitter profile
Head over to Twitter.com, click the sign up button and fill in your details. For
your username, try and incorporate your name or whatever is associated most
closely with your creative business. Because usernames take up the short (140
letters long) tweets, the shorter the better. I would recommend getting Twitter to
notify your friends (through your email networks) that you are on Twitter if you
are starting out, to get some ‘follower momentum’ going. However, don’t do this
until you have customized your Twitter profile first, which I will discuss now.
Create your avatar (small picture in this case) by clicking Settings > Picture
and upload and save a picture, ideally of your face, like on Facebook, or of a
logo or snippet of your work. Always put your brand or business at the forefront
of any design decisions you make online.
Write your bio within Settings by first typing it out in a text document so you
can view it in one piece. Include key words relating to what you do, because
your bio is indexed in search engines and is searchable. This is important
because people searching online for creative services might stumble on your
Twitter profile and hire you through Twitter, for example. Type shift+backslash (|)
to create vertical lines within the bio text to split it up.
Also under settings, put in your full url linking to your base (including http://), and
fill in the rest. Unless you only want to share your account and tweets to a select
few people, leave ‘protect my updates’ unchecked. It would be pointless from a
self-promotional and network-building point of view to protect your tweets, as it
would restrict interaction with others and content sharing.
Your brand should be unique and reflect what you do, so it is highly recom-
mended that you get your own, unique background image for Twitter, which
you or someone else can design. Having a uniquely tailored background will
have an effect on how likely people are to follow you. Take advantage of the
space either side of your Twitter blog feed, by bringing in valuable information to
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your design, like your other site addresses and so on.
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Upload your background by going to Settings > Design, and uploading a

background image. Refer to Green Glasses’ tutorial on Red Lemon Club, for a
step by step on how to create a Twitter background image ready for download.
Customize your design colours in Design > Change design colors, and
choose some colours that match the theme in your Twitter background, as well
as your general themes on all your sites. Be careful that you don’t affect the
legibility of your text in all areas of your Twitter profile through changing text and
panel colours.
Organize the email and other notices you receive through Twitter by going
to Settings > Notices, and checking or unchecking the boxes you want with
regard to how you want to be alerted for new followers and messages. I advise
checking the box that allows you to be notified of any direct messages you
receive, as these can be missed.
Automate
A great use of some of the Twitter tools provided by other sites includes sending
automatic messages to people that follow you. This will enable you to thank
them, and direct them to your base.
Get set up on SocialOomph or one of the various other online pre-schedul-

ing services for Twitter listed in the R17 Resources section of this book, for
automatic new follower welcome messages and auto-following.
Add your Twitter account, and within the account information editing area,
check the box that says ‘Automatically send a welcome message to new
followers’. In the box, compose a message that includes a short link (use su.pr
or bit.ly to shorten long links, although if your site name is short anyway, it’s best
to show the full site name) to your site. You could thank for the follow, and ask
people to send you feedback on your work. This is a good way of getting people
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to take action, by asking them to perform some task, that involves visiting your
site.
I would suggest automatically following people back, because it cements the

relationship you have with followers further, and enables each of you to send
messages to each other (which you can’t do if you don’t mutually follow each
other). With Socialoomph, check the box that says ‘Automatically follow people’,
then save everything.
Sign up to a link shortening service. When sharing links on Twitter, you will
want to shorten them owing to the restricted number of letters permitted within
each tweet. Link shortening is also an excellent way to track the number of
times people are clicking through your links. Bit.ly, Su.pr and Budurl are very
good.
Some examples of creatives who use Twitter effectively:
@mikeshelby
@imjustcreative
@rob_sheridan
@deuhlig
@AnnsBlogs
@isewcute
@writerauthorart
Networking and building followers through Twitter will be discussed in the next
step.
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Getting set up with MySpace
Many people think of MySpace as a place to showcase the work of musicians.

The site is actually an excellent platform for promotion for all kinds of people
and organizations, including small businesses, agencies as well as creative
freelancers. Many people in creative professions are joining MySpace for its
potential as a place to massively boost self promotion.
I’ll show you how to best set up your profile to maximize your promotional power
on MySpace.
Create Your MySpace Profile
Even if you have your own personal MySpace profile at the moment, it’s best to
set up a new one that centers on your business or work.
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Go to www.myspace.com and select a profile type. You’ll find a few options,

including a music or comedian profile, which will offer slightly different features
according to your vocation. If you don’t match any of the extra profile types on
offer, it is best to go for the personal page profile, which is the standard option.
Go through the sign up process, which you will need a valid email address
for. You will be asked to verify your email and add pictures to your profile. If
you have some pictures that showcase your work on hand, upload those to the
site. You can change your main profile picture at any time, but now would be a
chance to upload a logo or picture of you in keeping with your consistent brand.
Set your MySpace custom URL to include relevant keywords, or your name
by clicking the pick your MySpace URL link in the top left of the MySpace
dashboard area. Think about this carefully, as this cannot be changed in future,
unless you open a new page from scratch.
The next thing is to fill in your profile details by clicking Profile > Edit Profile.
Put some thought into filling in all your details including your interests as this
will all add to your personality and brand and will appeal to those prospects and
users who could potentially add you as a friend, contact you, and so on. Putting
in these details will also bring people to you, as the keywords you put within
fields such as ‘interests’ are searchable by people on MySpace. Think about
which keywords relating to your work you could incorporate into these details
pages.
As with Facebook, you might want to hold back on your year of birth for security.
Don’t forget to include a link to your website. Also consider incorporating your
web link into the design (discussed in the next section), like you might have
done through your Twitter background.
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Designing your Profile
Next, you need to set about designing your profile so that it looks professional,
is appealing and reflects your brand and your style. You want your profile to
be an extension of your base site, and reflect the style that runs through your
portfolio and brand.
MySpace is one of few social media sites that enables you to use code,
including CSS to customize your profile. This means designing the various
sections you want to put into your profile, through Dreamweaver for example,
and pasting the code into the available profile boxes. This allows you to make
some very special and dynamic MySpace profiles with slide shows, Flash and
more. I would recommend taking advantage of the flexibility this provides,
and either designing your own profile or getting someone to help you with it,
although bear in mind that legibility and simplicity will benefit your profile.
If you don’t have to ability to input your own code into your profile, you can use
any of the various third-party profile editors on the web, such as Mashcodes
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or you can use the very good MySpace Profile Editor within MySpace itself.
The Customize Profile link, which is located on the top right of your screen
once you have clicked Edit Profile from your homepage, will take you to the
MySpace editor.
The editor is very intuitive, and you shouldn’t find it too difficult to work your way
through designing your profile. When you get to customizing your modules,
which are the individual blocks within your profile, make sure the Add to Friends
link stands out, as this is something you want people to easily find as you build
out your MySpace network.
Consider taking advantage of images, text and video to drive visitors to your
mailing list landing page or blog, and/or base site. Effectively you are incorporat-
ing a call to action into your profile, which you can do in several places, which
will attract people to your blog or base. You’ll see many professional MySpace
pages using this.
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Adding Music
If you are a musician, you need to have prepared mp3 music files to upload
through the music player available with the musician’s profile. There are also
several other music widgets available for your profile, (have a look at the mp3
section at Widgetbox) that you can get online. Widgets come in the form of code
that you incorporate into your profile by dropping the code in your About Me
section.
Adding Video
If you have video to showcase, or have videos that you might be sharing as
part of your marketing campaign through sites like YouTube, you need to follow
these steps in adding it to your profile:
1. Click Video from the top navigation menu.

2. Click Upload.
3. Browse for the file and click Upload Video.
4. Under your newly uploaded video, click the Add to Profile link to bring the
video to your profile.
The methods on building up a substantial network and promoting your products

and services through MySpace effectively, will be covered in Step 6.
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Getting set up with LinkedIn

If MySpace is your laid back unofficial representation of you and your brand,
then LinkedIn is your sober, more official web presence that you can use to
great effect in nurturing your career, as well as the people that support it.
LinkedIn is an excellent tool to connect with millions of other professionals in

200 countries. You should view it as a platform for showcasing your professional
credentials and networking in a more career/business-focused environment. As
such, you need to make sure your profile has a clean, professional feel to it with
no grammatical or spelling errors.
Here’s how to get your brand set up on LinkedIn so that you can effectively
network with and attract contacts and clients.
Set up your Profile
Register at LinkedIn.com, then click Profile. Under Edit Contact Settings,

specify what kinds of messages you’d like to accept, and make sure all the
boxes under Opportunity Preferences are clicked, unless you want to rule out
certain opportunities from people.
Now you want to add a profile summary, which includes a brief and to the
point overview of what you do, and what sets you apart and, importantly, what
work experience you have had that will help you get the work you want in future.
Use this section to include details of your referral policy, providing a link to
the referral policy details page on your base site. Under Summary, click Add
Summary within your main profile page. You can add details of education,
employment, further awards and so on in other sections.
Add a photo, ideally of you, and the same one you use of yourself elsewhere
on the web for consistency. Click Add Photo beneath the picture area on the
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Edit My Profile page and upload.
You can add your past employment details on the Edit Profile page by
scrolling down and clicking add position next to where it says experience. Make
sure you put care into your most recent form of employment, as this forms your
headline, found under your name and will be seen immediately.
Fill out your education history by clicking Add Education next to Education,
and following the instructions to fill in the forms. There are other areas where
you can add further information. I would advise dropping a note to past clients
and even friends to write you a quick recommendation for that section, as
that will greatly add value and credibility to your profile. All this is important in
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building up a picture of you as a creative professional, which is important in

being hired and attracting the interest of prospects.
Click Add Information under Additional Information to put in your site

addresses including your Twitter account.
The next step is to set your profile for public view so that people on LinkedIn
who aren’t already on your network can view your profile. This will open up your
network and exposure to further people. Do this by clicking Edit Public Profile
Settings. Making your URL short and incorporating your name or brand name
is an important step here, because your profile is searchable on search engines,
and this will help it get found. If your name is taken, try using a dot or initial
between your first and last name. Then save settings.
Incorporate lots of keywords related to your skills and brand throughout

your profile. People looking for workers will conduct ‘people searches’ within
LinkedIn. Having more keywords will make sure you rank higher in LinkedIn
search results pages.
Sites specifically aimed at a creative crowd, like Behance and Flickr, are also
excellent places to get established where you can develop a targeted network.
Refer to R3 in Resources further on for further creative community sites to set

up and engage with.
I highly recommend the Social Marketing Method training program provided by

expert Mari Smith, which provides highly detailed training videos and ongoing
material on social media marketing for members. Her training applies to creative
workers.
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STEP 6.
NETWORK
AND
ENGAGE
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Hopefully by now you will have done the following:
• Identified your target market;

• Developed your unique selling point;
• Established your base in the form of a personal website;
• Built and begun adding content to your own separate niche blog;
• Set up a working mailing list;
• Set yourself up on at least one of the major social networking sites.
Your next step is to begin a networking campaign. Don’t worry about the scary
sound of this, as the rate of this process can be manageable and easy going.
Even if you have already performed activities that address the first two stages
of the sales cycle, the online networking process will reinforce these stages
further. Engagement will address the third and fourth stages of the cycle, once
you have various networks in place.
What is online networking and engagement?
Connecting with people who share your interests, enjoy the work you produce,
work in the same or similar industry as you and those who can potentially hire
your services is an essential part of your promotional strategy in general.
Building a larger and better-connected network that contains targeted people

relevant to what you do, is something the internet has facilitated in progressively
more effective ways over the years.
For the creative freelancer who has access to the internet, it is possible to be
part of a single network (associated with one social media site, for example).
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More realistically and what is more effective, is that your promotional strategy
will use a framework of several network groups existing within a larger network,
as illustrated below.
Effective online networking and engagment consists of the following activities:
1. Identify places that are likely to yield people to network with.
I will be going into detail on using social networking sites in particular for
networking in this step, but these will not be the only places to find people to
network with.
Especially as you going about emailing potential clients and co-workers

(discussed in detail in step 8), you will be looking at a range of online resources,
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including being referred by others in finding the right people to engage with.
Most of the details on setting yourself up with social media sites will have been
covered in the previous step.
Because different sites attract different kinds of people, and come with different
ways of networking and showcasing your work, it is a good idea to get set up
on a selection of sites. These are the key social media sites like Twitter and
Facebook, as well as a handful of other sites that allow networking that are ap-
propriate to your industry, such as Flickr for photographers and artists, Society6
for artists, and Last.fm for musicians.
2. Building up contacts.
Having identified where to find people to network and engage with, you’ll want
to start building up a network of people who would benefit you in promoting
yourself.
A lot of people use social media sites to connect with people they already
know, and stop there. As such, these online gatherings are simply a means to
socialize and re-connect with friends. By getting connected with new people
relevant to you, your online presence on these sites becomes a meaningful
and valuable business activity, as opposed to simply a form of entertainment
(although it can still be a lot of fun!).
Once you begin to see these social sites as a means to promote yourself, you
are opening up a whole new world that you’ll find very useful.
This involves searching for and identifying active and relevant individuals,
including fans, potential clients and key influencers, and adding them to your
network in any or all of the following ways:
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• Adding them as a friend on Facebook (and ideally ultimately as a

fan on your Facebook fan page).
• Having them sign up to your mailing list.
• Adding them to your buddy list (through an email programme,
forum, instant messaging service).
• Adding them as a contact on LinkedIn.
• Adding them as a contact on any of your social sites, like Flickr.
• Linking with them through Twitter.
• Storing contact details on an email account or in a book under
specific headings, such as ‘potential clients’, ‘advice givers’ and ‘key
influencers’.
Once you have effectively ‘locked in’ the contact details of relevant people in
these ways, you have the ability to engage with these people, through building
rapport, nurturing solid relationships, and promoting what you have in the
process.
3. Engage with your contacts.
The best strategy for promoting your work is to keep as many relevant people
as possible aware of what you are producing over the long term. This is where
engaging and interacting with the contacts you have already linked to becomes
important.
Social media expert, Mari Smith talks about the concept of ‘radical strategic vis-
ibility’ (RSV), which she has defined as ‘being seen in all the right places by all
the right people at all the right times’. This goes a step beyond keeping in touch
with the contacts on your mailing list and is something to consider as you go
about networking online. Although it us unlikely that you will be able to maintain
this kind of visibility all the time, it is something to aim for in your daily activity
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through online networking in addition to your regular mailing list mail outs.
I will go into more depth regarding the best ways to maintain your RSV for each
of the major social networking platforms shortly, but engaging with contacts will
generally include the following:
• Providing feedback on the projects and blog posts etc of others.

