FullBleed

Illustration courtesy of Mal Jones

If this is the first time you’re thinking about how self-promotion and social media can help you get recognized and paid as a talented creative, let’s just say you’ve got some catching up to do. The reality is that self-promotion is the only kind of promotion you’re going to get until you become a superstar household name with agent in tow. Don’t be ashamed to promote yourself, and don’t let anyone tell you that it’s unprofessional or reprehensible. It’s how you’ll grow your business and get recognized for the talented person you are.

We all hope our clients, colleagues, friends, and family will talk well about us and help us get new gigs; however, you can’t put hope in the bank like you can cold hard cash. The following social media insights are things you can use to get your name out there and attract clients, employers, collaborators, and admirers, while converting self-promotion into profit and praise.

You Are What You Publish

Social media is about creating content that people can share and talk about. This is as simple as writing a blog post about typography or web design that people comment on, forward, and link to. Thankfully, as a creative, you’ve got more content than you know what to do with. The key is to match your specific kind of content with the right publishing platform and then post, post, post! Over time, the world will form an opinion about who you are and what you do based on the content created by and about you. You’ll start getting emails and phone calls from people wanting to hire you based on what they’ve seen of your work across the social web.

Publish Once and Distribute Infinitely

The beauty of using something like a blog to showcase your work is that you can post it once, but reference it infinitely. When I write emails to prospects, I’m constantly including links to posts on iStrategyLabs.com that showcase exactly the kind of work they’re looking for. This saves time and provides an opportunity for the prospect to explore my site a bit more. This is also handy when I’m commenting on other people’s blogs, in forums, on Twitter, and in social networks. If there’s a conversation taking place in one of these sites that I’ve already posted some insight about on my own blog, I include that link in a comment. It’s always okay to add to a conversation somewhere by driving people to your work as long as it’s relevant to that conversation. If it’s not, then you’re spamming, and that’s not cool.

Social Networks Mean Business

I got a call recently from a “big four” broadcaster that wants to hire iStrategyLabs to do digital word-of-mouth marketing for their TV shows. They found us on Facebook!  Facebook ain’t for kids anymore (demographically speaking); it’s a place where your potential clients are hunting for insight into their challenges. This particular prospect was poking around a marketing group on Facebook and came across a video I had posted where I talk about how to do influencer identification and outreach. If you’re not already actively using social networks, start today. Post all your best work to your profile, then find the places in your social networks where your customers will be looking and determine a “non-spammy” way of getting your content in front of them.

Find the Virtuous Distribution Arc

The last insight I want to share is that there are some really easy ways to get your content distributed far and wide with little effort. My favorite way is through a “virtuous content distribution arc” (see graphic), which basically cross posts my content across a number of social media sites with one click. What I do is setup my blog platform (7,500 monthly readers) to update my Twitter account (1,250 subscribers), and then have Twitter update my Facebook status (2,050 friends). That’s the easiest way I can think of to keep 10,000+ people up-to-date, maximize my self-promotion, and encourage new business opportunities.