• Asking questions.
• Directing people to your referral policy declaration on your base.
• Helping others.
• Broadcasting interesting content.
• Prompting visits to your sites.
• Updating your status.
• Sharing your own work.
The interaction process is an important one for keeping your work seen. It is
a vital element of ensuring your sales cycle continues to function, so that you
continue to get work and sell products.
Let’s get into some detail on how exactly to grow and engage with your
networks using the key social networking sites, starting with Facebook.
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Contact Building and Networking through Facebook
By now you should be set up on Facebook in the ways described in the

previous step, including filling out your profile and hopefully having your own fan
page.
If you are happy to shift away from using Facebook as an entirely personal
platform to share private material with close friends and family, you should
now regard the site as a means to connect with all kinds of people, including
potential clients.
To get started with building and growing a network of targeted people on

Facebook you need to find and add targeted friends. Don’t be thrown by term
‘friends’ that Facebook uses here, as you don’t need to add close friends for
them to constitute as friends on Facebook. These friends are your contacts that
you will bring into your network on the common ground that you work in similar
or related industries, for example.
Before adding people, be aware that fewer people are likely to confirm you as a
friend if you have no profile photo, and little in the way of personal details. You
need to come across as human, and as credible as possible.
Your first stop would be to invite relevant friends to bring into your Facebook
network, by going to Friends > Invite friends, and filling in the email addresses
of people suitable to add to your Facebook network, as well as importing email
addresses from various accounts.
Find people through fan pages and groups by using keywords to make
searches from the search bar. You can also find groups and fan pages through
the profiles of relevant people you already have in your network and seeing
what they are fans or members of.
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These gatherings will often attract people from similar interests and industries,
and are thus good places to find targeted people. Look for influential group
admins and those contributing to discussions and so on, in finding people you’d
like in your network.
Find people outside of Facebook and search for them on Facebook. Note
people who you could ask to join your Facebook network through various direc-
tories, blogs, publications and other social media platforms like Twitter. Focus
primarily on key people (influencers) who are active and popular in your industry
as well as being active on social networking sites. Once you have added key
influencers, because their friends will be made aware of anytime the interact
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with you through Facebook, you gain access to both of these primary, as well as
secondary, contacts.
Send your potential Facebook contacts a friend request through Facebook

by clicking on the name of the contact and clicking Add as Friend. Always add
a personal message explaining what you do and how you found them and how
you’d like to include them in your network, for example. This adds a human
quality and a reason behind your ‘befriending’ and you are more likely to get
a friend confirmation from them. Once they have confirmed, they will become
part of your network and will be able to see your updates and interactions on
Facebook through their feeds.
Steadily build up friends by adding more people to your friend list. Don’t add
more than 20 people a day if you have to, and be careful about sending the
same message to people, as you can get suspended from Facebook. The limit
currently is 5000 friends. These are all people you can maintain visibility in front
of, as well as providing a source of fans for your fan page.
Engagement on Facebook
Update your Facebook status at least a few times a week and get active,
engaging in discussion with others, posting interesting content, clicking ‘like’ on
certain posts, being helpful, and so on. A great way of sourcing original, fresh
content is by setting up a set of Google alerts, which notify you via email of any
new stories or articles related to keywords that you specify.
The more active you are, the more you leave a ‘trace’ that will get you noticed
and the more you appear in the news feeds of your contacts. Be careful about
blatantly promoting your site all the time. You should view Facebook as a place
to develop relationships, with promotion almost being an after-thought.
Work on growing the number of fans in your fan page.
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Having followed the steps in setting up a page that centers around your
service or brand, start building fans by suggesting the page to your friends.
Click Suggest to friends under the picture on your fan page. Avoid doing this
more than every few weeks because it can be intrusive and annoying for those
contacts that aren’t interested at that moment.
Whenever a friend joins your fan page, their own friends will see this on their
wall, and can result in your page being exposed to many thousands of people.
Continue adding interesting content to the page, starting discussions, and

bringing in content that is unique only to your page, to keep people interested.
Those who become fans will see updates made on your fan page in their news
feeds.
Send occasional messages to fans, including news on the work you are
doing, by clicking Edit Page within the fan page and going to Send an update
to Fans beneath ‘Promote your page‘. The message you send them will appear
under ‘Updates‘ inside your Messages area.
Make sure you promote your fan page wherever you can outside of Facebook,
including through Twitter, and in your email signature, for example. You can also
gain exposure by joining selected other fan pages (you can join up to 500),
where your profile becomes visible within that particular fan page.
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Continually engaging with Facebook in these ways will get you noticed, will get
people to interact with you and will bring people to your sites.
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Contact Building and Networking through Twitter
Before you start building a network and engaging with followers on Twitter, you
should have set a up your profile with picture and bio as was discussed in the
previous step.
One of the great uses of Twitter is to be able to transmit content to many

targeted people. Its other uses include networking with people in your industry,
driving traffic to your sites and maintaining good strategic visibility as a creative.
Building a large network through Twitter in this way will be most effective with a
substantial targeted following, which I will show you how to build in the next few
steps:
Give people the chance to follow you by following them. If you follow
people, they will be alerted that you are following them. A large proportion of
these people will check out your profile to see who you are. If you appear a
credible, interesting and even useful ‘Tweeter’ (particularly if you are in the
same industry as them), there’s a strong chance they will follow you back. Once
you have a person follow you back, you have increased the value of your Twit-
tering status by a small amount, because these are people you can ‘tweet’ to.
Don’t hold back on the numbers of people you follow for the sake of looking
popular on Twitter (i.e. you have more followers than people you follow). The
more targeted people you follow, the more are likely to follow you back, and
having lots of targeted followers is the key thing.
Fill out a profile on Twellow and get signed up with We Follow. Once you’re
signed up with these directories, you can search for targeted people to follow
by typing in relevant keywords, who will hopefully follow you back. These sites
enable you find key influencers and people with large followings on Twitter.
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Search for people who are likely to follow you back by finding Twitter
profiles that are likely to be followed by the kinds of people you would like to
have following you and who you would network with.
For example, if you are looking for people with an interest in modern art, search
for well known online magazines or brands that are favoured by modern art
fans, and follow a handful of those people who are following them.
This means going to that profile, clicking their followers number beneath the
bio and following people by clicking on the button with the head and a plus next
to it (as on the left, below).
Be careful about following too many people as you could get suspended, and be
aware that Twitter will set limits on the numbers of people you can be following,
that get ever larger, as you gain more followers.
If you are looking to deal with large numbers of followers, you can manage who
you follow using various online services.
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To unfollow the people who have not followed you back, so as to make space
for following more people (and allowing your Twitter network to grow) you need
to use a service like Refollow. Here you can select people you follow who don’t
follow you, for example, and unfollow them. You would do this after sufficient
time has been left after you have followed others, to give them time to follow
you back. I’m not sure how long this feature will stick around for as rapid Twitter
follower growth is frowned upon by Twitter owing to it being used by spammers
(which is of course not you!). Otherwise, you can use these services to manage
your followers, and do it manually if needs be. Here are some other similar
services to Refollow:
• Twitter Karma
• UnTweeps
• FlashTweet
• Social Oomph
• Buzzom
This will enable you to build a substantial following after a while, which can
benefit your networking, interaction with others and your incoming traffic very
effectively.
Engagement on Twitter
Be active on Twitter, tweeting regularly, at least two or three times a day,

although it’s up to you, and don’t forget to interact and be human, as opposed to
using Twitter simply as a means to send out promotional links.
Provide content that is consistent within a niche you have chosen that relates
to your brand, your service and your blog. Try not to deviate away from content
centered on one industry or focused area, because you want people to come
to know you for tweeting certain things. Strongly consider becoming an expert
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at something in particular. This applies to your blog, the articles you write, your
social media updates, and so on. Use Tweetbeep to keep track of tweets men-
tioning you or your site. You can also use it to be alerted of content to retweet
yourself.
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Contact Building and Networking through MySpace
MySpace can be another powerful platform through which to build friend

networks of thousands of targeted members. It is worth trying the methods I
discuss here, as each social media site comes with different quirks, users and
features to the next.
You might find one platform more effective for your own promotional drive than
the next, so try them all out and look for feedback on how each one works for
you.
Here’s how to get networking and promoting through MySpace:
Use search tools to find and add relevant people. Make sure you are aware
of the target demographic you want to bring into your network, then use either
the MySpace Search tool, which is found through clicking Friends > Find
Friends in the top navigation bar, or the Browse Users tool, found in Friends
> Browse, which allows you to get much more specific about your target de-
mographic. Use these tools to find key influencers in your industry, people who
would be interested in your work and potential clients.
Unless you decide to use automated methods, which could get you banned for
spamming, I suggest growing your MySpace network out organically, meaning
that you create connections one at a time.
To add someone you go to the target member’s profile and click on the Add to
Friends button. The next screen gives you the option of sending them an intro-
ductory message. This is a good opportunity to let the user know who you are
and mention why you are reaching out to them. A simple hello and mention of a
common interest for example, is all you need. Here is not a good time to market
anything.
Once the member has accepted your request, they now belong to your friend
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network. They will now appear in your friends list and you will in theirs. When
you form a connection with a member in this way, you get much more substan-
tial access to them, including the ability for them to see your bulletin postings,
receive updates from your profile activity, and for you to leave comments on
their wall.
Use groups and forums to find and add targeted people. MySpace groups
are small communities within the site, where people come to share interests
with other members. Groups are great for finding people who share in interest in
something that suits your target market. Forums are similar areas for people to
share discussion, but are structured like other online forums, with the ability to
start new threads on a range of topics. These are both found under More on the
main page, and then scrolling down.
Engagement on MySpace
Build rapport with key people and others. Use the MySpace messaging and
commenting system to communicate with key people relevant to your industry
and eventually bring them over to your site or service or referral program. Don’t
get spammy with leaving links in comments and messages, but do so once you
have built rapport with the user and it doesn’t appear to be obvious marketing.
Participate in group and forum discussions. This is a means to add further

targeted people, and introduce your site to them.
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Consider starting a focused and niche blog within MySpace, which allows
you to address all your friends within MySpace. It’s a way to build credibility,
rapport and will provide a chance for you to promote yourself. Starting one is
straight forward. Go to Profile > My Blog and add your first post to get going.
Refer to step 3 for further ideas on blog-writing.
Use bulletins for further promotion within MySpace. These are messages
that appear on a bulletin wall that is viewable by anyone in your friend network.
They are a great way to make announcements for upcoming events, and so on.
Bulletins also allow you to use some dynamic content within them, so you can
be creative.
To write a bulletin, go to your MySpace dashboard and click Friends >

Bulletins. This will take you to the Bulletin Board page, where you click Post
Bulletin to start the process. Make sure you include a call to action at the end
of your bulletin if you are promoting.
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Contact Building and Networking through LinkedIn
With a complete, well-presented profile, you can now start to develop a network
through LinkedIn that will bring you exposure, traffic as well as the potential of
being hired, even through LinkedIn itself.
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.
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 custom-
ized 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.
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.
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.
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.
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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A Note on Referrals
Throughout the engagement process within all your networks, make sure you
work on addressing the fourth stage of the cycle through making people aware
of your referral system.
This could be in bringing people in front of your referral policy declaration page
on your personal base site, or simply sharing the fact that you’d like people you
interact with to help find referrals for you.
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STEP 7.
BRING IN
TARGETED
TRAFFIC
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A lot of what you have been working on so far in getting an effective

strategy of self-promotion together will lead to traffic being driven to your blog,
your various online profiles and your personal site and portfolio.
This might be through incorporating a link into a Facebook status update,

leaving a comment on a blog, contributing to a discussion on a forum, or leaving
a link to your work in the signature attached to your forum posts, and so on.
Remember that it is all an ongoing cyclical process, with each element contrib-
uting to the exposure of you and your brand, as well as any products you might
have.
This section will look closely at how to specifically drive traffic to your sites using
effective online methods on top of the vital networking activities you will have
been engaged with.
It is important that your blog, and ultimately your personal base attract a healthy
amount of traffic. High numbers of unique and targeted visitors coming to your
site will bring a constant stream of fresh, new potential clients, fans and sup-
porters of your work, mailing list members, new network contacts, referrers, and
advice-givers. This is an important element in addressing the first stage of your
sales cycle.
It is ok to drive traffic directly to your online base first. However, channeling

the bulk of traffic to your standalone blog comes with more benefits to self-
marketing.
The reasons for this are as follows:
1. Your personal site contains less material that would attract the majority of
people who you are trying to promote yourself to. The material on your blog is
what will attract the attention of large numbers of people initially, where there
will be a link to your personal site, which people have the option of clicking.
As long as your blog relates to the products or services you provide, you will
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generally be introducing the right people to what you and your brand are about.
The effect of this is even stronger if you incorporate some of your character,
your work and your brand into your blog.
2. People seeing the content on your blog before visiting your own site will see
you with increased credibility, especially if your blog is established, well written,
and with plenty of valuable content.
3. Those clicking on your personal site from your blog will likely be more
targeted because they will be genuinely interested in finding out more about
you, instead of non-targeted people stumbling on your site and promptly moving
on.
This is why a link to your portfolio site has to be visible and have a clear
purpose from your blog.
The right people need to click through to your personal site from your blog (or
other site). I know I talk about this a lot, but this is why having a blog that is
focused is so important, because you can then direct your traffic building efforts
at the kinds of people you want to bring there and obviously on to your own site:
the holy grail.
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Here are the online traffic-driving methods that I will explain closely. Don’t try
everything at once. If you carry out each traffic-building exercise as laid out,
you can see some immediate results, but it will take some work and patience to
see high levels of consistent, targeted traffic. Each method will provide a new
stream of traffic coming to your site(s).
They are shown in no particular order:
1. Forums
2. Press Releases
3. Squidoo Lenses
4. Online Directories
5. Video Sharing
6. Joint Ventures
7. Podcasting
8. Links
9. Social Networking
10. Article Writing
11. Creative Communities
12. Ezines
13. Search Engines
14. Classifieds
15. Social Bookmarking
16. Blogs
17. Link and News Submission
18. Review and Answer-Writing
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1. Forums
Use the following methods to generate traffic from engaging with forum sites:
Find a forum that relates to your niche (if you are driving traffic to your blog,
find a forum that will attract the kinds of people you want driven to your blog).
This is often an area within a forum. A list of forum suggestions can be found in
R19 in Resources.
Set up your profile, include your links, information and, where possible, add
your site’s link to your signature. Your signature is the area that appears at the
bottom of every post you contribute to the forums, and will be seen by other
forum users.
You might need to use special code to insert a link into a signature known
as bb code, like so (but with your own link!):
[url=http://redlemonclub.com]Red Lemon Club[/url]
Or, if it requires it, HTML code for your signature link:
<a href=”http://www.redlemonclub.com”>Red Lemon Club</a>
Search for posts you can contribute to and start participating in discussions.
Your intention should be in not only contributing helpful and expressive posts,
but in developing rapport with other users.
As forum posts are indexed by Google, people searching for information will see
your posts and click through your links from both inside and outside the forum.
After a while, consider messaging key participants who you think would enjoy
your blog or your work via personal messaging on the forums (click the author’s
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name). Send them an introductory message to your blog or work, build rapport,
and then invite them to your blog or base. This might sound time-consuming,
but if you work on the right person for the right reasons, this can prove very
fruitful for finding work, as well as bringing targeted traffic to your sites.
2. Press Releases
You would issue a press release to coincide with something newsworthy, related
to your site, such as when it is launched or updated.
How to write a press release:
Once you are aware of what exactly it is you are going to focus the press
release on, you need to open up a text document, and write down the intro-
duction of the release. This begins with your city and region, and the date the
press release is due to be released (this will be a little into the future).
Then write an opening paragraph with an emphasis on why your story is

newsworthy and of interest to your target audience.
Your next step is to write the body of the text. This is where you address, in
detail, who you are, what you are introducing, when it is coming out, where this
will be (i.e. the web address), why this is happening, and how this is happening.
Keep the text simple and highlight the benefits of what you are talking about, for
example, becoming a better logo designer.
Once you have introduced the blog or whatever it is you are announcing, you
need to reveal clearly what exactly makes it unique.
Write your call to action after the body. Tell the reader what you want them to
do. There is a strong chance they will click on the link to your site if you make
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it clear you want them to. A link to your blog’s landing page and opt-in form is a
good idea.
Put in your contact information, including a short statement about yourself or

your company. Add another link to your site.
Write out a summary of what you have written, including highlighting your
site’s unique selling point and keep it brief. Place this at the bottom of your
article, and include a re-worded call to action again, at the end.
Keep your release article and summary within 500 words.
Now write your headline, which should grab readers’ attention and should be
written not as an advert, but more like a newspaper headline.
Submitting
Make sure the release has been edited and ready to go before submission.
Identify the sites you want to submit to.
You can either choose to submit to press release sites individually using the
list available in R20 in Resources, or you can automate submission to multiple
sites using a press release submission service. Search on Google for ‘PR sub-
mission’ or similar to find these sites PR Log (free) and PR Web (paid, but better
service) are both good.
You might find it cheaper to hire someone to submit your release to many indi-
vidual sites for you, than paying for an automated submission.
It is worth searching for other sites that publish press releases related to the
creative industry, emailing them explaining your press release, and getting it
submitted through them.
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Run through the submission guidelines on each of the sites you choose to
submit through and submit, or delegate the task.
3. Squidoo Lenses
Go to Squidoo, a site that allows you to create pages (lenses) for various
subjects that can be shared and read as articles.
Identify content that would appeal to users that relates to where you intend
to drive people, such as your blog. You could take one of your articles from your
blog and change the wording or perspective slightly.
Prepare an expressive and interesting article containing keywords. This

needn’t be too long, but the more informative and useful, the better.
Include a call to action at the end, such as guiding the reader to go to your site
to learn more. After this, include details of you and your site, including another
website link.
Create a header containing relevant keywords.
Sign up with Squidoo and create an account.
Choose the option to create an article/lens and fill in the details.
Add keywords, add a relevant image and enter tags into the sidebar.
Submit your lens.
You should see people coming to your site through the links you provide within
your lens.
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4. Online Directories
It’s possible to get a substantial amount of traffic coming through from various
online directories, including blog directories, business directories and general
site directories, which people use to search for sites and businesses. This is
in addition to affecting how high your site ranks on search engines, which will
benefit your traffic further.
Using the list of directories supplied at the back of this book (R21), go through
the following steps in attracting web traffic through directories:
Research the keywords that relate to your site.
Prepare a small summary of your site in 50 words or less including your

keywords, and keep this handy in a text document.
Identify directories that are relevant to your site’s niche (get help from the list
in the appendix).
Sign up to the directory site and pay the fee if necessary.
Submit your site and description, making sure to add the web URL, tags and
anything else it asks for, using the particular site’s procedure.
Check your inbox for confirmation emails.
You can choose to sign up and use one of the multiple submission services
such as inetzeal.com or add2directory. Search on Google for more if needed.
This can save a lot of time, though will often cost you.
This should bring in traffic for those searching for sites of your niche, as well as
providing important backlinks to your site, which will benefit where your site is
ranked in the search engines.
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5. Video Sharing
Video viewing and sharing is on the rise on the internet, and you can ride it’s
growth by contributing (and sharing) videos too. This can prove to be one of the
best sources of traffic for sites.
We’ll be focusing closely on YouTube here, though you will find good exposure
through Vimeo, another excellent video sharing site, and others (see R11), by
engaging in a similar way.
Once you have put together videos, consider uploading them to your base’s
mini blog or your other sites in addition to being seen on social video sites like
YouTube.
Here’s how to bring traffic to your site from video sites:
Create an account on YouTube, ideally with your own name or your brand’s
name as username.
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Put together your profile with information appropriate and relevant to your
target audience, making sure you include a link to your site within your profile.
Create a video. The content can include:
• An introduction into you and your services and/or company.

• Your own work, or a slideshow of it.
• A tutorial.
• A testimonial.
• An update or announcement.
• An interview of you.
• An interview with someone else in your industry.
• A short film related to your industry.
Consider watermarking the video with your site name, logo or both, but make
it subtle.
Give the video an interesting title, including relevant keywords.
Include a call to action within the video itself or as a link in the video descrip-
tion if possible.
Upload the video.
Interact with people commenting on your video and encourage friends and
other users to comment on, and post video responses to your videos.
Promote your video further
Find other YouTube or Vimeo users who may be interested in your services
and friend them, as you would do on Twitter and Facebook.
Find other popular videos related to your niche, comment on them (leave your
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link here and there in comments) and engage with those viewing the videos.
Post a video response to a popular and relevant video. This can attract many
visitors, as your response will appear in the ‘related videos’ area of the popular
video you are responding to.
6. Joint Ventures
Combining forces with other partners is one of the best ways to bring traffic, get
advertised and get exposure, and is often overlooked.
Working collaboratively with others will reduce your own work-load and enable
the pooling of talent, skill, networks and resources.
Here’s how to do it to bring traffic to your sites:
Identify people to work with. These are people who could work with you in the
following ways:
• Cross-promotion on each other’s mailing lists.

• Set up a joint blog/site or advertise on each other’s.
• Interviewing each other to create content for blogs.
• Trading content for each of your blogs.
List promotion
Contact those potential partners who you could exchange advertising, or at

least ‘mentions’ of your site on your mailing list and theirs. Reach a suitable
agreement based on how many emails will be sent out, the format of the adver-
tisement and how long it will run for.
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Now you can exchange the content with them, making sure you get a copy of
their newsletter sent to you and vice versa.
A joint blog
You would likely set up a joint blog or site with someone to attract visitors to
your base, so that you avoid the steps taken by visitors between your joint blog
and your portfolio.
Contact partners who you think you could set up a joint site with. This blog
should be focused on something relating to each of your sites, so that you get
target visitors from it.
Create the site and upload content. Refer to Steps 2 nd 3 for help on this.
Promote the site, including mentions to each of your lists and use the methods
in this book to further drive traffic to your joint blog.
Exchange ads and links
Agree to exchange advertising material on a partner’s blog, such as a link or

banner. Do this with as many partners on relevant blogs as you like, but be
careful with cluttering up your sites with ads and links.
Joint Interviews
Interview each other, either in written, audio or video format and upload to each
other’s blogs or elsewhere. Include each other’s links at the bottom of and incor-
porated into interviews.
Trading Content
Offer to post articles or other content on your site in exchange for the same.
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This means writing original articles or posts for the other site in the form of a
guest post, which your partner also does for your site.
Be sure to include a link and possibly a short introduction of yourself or your

work within the post. This will open up new audiences to your site.
7. Podcasting
Podcasting in this sense simply means audio recordings. It doesn’t necessarily

have to do with iPods, although many listeners will likely listen through one.
Creating a series of 20 minute- or so long individual audio recordings is an

excellent way of bringing in traffic to your site as long as it is promoted well
enough wherever you choose to publish it. With an interesting topic related to
your blog or similar, you could build quite an audience after a while, and it’s a
great way to bring repeat visitors to your sites, as well as add credibility to you
and your brand.
Consider the following when putting a podcast series together:
Decide on the content of the podcast. You could choose to do a regular

interview series with people in your industry (an excellent example of which
can be found at Escape from Illustration Island), talk about particular areas that
people have been asking you about on the blog, and so on.
Script your podcasts loosely, so you have something to follow.
Your podcast should include an introduction to who you are and what your
site is about, a summary of the podcast, a mention of any guests, and a call to
action at the end guiding people to something on your site. Make this something
enticing for listeners. Summarize what you have talked about at the end of the
recording.
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Set up an account on itunes.com and mp3.com and include a link in the

profiles you create.
Categorise and write descriptions of your podcasts that will attract listeners
and upload your podcasts.
Dedicate a landing page on your site to encourage listeners to download and

tune in to your podcasts. Bring further traffic using other methods to this landing
page too.
Submit your podcast to the numerous sites that accept podcasts (see R27).
Promote the podcast to your list and write to other bloggers and sites that
publish podcasts introducing your podcast, as they may publish, mention or
advertise it.
Also think about how you could cross-promote podcasts with others in the form
of joint ventures.
8. Links
Building up a number of links that point to your site will bring in healthy traffic, as
well as benefiting the ranking of your site in search engines.
Here’s how to build up links to your site:
Submit your site to highly ranked sites and online directories using the
procedure discussed in No. 4 of this step.
Contact other sites in your niche and build up rapport with those running the
sites. Arrange for each of you to post a reciprocal link on each other’s sites.
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Consider setting up with Webring.com, which is a link exchange service that

allows you to display similar sites on your site. Once you have a profile with
them and get set up, your link will appear on a range of other sites similar to
yours.
Submit articles that include a link to your site to article directories. Use the
procedure for doing so in No. 13 of this step.
9. Social Networking
Apart from what has already been discussed in Step 6, consider opening up
accounts on other networking sites like Ning.com to engage with new audiences
with different features, and bringing traffic through similar methods as we’ve
explained (See R13 for other networking sites).
With Facebook, traffic will come through the links on your profile, your status
updates and wall posts, your fan page, groups you share links with and events
you hold.
The way to use Twitter as a source of traffic to your blog is by being active as
a tweeter on your niche. Tweet to announce new blog posts, but don’t over-do
the tweeting to bring people to your site, as it can get spammy and irritating to
others.
Mix it up a bit by linking to other relevant sites, discussing similar subjects and
generally expressing yourself. People will come to you if you provide diverse
and interesting content (tied into your niche), and these are people who will
come to your site through your tweets, your bio link, and your direct messages.
Myspace and LinkedIn can provide substantial targeted traffic once you have
a sizeable network built up within them, and have become an active user who
engages with your contacts.
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10. Article Writing
Writing articles for sites like ezinearticles.com that relate to your blog or to wherever
you plan to bring visitors, can be a powerful way of attracting visitors, as well as
building backlinks to your sites, and developing your status as an expert in your field.
Here’s how to go about writing and submitting articles to start bringing in

targeted traffic:
Identify the purpose of the article. Is it a review, an introduction to a service, a

tip or piece of advice? Ideally you want the article to be interesting and informa-
tive, but also encourage readers to visit your site for more information or further
inspiration.
Research keywords. Look for keywords using Google’s tool that would be
likely searched for by your target audience. This is important as articles will
appear within search engine results, and the more words match what your
audience searches for, the more likely your articles are seen.
Write your article. Ensure you put in an appealing and attention-grabbing

opening paragraph, and that you incorporate the keywords you researched into
the copy. Different article sites require articles of different lengths, but stick to
articles of 500 - 1000 words long, which you can alter later on.
Write a call to action, that will encourage people to click over to your site. You
should link to your mailing list opt-in landing page to attract visitors who can
become subscribers.
Add your contact information, including a short bio of you, as the author and
another link to your site.
Write a summary of the article after your contact information for those who like
to scan.
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Write your headline at the end so that you know how best to write it. Make it
intriguing, but not like a cheesy advert.
Submit your article according to the guidelines of high readership article

directory sites, such as Ezine Articles and Go Articles. More article submission
sites can be found in R22 in Resources. Also consider using cost-effective
article submission services or by searching on Google.
The more article directories you submit to the better, especially as they will
create links pointing to your site, which will benefit your sites search engine
ranking further.
11. Creative Communities
There is a lot of potential traffic you can bring out of online creative communi-
ties. These are sites for creatives and others that enable communication with
other members, in the form of an online community. These can include portfolio
sites (No. 6 Step 8). They are also great sites to network, build fans, attract
clients and showcase your work.
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The sites of interest to you would be ones that bring together people in your
specific creative field, such as Flickr and DeviantArt for photographers and
artists, or sites that aim to bring creatives in general together such as ‘This is
Central Station’. Bear in mind that clients do find creatives to work with through
these avenues.
Set up profiles in various creative communities that attract members of your

target audience and clients. Include your standard photo, links, some detail with
a bit of personality and upload your work. Use the ‘creative communities’ list in
Resources, at the back of this book.
Upload new work and articles, if this is possible, regularly, remembering to

add your link with them where possible.
Start building up contacts by adding friends and engaging with key influenc-
ers in your field, building rapport and interacting with others through comments
and direct messages. Drop your link in here and there when commenting and
interacting, and remember not to appear spammy: it’s relationships first, adver-
tising second.
Join popular groups and upload work to them if you can, participate in com-
petitions and be helpful to other members. These activities will all attract visitors
and add to traffic coming to your sites.
12. Ezines
An ezine, or online magazine, is often distributed through mailing lists and

blogs, and it is possible to contribute articles to them, advertise within them or
start up your own ezine in order to drive traffic to your site.
Here’s how to generate traffic using ezines:
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Research ezines related to your appropriate niche so that you can target the
right people, using online directories like Zinebook or Go-Ezines.
You can advertise with ezines, although this will normally be for a fee, unless
you come to an agreement to avoid it. If you are happy to pay for an ad on an
ezine (the value is often very good, for the readership), visit the ezine sites, and
either look at their advertising rates, or ask for them, and work out a budget for
some ads on relevant ezines.
Submit the ad according to the guidelines set out by the ezine, and check it
gets distributed.
Another option is to contact the ezine, and ask to contribute an article to their
publication, perhaps in exchange for a link you publish on your list or elsewhere.
Follow their guidelines for article writing and submission and make sure you
include a call to action and a link within the article.
Alternatively, you can start your own ezine to distribute. You should view this
as a more substantial publication than your regular newsletter to subscribers,
and you should consider having the ezine available to download through your
site.
Start writing articles that relate to your blog or site for your ezine, and
encourage others to contribute too, letting your list know that you are starting
one before publishing. Compile one or two issues of your ezine before you start
distributing. This will allow you to have plenty of material available while you
work on future issues of your publication.
Once ready, email the ezine to your list and keep promoting it, including with
partners. Let others with mailing lists know of your ezine, as they might like to
share it amongst their own subscribers if it is relevant.
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13. Search Engines
Search engines like Google should be viewed as a main source of traffic for
you, and you should work towards making organic search engine traffic as
effective as possible in bringing traffic to your site.
Here’s how to work with search engines to improve the level of traffic coming to
your sites:
Get your site submitted to the search engines, if this hasn’t already been
done (often hosts like Wordpress will submit your site to a few engines auto-
matically). If you are unsure of this, go for it anyway. You can use search engine
submission services to submit to many at once, which can be free.
Some sites that provide this service include:
Add Me
Add Pro
Start Ranking
Build quality backlinks to your site. To increase how high your site ranks on
Google, and elsewhere, you need to have plenty of sites (ideally popular and
high ranking themselves) pointed at yours in the form of links. Follow the link
traffic strategies in No. 9 and the link submission method in No. 17.
Optimize your site for search engines, to improve site ranking and thus
improve search engine traffic. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is an area
that could be discussed over several volumes, so I’ll show you the very basics.
Apart from building backlinks to your site, you need to make sure your site’s
header, blog titles, posts and text within your site contain keywords that people
are searching for. Research these keywords using the Google keyword tool and
Wordtracker.
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Consider hiring an SEO expert to make your site work well in the search
engines. There isn’t much better than getting more ‘organic’, targeted traffic
through search engines. An expert can make changes and suggestions to your
site’s graphics, interface, structure, coding and navigation.
Submit your site to the extra services that come with search engines, such
as Google Maps, Yahoo Answers or Google Earth. Search engines have been
known to afford higher search rankings for sites with accounts on their services.
Submit your site or set up accounts or profiles with these sites and maintain
these listings every few weeks.
Drive targeted traffic to your site through paid adverts that appear in search
results. Usually these are paid per click. Run through the procedure for Pay Per
Click advertising in Step. 8.
14. Classifieds
Posting ads on classified ad sites like Craigslist can be a strong way of bringing
in traffic to your site. A lot of these are free, and, if categorized well with the right
keywords, can bring in relevant people to your blog and base.
See No. 4 in the next step on exactly how to use classifieds to advertise and
drive traffic to your site.
15. Social Bookmarking
You should add the links of your sites, as well as the links to all the articles and
updates you add within them to social bookmarking/news sites.
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Sites like StumbleUpon, Mixx and Delicious bookmark your links, and share
what you have contributed in various ways, by allowing it to be categorized,
searched for and voted on by members, posted as featured, shared as news,
and more.
Google and others will prioritize articles and updates that have been book-
marked, because it will associate these popular bookmarking sites with your
links and sites.
Here’s how to submit to social bookmarking sites and drive traffic from them:
Refer to the list of social bookmarking sites in R14 in Resources, and register
with the site and set up a profile. Include your photo as an avatar, a consis-
tent username, links and other details.
Install social bookmarking buttons to your site using a plugin like Sociable
for Wordpress, or get someone to help. This will enable readers to submit your
posts to these sites.
Whenever you write a new blog post or update the site with content, submit
the link to a handful of social bookmarking sites. These are up to you,
but StumbleUpon, Delicious and perhaps Technorati are essential ones. Try
different ones, and, using Google alerts and Analytics for feedback, see what
sites are bringing your better results, and then focus on those.
Use su.pr, StumbleUpon’s link-posting tool, whenever you tweet your link
through Twitter and Facebook, as your link will automatically get integrated into
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StumbleUpon, and will result in lots more people seeing your link. The service
shortens links and suggests optimum posting times for more traffic too.
Consider using an automated social bookmarking service like OnlyWire to

submit links to several sites at once, which will save you time, although can
attract a small monthly fee. If you submit a lot, it might be worth paying.
Connect with other users on bookmarking sites. Interacting and friending

other users, particularly key influencers (other active, well known users) is a
good way of building a reputation within the community. Active participation
will allow you to develop exposure for your site, as well as positive support for
your site or brand, and you might see more people pushing your site through
rankings etc so that its exposure increases.
16. Blogs
Driving traffic to your blog using other blogs, and even using your own blog as
leverage, is another way of attracting visitors.
Here are ways to do it:
Link exchange
Identify popular or influential blogs that relate to your blog’s niche. Use
forums, technorati, Blogged, Google blog search to search for blogs and Similar
Sites to find blogs related to yours or others.
Place a link to these sites in your site’s blogroll.
Contact the writer of the blog, explaining your site and how it can be mutually
beneficial for you both to do a link exchange. You might want to exchange a few
unrelated emails before you ask, to build a rapport. It’s advisable that you have
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established your blog/site for a few months and have a bit of credibility associ-
ated with it before you exchange links with other blogs, particularly popular
ones.
Consider suggesting other things that would benefit the other blog, such as you
writing a review or you writing a guest post for them in exchange for a link, and
so on.
Make sure they have reciprocated with a link to your site on theirs.
Commenting
Engage in the conversation on related blogs in the form of comments. Go a

little further than a simple: ‘nice post!’. You want your comment to be meaning-
ful, interesting and/or helpful and you want it to stand out.
You can leave a link to your site at the bottom of the comment, but because this
is frowned upon as a bit spammy, better avoid it. A link will appear through your
username in most cases, which is important, as this is where interested visitors
to your site will come through from the blog you are commenting on.
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You’ll see better long-term traffic if you comment with the intention of developing
relationships with other users of the blog, including the author. Use names to
interact, be helpful and insightful, and people will take notice of you and your
own site.
Encourage your own readers to leave comments on your blog. This will add
credibility and a buzz around your posts, as well as apparently benefiting how
your site is prioritized by search engines for being active.
Trackbacks
Trackbacking is a way to notify a site when you publish an entry that makes
a reference to that site. When you send a site a trackback, a link with a short
excerpt of your own entry will appear in the comments area of referenced site.
Doing this is a good way of building relationships with author bloggers, encour-
aging bloggers to reciprocate, and attracting traffic to your site.
Here’s how to leave trackbacks:
Locate and copy the trackback link that appears with the post of the blog you
referenced. Sometimes you need to contact the author for the link, which will
look something like this:
http://www.typepad.com/w/trackback/3948593
Before you publish your own post with the mention or link within it, you’ll need to
paste the trackback link into a trackback box that says ‘Send Trackbacks To’
within Wordpress. There will be a similar box on other blog platforms.
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Once you have pasted all the trackback links into your post, the blog(s) will be
notified as soon as you click ‘publish’.
17. Link and News Submission
Submitting a link with a summary of either your site or posts to various link and
news submission sites has the potential of being showcased on the front page
of often very busy sites, bringing you plenty of new visitors to your site.
Refer to the list of submission sites for creatives in Resources (R8), or this
useful post by 1st Web Designer for design-related sites to find sites to submit
links to.
Register and follow the guidelines for submitting links to each site.
Submitting to lots of these sites is time consuming, so try out lots of different
ones to start, then streamline over time by focusing on a few of the one that
have been effective for you.
Some sites such as Design Bump, require many people to have voted on your
link for it to be featured on the front-page, which is very beneficial for traffic.
Therefore, encourage friends, fans, readers and other internet users to vote for
your link to increase its chances of higher visibility.
18. Review and Answer Writing
If done effectively, it’s possible to bring in traffic from sites that seek reviews or
those that enable users to answer questions posed by other users.
Here’s how to drive traffic to your site by answering questions through Yahoo
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Answers:
Start a new account at Yahoo Answers by clicking Get Started. I would

recommend opening a new account even if you are already on Yahoo, in case
you get banned (sometimes users can unfairly report you if they think you are
leaving too many links).
Find relevant questions to answer by going to the Yahoo Answers homepage

and clicking the link next to the search bar that says advanced.
Use the advanced search tool to drill down on questions people are asking on
Yahoo that are closely related to your niche. This is so that you attract targeted
people to your site.
Answer relevant questions, leaving 4 to 5 links to your site for every 20

answers you leave. Make sure your link has a purpose within the answer, and is
not just detached. What’s more, you can get flagged for spam if you link to the
same domain with each answer, so mix it up.
I know it sounds like hard work, but the key thing is in building up points and a
reputation within Yahoo, and answering questions without leaving a link will get
you there. It is a long-term process, and after a while you should see healthy
traffic coming through many answers you have left on Yahoo.
How to drive traffic to your site by posting reviews on Amazon:
Register with Amazon, and set up a public profile that includes a picture,
extra personal details you’d like to share, as well as a link to your site.
Review products that relate to your blog and review other products you have
used for added credibility and to increase your Amazon ranking as a reviewer.
Inject a bit of personality into them for added interest. It also helps to have used
the product in question!
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Mention your site in the review where appropriate, but don’t leave a link
within the review, as this is considered spam. When readers see that you write
a related blog, they are likely to click through to your name and see your link
within your profile before heading over to your site.
Post your review.
See the Traffic Maintenance section in Step 10 for information on optimizing

and improving your traffic campaigns further.
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STEP 8.
DIRECT
ADVERTISING
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By now you have hopefully become an active blogger and networker, and
begun to see some good results driving targeted traffic to your blog, site and
mailing list. Many of you might, at this stage, feel like what you have achieved
is enough, and are seeing some excellent results, including more paid work and
more sales if you are selling products.
It is worth looking into the next few steps to really beef up your promotion
strategy even further, to ensure you attract bigger and better clients, as well as
more exposure in general. This step also provides further opportunities for ad-
dressing the final stage in the sales cycle, which is to create offerings leading to
work or sales and making people aware of your referral policy.
Directly advertising your work is the next step.
With so many free methods to use to promote yourself online, paying for
adverts in its old fashioned sense is no longer required as part of a successful
marketing campaign, although it can of course boost it even further.
We will be discussing how to directly advertise your products and services

using ‘non-spammy’ and un-intrusive methods, both using paid and cost-free
methods.
The term ‘direct-advertising’ is used in this book to describe any marketing

activity that will let others who are likely to want what you have in the first place
know of your services through putting advertisements, announcements and
introductions in front of them. This is different to mass advertising, spamming
and undirected marketing, and is the opposite of allowing people to be aware of
you through indirect ways by means of networking and engaging with people.
Although building relationships and networking should guide the framework of

your marketing process, I still think there is room for advertising in this sense if it
is done appropriately. This is possible when the manner in which you advertise
to others is targeted, valuable, tailored to the individual and legitimate.
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These are the channels that I recommend you use for effective and mostly free
direct advertising:
1. Mailing List Advertising

2. Direct Contact Emailing
3. Local Online Business Directories
4. Classifieds
5. Forums
6. Portfolio Sites
7. Freelancing Sites
8. Pay Per Click Advertising
9. Targeted Banner Ads
10. Press Releases
1. Mailing List Advertising

As was mentioned previously, you can advertise through your list by incorporat-
ing links within your newsletter, ezine or email mail out at points within the text
that are appropriate.
Including a feature on the work you have produced or are currently working
on as part of your newsletter (or even on its own) is another way to promote
yourself here. You can also incorporate banners, images (with incorporated link)
or even video.
These methods can be used to promote through other people’s mailing lists too.
If you know somebody who runs a newsletter and has an active mailing list, it
could prove very valuable for both of you to come to a mutual agreement to
exchange ads or links on each other’s mail out. You could also pay someone for
the ability to advertise through his or her mailing list. The person running the list
you advertise to should have a list of relevant subscribers, so that your work is
seen by targeted people.
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It is important not to view your mailings as a form of advertising in itself, but as a

means of bringing in a little of it here and there, so that your work is consistently
visible, but not intrusive. It is wise to mention on your landing page or newsletter
welcome message, the fact that your mail outs will occasionally include promo-
tions in some form, so that readers aren’t surprised when it is there.
2. Direct Contact Emailing
Writing an email or message to potential clients and other key people can be a
very effective way of drawing attention to your work. It’s also an important part
of your networking strategy as discussed in step 6.
Your aim in direct emails is to introduce yourself and your work with warmth,
without coming across as pushy, desperate, cold, needy or automated. Avoid
bulk messaging, as spam will get blocked and will be regarded very negatively
by those that do receive it if it isn’t obviously a personal one-on-one message.
These methods can be used for connecting with potential collaborators, new
fans and ‘sneezers’, i.e. people who are effective at spreading the word about
your work and projects.
The message you need to transmit is that you present value to what they do.
You need to show that you know about and respect who you are writing about,
by for example commenting on a recent project of theirs before bringing in a link
to your own portfolio that might be of interest to the work they do.
One of the best ways of contacting new potential clients without seeming pushy
or ‘salesy’ is by sending over positive feedback on something they have done (it
helps if you are genuinely interested. You don’t want to come across as false).
More often than not, they will click on the link that you provided to your site in
your email signature if it is clearly visible. If they see work of yours that could
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work within their organization, they might very well contact you. This is also a
good way of establishing some rapport between the two of you, which you can
build on, and eventually ask for referrals etc later on.
Steps to take in direct emailing:
1. Find people to contact
You need to make sure that the people you contact for the purpose of furthering
your career should be targeted. That is, they are relevant to your promotional
campaign and are those that you can initiate mutually beneficial relationships
with.
One of the ways to find potential clients is to browse the work by other
creatives who produce work that is similar in style, materials used, content
and/or ‘attitude’ to your own. Find out who the clients who used them were, and
contact them. Look through various publications, portfolio sites and creative
community sites in finding work of other creatives.
You could message people already part of your network for ideas on people
to contact for work. You can also use this method to ask for referrals.
The search tools that come with social media sites can point you to some
relevant people, collectives and organizations. For example, you can use
Twellow or We Follow to find people according to profession, who are ranked by
popularity. You may have to get certain people to follow you before being able to
contact them, however.
On Facebook, you can search for groups or fan pages, join them and then
find clients, referrals and recommendations from interacting with the people on
them, for example.
LinkedIn is another useful tool for locating potential clients by making contact
with people in your own network, as well as finding people through the networks
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of others. See step 6 for ways to find people through there.
Print and web publications, including blogs and websites, can point you to
the right clients for you. Identify places where you think your work would be
accepted and establish contact with those who deal with selecting creatives for
new projects, such as the art director for a magazine. The suitable contact will
vary, depending on the individual, group or organisation you choose to contact.
2. Write an email or letter
Make sure you do the research into each point of contact you approach, and
that you observe the correct procedures in contacting them. If you cannot find
how best to get through to a potential client for you, contact a member of their
office asking how best to go about doing this.
The next step is to communicate with the contact you have found, transmitting
your value and warmth, as we talked about before.
Here is a sample email structure that you could send to a potential client:
• Subject
• Greeting/Compliment
• How you found them
• What you do
• How it might be beneficial to each of you to be in part of the same
network
• One link to your work (the fewer links, the better, as it declutters the
email)
• An invitation to connect via social media, such as through Facebook
• Thank you
• Yours sincerely/regards etc
• Your name
• Email signature (your link and invitation can be included here)
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Don’t follow up any unanswered emails until more than 2 months later if you
have to. Remember that there are plenty of prospects out there.
3. Local Online Business Directories
Online business directories that are tailored to specific geographical areas, will
get your services in front of those using directories to search for professionals.
There are thousands of general online directories that you should consider
submitting your sites to for the purpose of gaining backlinks and better search
engine optimization. However, with local directories, your aim is to not only get
backlinks to your site, but to be found by prospects and others running local
searches for businesses like yours.
Some local directories will allow you to create a listing for free. Others will
require a reciprocal link or attract a fee. It is worth setting up listings in at least
as many free directories as you can, because of the inbound links they will
create to your sites.
Here are some free local directories for you to get started on. Refer to
Resources (R21) for a more extensive list of online business directories:
YellowPages.com
Splut.co.uk
Yahoo Local
Thomson Local
TouchLocal
B2B Index
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4. Classifieds
It is possible to get some solid exposure through classified ads sites such as
Craigslist, Yahoo, AOL, Gumtree and USFreeAds. You can use classifieds as
a means of advertising your services directly, or as a means to drive decent
amounts of traffic directly to your blog and sites.
Because such sites are tailored to local areas, particularly some of the local
community sites and portals (which you can find using search engines), you
need to keep in mind the locality or region you are advertising your services
to. However, for those of you looking to advertise globally, it might be a case of
choosing to place ads aimed at a few areas, or to place multiple ads covering
many areas.
Some sites will charge you for placing an ad, whilst many will be free. Before
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posting an ad, it is worth writing out the ad in a text document to be copied first.
Writing the ad
Use a headline that highlights the main benefit of what you are advertising. For
example: “Clean and contemporary website design”.
Write a section that explains exactly what you offer and provides explicitly and
clearly what benefits you can provide.
Write a ‘call to action’, which is a line that specifically draws the reader to
something, namely your base site. An example could be:
‘I would appreciate any feedback you might have on my portfolio, which can be
found at http://...’
Pictures
If pictures are allowed, it is a good idea to use one that is relevant and will add
to the depth of the advertisement.
Submit the ad
You then need to input this information into the form of the ‘new ad’ or ‘post’ on
as many classified sites as you choose. Many sites will require you to register
before submitting. Always keep your target audience, and (if it is necessary)
your target geographical area in mind when submitting ads to classifieds sites.
You can use automated submission software for submitting ads at once, or hire
someone to post several for you. The more ads you submit, the more exposure
and traffic you will get in this way.
Delete ads that have been up for more than a few weeks, and re-submit them,
to keep ads at the top of listings.
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Refer to Resources (R23) for more sites that accept classified advertisements.
5. Forums
Online forums often have sub-forums or pages dedicated to allowing people

advertise their services directly. This will be a section called ‘advertising’ for
example. Advertising areas sometimes charge small fees to allow you to use
them, but some are free.
You can also make use of threads (discussions) that allow you to introduce
yourself. You either start a new thread or add to existing ones, normally classi-
fied under introduction’ sections. Make sure you follow the etiquette and rules
of the site you post on. You will often find a set of guidelines for posting as a
thread within the list of forum areas on the site.
Another way of advertising through forums is by browsing the job boards

or classifieds sections (where others have posted available jobs), using the
threads to explain what you do, and promoting yourself in the process. You can
also contact potential clients directly in response to a job they have posted that
might suit you.
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Some examples of online forums to advertise in:
Designers Talk
Talk Photography
Graphic Design Forum
Some more places for creatives to contribute on forums are listed in the back of
this book (R19).
6. Portfolio Sites
You will find a large selection of websites that will host your work and promote
your portfolio. Some of these will cost you and some will be free. A selection of
these sites will work harder, or be more effective at promoting your work than
others, including in driving traffic to their site, so that more potential visitors see
your work. These sites, which I call ‘active’ sites, will likely be paid sites, for
example Creative Shake.
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Others will function more as news portals or be based on a regularly updated

or rotating system whereby new work that is added by you and approved will be
featured briefly on the homepage of the site, such as Little Chimp Society for
illustrators.
Other sites like Flickr or DeviantArt, will simply host images or other files you
upload to them. Because of the interactive nature of many of these sites, they
can get your work a great deal of exposure, especially if you engage in the
interaction.
You might consider using one of these sites as your base, which is fine.
However, as part of the strategy I put forward, I still recommend having your
own, unique, personal site, which will afford you added benefits, including
looking more professional, and allowing you the flexibility to have a landing
page for a mailing list etc.
Refer to Resources (R9) for a list of portfolio sites you can use.
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7. Freelancing sites
By freelancing sites, I am referring to websites that cater specifically to providing

work for freelance workers and other contractors. These effectively act as online
marketplaces for buying and selling services.
I have used sites like Guru, Elance and iFreelance in securing a few jobs over
the years, although I am skeptical that creatives should rely on them for their
main source of work and promotion, primarily because of the amount of price
undercutting that occurs amongst freelancers. However, some great ongoing
relationships with clients can be initiated through freelancing sites.
Such sites can provide a means of directly advertising your services by allowing
you to set up a profile that can be searched by people looking to hire freelanc-
ers.
I do recommend at least setting up a profile with sites like Elance (refer to

R24 in Resources for a list of similar freelancing sites), so that your portfolio
is visible to those that might be looking for services like yours. Your profile
also tends to get well indexed by Google and others, so it can be seen if the
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keywords in your profile match those being searched. From here on, you can
choose to apply for jobs that appeal to you or simply keep your profile updated.
Here are the steps to take in setting up an effective freelancing profile on

sites like Elance:
1. Register.
2. Choose the option to set up as a worker.
3. Choose your preferred account plan if offered. It is probably best
to start on the free option if there is one, to get a feel for the site for a
few weeks.
4. Enter your account information, including your desired username.
5. Create a tagline that includes keywords related to your services.
6. Make sure you emphasize the benefits you provide in your descrip-
tion and about me sections. Be sure to include relevant keywords
here too.
7. Add a picture of you or a logo if required.
8. Add a selection of your best pieces to the portfolio area.
9. Add any links you have to your personal site or blog.
10. Add your contact details, especially a valid email address.
11. Save and submit.
8. Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
If you are happy to pay for site visitors, it is definitely worth considering
employing pay per click advertising to bring targeted traffic to your portfolio.
If you decide to do this, you should make sure visitors are brought to a page on
your base site that explains clearly what you do, what sets you apart and what
the benefits are for the prospect. This can be your about page, but you should
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definitely provide a ‘call to action’ at the bottom of the landing page that people
are brought to. This should be something that makes people take action, such
as asking to be contacted for a quote or your mailing list opt-in form, otherwise
you could potentially lose customers.
You need to put in the research, and you need to make sure that people coming
to your services are converting so that you do not lose money. By converting I
mean there needs to be a high enough proportion of people who actually take
action in the form of employing you, buying from you, or at the very least signing
up to your mailing list, for it to be worth the cost of PPC advertising.
How to organize and set up effective PPC advertising:
Create a PPC campaign account and set a daily budget. Google Adwords
is one option, and will be addressed in these instructions, although it is worth
looking into StumbleUpon’s and Facebook’s ads too, which are explained
through each site’s guidelines, and can be very targeted sources of traffic too.
Research your primary keywords using Wordtracker or the free and very
good: Google keyword search tool. Identify keywords that relate to your work
and your niche that get plenty of hits according to the keyword tools. You should
identify at least 10 keywords.
Input your chosen primary keywords into Excel as groups of 10, and save.
Use Google docs as this keeps everything on the net.
Research sub-keywords within each group of ten, also within Excel to keep
things organized. This means ensuring that you capture the highest number of
possible combinations of search terms within each group. For example taking
keyword ‘illustrator’ and breaking it down four ways to: ‘illustrators’, ‘ilustrator’,
‘digital illustrator’, and ‘digital illustrators’, and so on.
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Write two adwords ads for each group that you have inputted into your
Google campaign. This will enable you to test the effectiveness of each ad
further into your campaign, to see what is working best for you (this is why it’s
important to have a way of seeing your site stats through something like Google
Analytics).
Set your maximum bid for each keyword group. Be careful not to bid too high,
because you might not convert well enough within your site to be able to pay for
the clicks.
Activate your campaign and keep a close eye on it.
The key thing to remember is that you want the highest possible conversion rate
on your base site for the lowest possible cost per click. This will inevitably mean
monitoring and tweaking each ad in your ad campaign, which is discussed in
Step 10.
9. Targeted Banner Ads
Putting up a banner on a relevant and well-visited site can prove to be a quick

and effective way to drive traffic to your sites, and introduce people to your
brand. Often they will come at a cost, and you need to make sure your banner
design stands out amongst others that it might be sitting with.
What is it?
Essentially a banner is an image, posted up on a site as an advertisement, like

a billboard, which links to wherever you specify it to. Normally you pay the site
owner a monthly fee to place a banner on a spare space on their site.
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How to do it
Identify the kinds of sites to display your banner through. If you are looking for
clients, consider the kinds of sites which potential clients are likely to use.
Contact the webmaster of the site via email, explain who you are and ask for
an advertising rate card for banner ads.
If it is acceptable given your budget, send through your payment and the banner
according to the banner dimensions they specify.
Many creative sites have an advertising system already incorporated such as

through ‘Buy Sell Ads’, meaning you need only click the empty ad spaces you
want to use to get advertising immediately.
Ensure your ad is being displayed according to the agreed terms and track
it’s performance through Analytics or similar.
10. Press Releases
We discussed using press releases to drive traffic to your sites in Step 7, so

most of the information can be taken from there in advertising yourself.
You can use press releases to make announcements across the web to be
picked up by various news services, whenever you have something worthy of
mentioning. For example, send out a press release (or multiple releases) when
you have launched or updated your site or when you have a new exhibition
coming up. With a call to action within it, and the right keywords included in the
text, your press release can be picked up by relevant people who will come to
your site and use your services. You can also incorporate the press release text
into your personal site to add credibility after you have sent one out.
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STEP 9.
DO MORE
FREE STUFF
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Not many creatives consider working for nothing as worthy of their time
and effort. We want to have work coming in regularly and get paid 100% of a
suitable rate for each and every project we work on. That’s completely under-
standable and very fair.
I want to get paid, and paid properly as much as the next freelancer. However,
there is more promotional power in doing certain things for free or at lower
costs, than a lot of us might think. Although working for less will earn you less
initially, the rationale behind going for unpaid or low cost work is to create value
in your own brand, improving your exposure and benefiting you in the long term.
If you can see it in this light, you’ll see that the methods I’m about to describe
can really benefit you, and in some cases, massively.
Here are some ways that your exposure and long term value will be magnified
through working without initial payment:
1. Working on more self-initiated projects

2. Offering discounts or free work to ideal clients
3. Mutually beneficial deals
4. Create products
5. Collaborate
6. Competitions
7. Submit work to stock sites
1. Working on more self-initiated projects
Allow yourself the freedom to work on your dream projects without waiting for
them to fall into your lap, under your own guidance. Once completed, you can
showcase what you have produced in your portfolio, and promote it from there.
More often than not, the passion and enjoyment put into this work will shine
through, bumping the quality and worth of your portfolio significantly.
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New work that you create in this way needs to be exposed as much as it can,
and you can use all the methods described so far, including social networking
and uploading your work to social sites like Flickr and Society6 for attracting
welcome criticism and feedback.
2. Offering discounts or free work to ideal clients
This might attract some gasps of horror from some of you within the creative
community. We all deserve to be paid well for the work we do. Imagine a
plumber offering us to fix the boiler for free, with no strings attached.
The reason I’m suggesting this as an option is because of the value you will
derive from doing this, in the following ways:
Instead of adding new outstanding work to your portfolio, you can add new
work that is attached to the name of a client, which can be added to your list
of completed projects, and clients, boosting the value of you as a creative. The
greater the renown of the clients you manage to work with, the better.
Working for free brings with it opportunities for being referred to paying
clients. The client themselves can forward your name on to other suitable
prospects for you, or eventually offer you paying jobs themselves. Referrals can
also come through people seeing your list of clients on your site and elsewhere.
Working for less (especially when you might otherwise be unemployed) gives
you practice and will get you honing your skills, which is of great value to
you in itself.
Gaining marketing power through your client. Those you work with will
provide opportunities for your work to be seen, through revealing your work and
crediting you for what you have done. It helps to confirm with them that you
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would like your name to be showcased by the client as much as it can.
Subsequent payment opportunities. Your client, if they require your services

again once you have worked with them, will likely pay the full cost of your
service on the next round if you made it clear that the initial job was discounted
for them. In some cases, you’ll find that those you offered a discount to will pay
more or the full price anyway (this is why you should make it clear what your
normal costs are).
You can make these offers to clients through your newsletter and mailing list,
via social media platforms, by direct email contact, and through various direct
advertising methods.
3. Mutually beneficial deals
Sometimes it’s not simply money that will contribute to your personal wealth, but
mutual agreements that can prove hugely beneficial to you and your strategy of
self-promotion.
Find people you’d like to work with who you think could use your creative
services. Offer them a deal that would benefit both of you that focuses on
improving your exposure.
You will find this often provides some excellent rewards if you think imagina-
tively on the kinds of agreements you could have with various people, and build
healthy rapport with those you contact.
It is up to your own judgment whether you should approach new potential clients
with discounted offers or simple introductions to your work, and I would suggest
mixing things up a bit and seeing the results. You can always offer a discounted
service as a follow up communication a while after the initial communication.
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I recently contacted a popular online design magazine with the intention of

striking a deal with them that would benefit both of us. My suggestion was to re-
design their logo in exchange for some promotion through their site. After some
email negotiation, the deal we ended on was a logo and site counter redesign
at a discounted price (so they were happy to pay anyway) and an interview that
was seen by thousands of web visitors everyday.
Be imaginative and practical in deciding on a good deal that will benefit both
you and the client, and you’ll get some great rewards. Don’t forget to see the
value in promotion itself.
4. Create products
By ‘products’ I mean both physical products such as giclee prints, and non-
physical, like information products or audio downloads. The reason this is
included in this section is because with products you are not guaranteed
earnings from them like you are with an agreed job with a client. You might also
consider making products to give away for free.
Creating products like merchandise for a shop are one way of gaining exposure,
especially if it is something that will spread through people are sharing it with
others.
Anything that you consider selling will have self-promotional value within it, par-
ticularly if it sells well, because products can potentially be seen by many, who
might see your name associated with it or inquire further. One of the best, and
cheapest ways you can promote yourself and your work in this way is through
information product creation.
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Information products
Creating information products is an excellent way of building up a credible

image. They can come in the form of e-books, audio recordings, software
programs, and video and can help you get exposure to potentially thousands of
people.
No matter what your profession, you can find something to produce into an
information product that relates to what you do.
Apart from allowing people to learn more about the way you communicate
and express yourself, producing information products are useful for you in the
following ways:
1. They will help you get more clients because such products will give
people the ability to connect with you and learn more about how you
communicate and what you know about before taking further ‘risks’
with you.
2. They create opportunities for ongoing passive income that requires

little ongoing work.
3. The opportunity for your product, your name, your brand to go viral
(spread through word of mouth), if the product is free.
4. Having an information product improves your credibility as a

creative freelancer because it establishes you as an expert in your
field and will distinguish you from others in your industry.
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Here are some information products you could put together to sell or giveaway,
either as it is, or in exchange for your mailing list subscription:
• A free e-book full of special tips

• A full e-book (usually in the form of a pdf file)
• An audio CD
• Training videos
• Write an article
Make sure the product relates to the work you do, is straightforward and isn’t
overworked. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It is ok to put together information
that has originated from elsewhere, as long as it is presented in your own words
and isn’t an obvious copyright infringement. You can also get the majority of the
work outsourced, although for your credibility’s sake, you’ll want to exert a fair
amount of control over the finished piece.
5. Collaborate
Collaboration, joint ventures or joining forces with one or more people in

mutually beneficial agreements that ultimately benefit the promotion of your
products and services can be very fruitful.
Establishing joint ventures through cross promotion on mailing lists and blogs
and trading content with others were some of the methods discussed as part of
one’s traffic-driving strategy in Step 7.
Other forms of collaboration include:
Working with other creatives in similar or other fields on new projects.

These can be paid projects, but it is also an option to create an interesting, self
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initiated project with others that you can add to your portfolio.
Really aim for a piece of work that is remarkable as you make use of the
benefit of combining talents with others. The ideal partner to collaborate with is
obviously someone who is well known in the first place, so that you can ‘piggy-
back’ on their success and promote via the contacts they have.
Joint products. Consider combining forces with others in producing things

you can give away or sell, like information products or pieces of art that will
ultimately benefit the exposure each of you can receive.
Joint blogs/sites. Starting and running a blog needn’t be a solo job, and you
can work with one or more people on a blog to save the effort. You will also
have the combined power of all of you in promoting it and running it, and it will
allow you to focus more time on actually being creative or promoting yourself
elsewhere. For example, ThunderChunky is contributed to by four designers,
who each receive exposure through the site.
You can also work towards putting together a website that attracts people in a
different format to that of a blog, and bring in the pooled talent of others in order
to do so. Make sure you connect your sites to your respective base sites.
Excellent online communities tailored for bringing people together for collabora-
tion include Everycreative and Society6.
6. Competitions
Applying to competitions that accept submissions for your kind of work can be
an effective way to create exposure for your work, especially if you end up as
runner up or even winner. The voting or judging process will open up the oppor-
tunity for often high caliber people to see your work and you have the chance to
add value and credibility to your portfolio and base if you do walk away with an
award.
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Competitions are also a great opportunity to provide motivation for focusing on

a project that will result in a high quality piece of work that you can add to your
portfolio and further promote.
Always be aware of the rights you are entitled to as a creative before submitting
work to competitions. You don’t want to give away too much of the ownership
of your work to companies who essentially want to get their hands on free
work. Do the research and ask around before committing to various contests
to be sure you are contributing to something that is known to be valid and well
regarded. Be cautious of competitions that require a fee to enter.
Follow the guidelines of the competition or contest and submit as requested.

If you are able to, research the contributions of previous contestants from
previous years to get a sense of the level of complexity and/or quality judges
are looking for. Of course originality and remarkable work is key, however.
A few suggestions of competitions that can be applied to online are listed in

Resources.
7. Submit to stock sites
If you are accepted to contribute your work to stock sites, they can prove to be
very effective platforms for people to discover and commission new work by you.
By stock sites, I’m referring to sites that accept submissions like photographs,
illustrations, audio, flash and video by various contributors, which are then sold,
often royalty-free to the general public. Contributors receive a percentage of
each sale. Sites like iStockphoto and Shutterstock, because of their high levels
of traffic, are great places to combine earning money from your work with self-
promotion.
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Many of these sites also act as places to network, through forums and creative
networks that you can build through linking up with other members on the site.
These sites are excellent places to find potential clients, as many become
members of the site because they search for royalty-free stock and freelanc-
ers who contribute there. I personally have contributed work to iStockphoto,
and have received a significant amount of separate work, as well as exposure
through it.
Before being accepted as a contributor, put in some research by searching

through the stock that is already there. Have a look through work of the same
medium to yours and try to gauge a sense of what is missing in terms of
suitable stock, and see if you can fill this gap, without veering too far from your
own unique style.
Follow the guidelines for submitting work carefully, as this can often be com-
plicated and rejections are frequent.
Once accepted, make sure you fill in your profile to include plenty of information,
including links to your sites, a photo or logo, and so on.
Engage with other members of the site, be helpful on the forums, and begin to
build a network if the site enables this, for example through the creative network
on iStockphoto.
Refer to the Resources (R26) section for a list of recommended stock sites to
become contributors for.
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STEP 10.
MAINTAIN!
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Up to this point, I have discussed a range of methods and steps to take

in establishing an online base, blog and mailing list. I’ve also revealed ways
in which to increase the exposure of each, so as to secure more clients, grow
more fans, make more sales and ultimately get your work seen.
Most of what we have talked about are ongoing activities, and you should view
networking and developing a group of contacts a long term activity. It is worth,
however, clarifying some of the things you should continue to address as you
go about optimizing, monitoring and expanding your campaign of self-
promotion.
First we’ll look into monitoring and maintaining the promotion of your personal
base site and blog before discussing some tips on keeping your mailing list
going. Then we’ll discuss maintaining visibility through social networking before
talking about how the exposure you glean from traffic, advertising and working
for free, can be optimized and made consistent.
Base maintenance
As a representative hub for your brand, your base plays a crucial role in your
promotion. As such, you need to make sure that the site serves its purpose
effectively over time.
Site performance feedback
To get an idea of how your site is performing in response to traffic being driven
to it, you can analyze site statistics, monitor using Google alerts and you can
ask your visitors for feedback.
Use Google Analytics or a similar tool to see how visitors use your site. If
you are bringing people to the site, check the bounce rate, which indicates the
percentage at which people are turning away to other sites on arriving at yours.
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If this level is high, this is an indication that your site is not being effective in
encouraging visitors to stay for longer.
Analytics can also show you where various traffic streams into your base are
coming from. This would be a good indication of where you should focus your
traffic building efforts, by focusing on the areas that are working, and improving
areas that aren’t generating much.
Have a hunt around the kinds of statistics these tools can show you, as they
can point to all kinds of areas that can be improved or exploited. For example,
you might like to see how long people tend to stay on particular web pages,
such as your portfolio to get a sense of how ‘sticky’ the page is, so that it can be
improved if required.
Use Google alerts or another monitoring system to track any mentions your
site is getting on the web, including when people blog about it or comment on it.
This gives an insight into the reputation of your brand and site and directs you
to places to contribute to discussions relating to your base.
Ask your site visitors for honest feedback on your site at regular intervals,
using social media, your mailing list and other online interactions. This is where
you will get some of the best ideas on how to improve your site as well as your
personal work so that visitors return and spread the word.
Armed with this feedback, you should keep a regular eye on the following
aspects to ensure the longevity of the effectiveness of your base:
• Site Activity
• SEO
• Quality design
• Navigation
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Site activity
Ensure you keep the content on your site up to date and functioning. Up to date
content includes work you add to your portfolio, testimonials, contact details,
mini-blog posts and the details in your bio. This adds to the site’s credibility and
stops it from going stale. You should ensure all links are working regularly and
that there are no mistakes in the copy.
Your base site should be immaculate because it is effectively representing your

brand and your service on the web, so you want it to appear professional.
SEO
Address the search engine optimization aspect of your site is important, as you
want to attract targeted visitors searching for your products and services via the
internet. Your standalone blog will function in the same way, but you want good
SEO applied to your base.
You should verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools, which was discussed
at the end of Step 2. Use it to see how the Googlebot is crawling your site,
where there are errors and what backlinks are pointing to your pages. Also use
it to see the page rank distribution of all your pages in Google, see top search
queries as well as top search query clicks.
Also use the Google Toolbar to find out the page rank of your site or any other.
The better the page rank, the more effectively optimized your site is for the
search engines.
The following activities will ensure you maintain high page rankings for relevant
keywords in search engines:
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Incorporate keywords into your site title, headers and text that you want
people to be searching for in search engines. Don’t jeopardize the professional-
ism of the site with too many obviously planted keywords, but put in a healthy
amount of words that relate to your service and niche within the text.
Make sure your site is regularly updated with fresh content that includes
relevant keywords. This is where your mini-blog comes in handy, as you will be
using it to talk frequently of your work, and this will be looked on favourably by
Google and others who crawl your site looking for new content.
Continually add backlinks to your site by publishing articles elsewhere,

incorporating your links into various profiles and forum signatures, leaving blog
comments on high profile sites, and so on. Be careful about adding too many
backlinks, as this can get you blacklisted from Google. Keep it organic and
consistent. You don’t need to force hundreds of backlinks a month.
Add your site to various online directories that are relevant. Use the
methods in Step 7: No. 4 for help.
Quality design
Keep each page on your base consistent when it comes to colouring, font and
general style. Also maintain consistency of your site design with your brand,
within your base as well as elsewhere on the web. If in doubt, keep it simple.
Ask people what they think of your design occasionally to get a sense of how it
appeals or doesn’t to various people, then act on this feedback.
A great tool for visualizing where visitors tend to click on your site, is Crazy Egg.
You can use this service to see how visitors interact with the design and text of
your site, and see where you might be going wrong. It’s also a valuable tool for
improving site navigation.
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Navigation
Regularly test your site from the homepage through to the various sub-pages
within it, for ease of use, broken links, and accessibility. Make sure that pages
are consistent in format and style from one to the next. People should know that
they are in the same site on every page. They will be turned off from your site
if finding certain pages and the ease with which to do so are restricted. Make
the flow through your base seamless to ensure your visitor’s experience is a
positive one.
Blog Maintenance
All of what I discussed on base maintenance will apply to your blog, including
signing up to Google Webmaster Tools, SEO, design and navigation.
Because adding regular, fresh, interesting content is the key element in main-
taining your blog, you need to get organized about blog-posting. The more great
posts you add, the better, but work out how often you are realistically comfort-
able posting.
Set up a blog-post schedule using a spreadsheet perhaps (Google Docs

is great for this) or put the days into your calendar, and stick to it. Don’t post
for the sake of it, however, as having no post at all is better than a post that is
poorly constructed and of little interest.
Interact regularly with your visitors and encourage comments. This will
create a bit of a buzz on the site, add credibility, and get people coming back.
Also talk to visitors about what they think of the site, so you can gain valuable
feedback on improving your blog.
Keep upgrades through your blogging platform up to date. Most blog
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platforms will remind you of updates and upgrades that need to be downloaded
through the ‘back end’ area of your blog, so keep an eye out for necessary
upgrades, that you should perform whenever they pop up.
Look through the statistics that you installed on your blog or through
Analytics, as was discussed in the previous Base maintenance section to see
where traffic is coming from and how visitors are using your site.
If you don’t have access to your computer for certain periods, such as when you
go on holiday, here are some ideas for maintaining your blog when you cannot:
• Invite guest bloggers to post for you in your absence.
• Prepare content in advance and have your blog automate the publishing of
posts, or post the content quickly if you have access while away.
• Pay someone to maintain the blog.
Mailing List Maintenance
Like with blogging, you need to be organized about writing your newsletter or
other mail out. You need to deliver as regularly as promised, so consider putting
together a schedule that you can refer to in order to keep things prepared and
organized.
Make use of the statistics provided by your auto-responder service such

as Aweber for monitoring finding problems. You’ll often be given details into
broadcasts that weren’t received (bounce), who is unsubscribing, what the
click through percentages are for links you leave are, and so on. This kind of
feedback is important in being clear about the effectiveness of your broadcasts
to subscribers and what needs changing. Ask readers for feedback in emails as
well, but be sure to make it clear to hit ‘reply’ and not ‘reply all’.
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Use your auto-responder to schedule broadcasts in advance if you expect to

be away during the day of posting.
Always be aware of the need to promote your mailing list landing page
when you have the opportunity, especially when interacting with somebody who
shows an interest in your work, online and offline.
Social Networking Maintenance
A lot of what we discussed in Step 6 should be an ongoing process. Maintaining

visibility of your brand through channels like Twitter and Facebook is something
you should consider working on daily. You need only spend a few minutes each
day on social networking, with potentially very effective results. This also applies
to the creative communities discussed in Step 7.
You should consider writing down the key things that need to be addressed
for each site you network through so that you knock of each thing as you move
through the list, and don’t get distracted whilst doing so.
Here is a suggested daily to do list for Facebook (outside of adding friends),

which shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes:
1. Look at your homepage news feed (ideally showing updates from

you key contacts friend list). Interact as necessary, sharing comments
and ‘liking’ various updates you like.
2. Process your requests.
3. Wish people Happy Birthday (great way to stay in touch with
people).
4. Deal with your profile news feed; comment and ‘like’.
5. Deal with your messages in your inbox.
6. Interact and add content to your fan page wall.
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If you find any aspect of your promotional strategy to be time consuming without
requiring much in the way of your own personal input, consider outsourcing the
work to assistants who would happily take on the work for you. Use Elance or a
company like Tasks Everyday to delegate work to, which are often at very low
rates.
Traffic Maintenance
As was discussed for base maintenance, Google Analytics is a good way of

analyzing the traffic coming into your sites, so you can see how effective certain
methods have been, and how you can improve things.
Alexa and Ranking.com are useful tools for monitoring the traffic rank of your
site, and you might like to add the Alexa toolbar to your browser (download from
Alexa) to see yours and other sites’ traffic ranks as you browse.
All the methods we discussed to primarily drive traffic to your blog (or other
sites) will be undertaken as long as you want targeted traffic coming to your
work. I would advise trying them all out, and seeing what works best for you
by looking through your traffic statistics, then focusing on the more successful
methods.
If certain methods don’t seem to be working well, don’t give up before trying out
the tweaking, expansion and optimization techniques for each, which we will
run through below.
Forums
If you are not happy with the level of traffic you are receiving through forum
participation, here are some ways you might work on improving the method:
• Further optimize your personal profile(s) with more information.
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• Work on developing deeper relationships with those key people you interact
with on forums.
• Join and engage with more forums related to your niche.
• Consider applying to become a forum moderator, which will have a positive

effect on your credibility within forums.
Press Releases
If press releases are working well to bring traffic to your sites, look into the
following to improve the response to further releases:
• Offer an enticement to go with driving the reader to your site via the call to
action, such as a free ebook of tips that can be downloaded on your site.
• Re-write the copy yourself or professionally, placing emphasis on the read-

ability of the text. Make sure headlines and opening paragraphs are clear and
attention-grabbing.
Squidoo Lenses
The higher ranked your lens, the more traffic you will receive. Focus on the
following in boosting your lens rank:
• Look for other lenses and rank them, as this will have a positive effect on your
own lenses.
• Encourage other people to rank your lenses.
• Promote your lens externally, including through social media channels.
Page | 210
Online Directories
• Proofread, re-word and improve the listing text.
• Re-submit your site listings under multiple categories, if the directory allows it.
• Submit to more directories.
• Add tags to go with submissions if you hadn’t already.
Video Sharing and Podcasting
• Keep making video material, perhaps introducing a series that you can feature
on your blog. Look for new and interesting ways to use videos such as tutorials
and think about collaborating with others on video production that you could
both use for publicity and traffic-driving. Cross-embed your videos into your
blog, as well as on other video hosting sites.
• Continue to make podcasts and add them to further podcast directories.
Article Writing
If you aren’t seeing the levels of traffic you’d like coming through the articles you
publish online, consider trying out the following to optimize this method over the
long run:
• Use incentives to entice readers to your sites, and make this clear as part of
your call to action. Use information products, free gifts, further training and tips,
service discounts and so on. Add as much value to your articles as possible by
incorporating mention of bonuses they receive on going to your site, such as
your newsletter and the content of your blog.
• Have a look over your article headline and copy or maybe get a friend to look
over it for you. Consider breaking it up into smaller chunks, bold or re-size
Page | 211
certain areas, rephrase sentences, and generally make it more eye-catching.
• Consider getting articles professionally re-written. You can get this done at
pretty low costs, if you put in some research.
Classifieds
• Delete your ads and re-submit them every few weeks so that they remain on
the top of updates and results pages.
• Because, with classifieds, a lot of your exposure is proportional to the number

of ads you have posted, think about using automated submission software
(such as Classified Submission Center) to submit many ads to the same or
different sites.
Social Bookmarking
Continue to submit new content you post on your sites to a selection of social
bookmarking sites. Become an active member of one or two social bookmarking
sites such as StumbleUpon. Rate, review and vote for various other pages and
articles you come across on an ongoing bases. Doing this will benefit the way
bookmarking sites prioritize your own sites in the future, as well as attracting
support and votes from others.
Advertising Maintenance
Like with the traffic-driving methods we discussed, if you choose to directly

advertise your products and services, you will use the methods you choose as
much as you like in an ongoing process. Use statistics tools and user feedback
to see the effect of advertising on the visitors coming to your sites.
You can use the following tips as you maintain and monitor each of the following
Page | 212
advertising methods:
Portfolio Sites
Like with your base, don’t neglect to add your new work as it becomes
available. Think about engaging with other creatives and site members on
portfolio sites, as this will bring eyeballs to your work, and establish you as a
credible member of that online community.
Pay Per Click Advertising
If you are not satisfied with the level of exposure and traffic PPC ads are
providing for you, look into making use of the following tips to optimize your ads:
• Have a look over your keywords within your advertising account on Google
or elsewhere. Pause keywords that are not performing well and perform further
keyword research for keyword groups that are converting well.
• Perform more keyword research on your niche in general.
• For keyword groups that are not converting well, consider using negative
keywords to filter out people who search for unrelated keywords to your niche.
This means placing a negative (-) sign before the keywords you add that you
don’t want people to use to find your ads.
• Re-word advertisements that aren’t doing well and incorporate more benefits
into them to entice people to click.
Targeted Banner Ads
To optimize your banner ads, try the following:
• Submit different banners of different styles, shapes and designs and test to
Page | 213
see which ones bring in better results. The position on the web page also often
makes a big difference.
• Reword the headlines and text within the banners and test the response.
Do More Free Stuff: Maintenance
Continue to take advantage of any free moments you have by working on

and developing self-initiated projects and looking for opportunities to work for
influential clients for less. Competitions are excellent sources of motivation for
creating new, high quality work. The value in mutually beneficial agreements
with others can be substantial, so continue to put research into finding new
opportunities for working with others to both of your favours.
Research what products other creatives, successful bloggers and marketers

are selling and giving away to get ideas on potential products for you to
develop.
Continue to develop relationships and build rapport with all those you interact
with on the net as you’ll never know who might reveal themselves as potential
collaboration and joint venture partners.
If you have signed up for and been admitted to submit work to sell on stock sites
like iStockphoto continue adding people and potential clients to your creative
networks within the sites, and continue to add as much work as possible.
Obviously, your chances of making a sale and having your work seen increase
with each new piece of work you add.
Interact with others on forums on these sites if they have them.
Page | 214
Final Words
And there you have it! That’s ten steps of self-promotional goodness for you
to get to work on. When I say work, yes, I’m afraid self-promotion does mean
doing a bit of work in addition to making your creations. The good thing is that
once you have set up the main things, like your base site, blog and social
network, you only need to work at it a little bit at a time.
Despite the clear benefit of online promotional tools, don't lose sight of the many
ways to promote yourselves in the physical world too. Clients and fans will never
lose interest in tangible forms of promotion, so be aware of those too.
There is plenty of guidance here for you to get started with promoting yourself
on the internet, getting more work and making more sales if you have
something to sell.
Remember that you can dip in and out of this guide, and I wouldn’t expect you
to try all methods and steps in perfect order, unless you decide to use some
assistance. I also don’t expect you all to be starting every step from scratch, so
feel free to tailor the instructions in this book to fit your current situation. I do feel
that moving in order from step 1 to 10 will put you in a good position to see the
best results of this system.
I want to thank you again for investing your time and money in this book.
I am always happy to hear feedback from you, so don’t think twice about
writing me an email at info@redlemonclub.com. Send me a message and
I’ll try my best to respond.
Good Luck!
Alex
To earn 50% on all books that you promote, join my affiliate program.
Page | 215
RESOURCES
R1. Technical R2. Legal and Copyright
File Editing and Formatting www.aiga.org

www.creatorsrights.org.uk
www.dummies.com www.creativecommons.org
www.about.com www.sba.gov
www.techguy.org www.work.com
www.5starsupport.com www.ipo.gov.uk
www.wipo.int
Web Design and Training www.bailii.org
www.webdesignfromscratch.com R3. Creative Community Sites

www.w3schools.com
www.lynda.com www.behance.net
www.totaltraining.com www.shapeshifters.net
www.killersites.com www.likemind.us
www.krop.com
Domain Names www.ning.com
www.deviantart.com
www.godaddy.com www.creativecoffeeclub.com
www.namecheap.com www.flickr.com
www.joker.com www.istockphoto.com
www.networksolutions.com www.authonomy.com
www.creattica.com
Hosting www.formfiftyfive.com
www.thisiscentralstation.com
www.hostmonster.com www.designtaxi.com
www.hostgator.com www.society6.com
www.webfaction.com www.designaside.com
www.mediatemple.net www.conceptfeedback.com
www.thiswebhost.com www.thelittlechimpsociety.com
www.Illustrationmundo.com
www.pinkmuse.com
www.designrelated.com
www.spraygraphic.com
Page | 216
www.jacketflap.com www.otherpeoplespixels.com
www.illustratorsink.com R6. Blog Platforms
www.everycreative.com
www.artst.com Hosted
www.design21sdn.com
www.9rules.com www.typepad.com
www.graphic-design-links.com www.wordpress.com
www.designerid.com www.eponym.com
www.coroflot.com www.blogger.com
www.blogeasy.com
R4. Free Site Builders www.journalspace.com
www.squarespace.com
www.coroflot.com www.tumblr.com
www.moonfruit.com
www.shownd.com Self-Hosted
www.carbonmade.com
www.devhub.com www.wordpress.org
www.warmtoastcafe.com www.b2evolution.com
www.designerfolio.com www.lifetype.com
www.creativeshake.com www.movabletype.com
www.cafelog.com
Content Management Systems
Micro-blogging
www.indexhibit.com
www.cargocollective.com www.twitter.com
www.joomla.org www.plurk.com
www.identi.ca
R5. Paid Site Builders www.jaiku.com
www.creativeshake.com R7. RSS Submissions

www.mosaicglobe.com
www.site2you.com Sites accepting RSS submissions
www.carbonmade.com
www.ephotozine.com See the resources here:
www.dripbook.com
www.foliosnap.com www.rss-specifications.com
www.thecreativefinder.com www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
www.designerfolio.com
www.writersresidence.com Automated RSS Submission
www.loop-portfolio.com
www.squarespace.com www.seofocused.com
Page | 217
www.dummysoftware.com www.hireanillustrator.com
www.rssfeedsubmission.com www.foliolink.com
www.blogsubmissionservice.com www.dripbook.com
www.myphotofolio.co.uk
R8. Creative News and Link www.designrelated.com
Submission
R10. Search Engine Submis-
www.designbump.com sion
www.dezinerfolio.com
www.design-newz.com www.exactseek.com
www.designrfix.com www.gigablast.com
www.devsnippets.com www.ulyseek.com
www.inspiredn.com www.towersearch.com
www.thedesignmag.com www.scrubtheweb.com
www.instantshift.com www.searchhippo.com
www.abduzeedo.com www.amfibi.com
www.tripwiremagazine.com
www.hongkiat.com R11. Video Sites
www.graphic-design-links.com
www.fuelyourcreativity.com www.youtube.com
www.zabox.net www.vimeo.com
www.noupe.com www.12seconds.tv
www.dexigner.com www.viddler.com
www.crazyleafdesign.com www.ustream.com
www.thewebblend.com www.kyte.com
www.psd.tutsplus.com www.justin.tv
www.brushking.eu www.revver.com
www.paintbits.com
R12. Blog Directories
R9. Portfolio Showcase Sites
www.technorati.com
www.theispot.com www.mybloglog.com
www.thecreativefinder.com www.blogbookmark.com
www.coroflot.com www.blogcatalog.com
www.folioplanet.com www.boingboing.net
www.theaoi.com www.blogged.com
www.flickr.com www.blogarama.com
www.picasa.com www.bloglines.com
www.deviantart.com www.portal.eatonweb.com
www.behance.net
www.creativeshake.com
Page | 218
More listed here: R15. Social Media Multi Posting

www.rss-specifications.com www.socialoomph.com
www.seesmic.com
R13. Social Networking www.ping.fm
www.hootsuite.com
www.bebo.com www.tweetdeck.com
www.brightkite.com www.twhirl.org
www.efactor.com www.posterous.com
www.facebook.com
www.friendfeed.com R16. Twitter Apps
www.last.fm
www.linkedin.com www.twitpic.com
www.myspace.com www.easytweets.com
www.naymz.com www.tweetdeck.com
www.ning.com www.hootsuite.com
www.plaxo.com
www.tagged.com R17. Twitter Pre-scheduling
R14. Social Bookmarking www.twuffer.com
www.autotweeter.in
www.digg.com www.futuretweets.com
www.reddit.com www.socialoomph.com
www.stumbleupon.com www.twitresponse.com
www.furl.net www.twitmessenger.com
www.spurl.net
www.delicious.com R18. Sites that Pay
www.propellor.com
www.fark.com www.shutterstock.com
www.slashdot.org www.istockphoto.com
www.mixx.com www.fotolia.com
www.shoutwire.com www.cafepress.com
www.indianpad.com www.etsy.com
www.newsvine.com www.zazzle.com
www.linkfilter.net www.spreadshirt.com
www.hugg.com www.imagekind.com
www.plime.com www.deckpack.com
www.linkswarm.com www.greetingcarduniverse.com
www.theuntappedsource.com
www.redbubble.com
Page | 219
www.dreamstime.com www.sanepr.com
www.audiomicro.com www.publicitywires.com
www.sanepr.com
R19. Forums www.addpr.com
www.pr.com
Google your industry or niche + ‘forum‘ is www.ideamarketers.com
usually a good bet, but here are some sug- www.localpressrelease.net
gestions for creative forums: www.prbd.net
www.promotionworld.com
www.allgraphicdesign.com www.onlineprnews.com
www.graphicdesignforums.com www.widespreadpr.com
www.synthvox.com www.pressrelease001.com
www.designforums.co.uk www.lawfuel.com
www.productdesignforums.com www.njbiz.com
www.designerstalk.com
www.freelanceuk.com Press Release Submission Services
www.illustrationmundo.com
www.illustrationfriday.com www.prlog.org
www.ccgb.org.uk www.marketwire.com
www.pressbox.co.uk
R20. Press Release Submis- www.1888pressrelease.com
sion www.get2press.co.uk
www.presswire.com
Sites that Accept Submissions www.freepressreleases.co.uk
www.i-newswire.com
www.betanews.com www.realwire.com
www.nanotech-now.com www.prweb.com
www.npr.org www.pressdispensary.co.uk
www.bizeurope.com
www.downloadjunction.com R21. Online Directories
www.afreego.com
www.freepressindex.com Paid Directories
www.techprspider.com
www.directionsmag.com www.dir.yahoo.com
www.prmac.com www.chiff.com
www.pressexposure.com www.business.com
www.mediasyndicate.com www.elib.org
www.sbwire.com www.gimpsy.com
www.news.thomasnet.com www.qango.com
www.prlog.org www.abilogic.com
www.baygo.com www.avivadirectory.com
Page | 220
www.site-sift.com R22. Article Submission

www.joeant.com
Sites that Accept Articles
Free Directories
www.newswiretoday.com
www.dmoz.org www.prleap.com
www.lii.org www.freepressrelease.co.uk
www.illumirate.com www.prweb.com
www.iwebinfo.com www.ezinearticles.com
www.intestyle.com www.goarticles.com
www.turnpike.net www.articlecity.com
www.bizdirects.com www.a1articles.com
www.imomlinks.com www.ideamarketers.com
www.littlewebdirectory.com www.searchwarp.com
www.webworldindex.com www.isnare.com
www.websearches.info www.amazines.com
www.jayde.com www.articledepot.co.uk
www.sinotribe.com www.articledashboard.com
www.easyarticles.com
Local Directories www.articlebin.com
www.articlehub.com
www.yell.com www.articlegarden.com
www.google.com/localbusinesscenter www.articlesphere.com
www.thomsonlocal.com www.articlealley.com
www.touchlocal.com www.articlesfactory.com
www.local.yahoo.com www.articlewise.com
www.articlegeek.com
UK Local Directories www.writeyourarticles.com
www.submityournewarticle.com
www.b2index.co.uk www.article-hut.com
www.lifestyle.co.uk www.article-spot.com
www.splut.co.uk www.articlefusion.com
www.haabaa.co.uk www.article-planet.com
www.toplocallistings.co.uk www.theallineed.com
www.business-directory-uk.co.uk www.articletrader.com
www.freeindex.co.uk www.certificate.net
www.ozami.co.uk www.articlepoint.com
www.bigwebdirectory.co.uk www.alumbo.com
www.reprintarticles.com
www.free-articles-zone.com
Page | 221
www.articlefinders.com www.livedeal.com
www.articlejoe.com www.adpost.com
www.articleson.com www.buysellcommunity.com
www.linksnoop.com www.inetgiant.com
www.fresh-articles.com www.adlandpro.com
www.stickyarticle.com
www.article-content-king.com R24. Freelancing Sites
www.articlematrix.com
www.linkgrinder.com www.elance.com
www.rectonet.com www.guru.com
www.anyarticles.com www.designquote.net
www.freelancewriting.com
Article Submission Services www.coswap.com
www.aquent.com
www.submityourarticle.com www.ifreelance.com
www.isnare.com www.getafreelancer.com
www.articlesbase.com www.freelanceseek.com
www.articletrader.com www.scriptlance.com
www.articleflicks.com www.rentacoder.com
www.allfreelancework.com
R23. Classified Ad Submission
R25. Competitions
www.craigslist.com
www.gumtree.com www.sciencewritersawards.org
www.usfreeads.com www.ibby.org
www.classifieds.aol.co.uk www.theartsclub.co.uk
www.adflyer.co.uk www.booktrust.org.uk
www.webclassifieds.us www.insightguides.com
www.bargaintraderonline.com www.theaoi.com
www.freeadlists.com www.linnean.org
www.olx.com www.amazon.com/abna
www.pennysaverusa.com www.arts.gov
www.recycler.com www.hugocreate.com
www.buysell.com www.archleague.org
www.sell.com www.dubailynx.com
www.classifiedads.com www.callingallinnovators.com
www.traderonline.com www.goldenbee.org
www.kudzu.com www.schindleraward.com
www.domesticsale.com www.ifdesign.de
www.kijiji.com www.howdesign.com
www.backpage.com
Page | 222
R26. Stock Sites
www.istockphoto.com
www.fotolia.com
www.shutterstock.com
www.audiomicro.com
www.everystockphoto.com
www.photoradar.com
www.bigstockphoto.com
www.photos.com
www.vectorious.net
www.veer.com
www.punchstock.com
www.vivozoom.com
www.fotosearch.com
www.gettyimages.com
www.stockaudio.de
R27. Podcast Submission
www.podcasting-station.com
www.podcastingnews.com
www.podcastalley.com
www.podnova.com
www.podcast411.com
www.allpodcasts.com
www.ipodderx.com
www.podcast.net
www.podcasthost.com/
www.podsites.com
www.podcastpickle.com
www.plazoo.com
www.podfeeder.com
www.getapodcast.com
www.podcastshuffle.com
www.podfeed.net
www.amigofish.com
www.idiotvox.com
www.hardpodcafe.com
www.podtower.com
Page | 223

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10 Steps to Powerful Online

Self Promotion for Creatives

An in depth guide to effective marketing, winning

Copyright © 2010 Alex Mathers. All rights are reserved.

Step 8. Direct Advertising .............................................................................174

It’s time to use methods to promote what we have with confidence.

Building a Sales Cycle

The following diagram shows a simplified version of the cycle:

Addressing all the stages in your campaign is important in ensuring a steady

The stages are as follows:

Stage 1. Get Seen

A secure link can be in the form of attracting a Twitter follower, adding a

Stage 3. Keep in touch

Stage 4. Strike a Deal

An offering to attract work, such as a discounted service, or offering tickets for

It is important to be aware of this cycle as you go about the steps we discuss

Here are the ten steps:

Preparation in this way should cover the following:

• Establishing a target market

Establish Your Target Market

You need to decide on a group of people you would be passionate about

3. Which group(s) do you already know people or clients in?

5. What are you most passionate about as it relates to your work?

6. What are your strengths and talents?

7. What do you know a lot about within your field?

Here are some examples of target markets:

Building Your Personal Brand

As a creative professional, the requirement to stand out and be known for

Establish a Unique Selling Point (USP)

In marketing jargon, a unique selling point/proposition is what a product or

As creatives, one of the biggest challenges we face is in standing out

How to Develop a USP

1. Identify your main strength and milk it.

2. Improve your skills in one or two areas.

3. Find what makes you truly unique as a person.

Ask yourself these questions to get you going:

1. What are the three things that make you memorable?

2. What do people always compliment you on?

4. What unique experiences have you had?

3. Hone your style.

4. Make your speciality obvious.

The importance of your recognisable personal brand can’t be overlooked.

As Tom Peters puts it:

Demonstrating the right attitude and acknowledging internet etiquette is a key

I’m mentioning this, because a large amount of online promotion involves

When promoting a product or service, the old method of directly advertising

If you forget all else in marketing yourself online, remember this:

Relationship building and rapport come first, promotion comes second.

Internet etiquette, or ‘netiquette’ in general, is something everyone should be

It is good netiquette to pass on your knowledge to newbie’s (new users) to the

Don’t promote too widely.

Understand the emotion created in writing.

Refrain from using CAPITALS to emphasize yourself. For example, add

Don’t promote excessively.

Aggressive marketing is not welcome throughout most of the web as it is irritat-

Be aware of the netiquette of the platform you are on.

Research before asking.

If you have questions to ask, minimize disrupting someone else’s time by