In Part I of Marketing for Designers, ADCMW’s own long-time member Deane Nettles shared how he has learned to leverage the web as a foundation toward promoting his creative work. In Part II, he discusses social media’s role to other ADCMW members who, like him, have found themselves asking, “What are all these social media tools about?”
Social media tools provide people with ways to reach a large number of contacts while establishing individualized relationships, too. Through these tools, you as a creative can talk about your interesting new clients, the things your clients are up to, the new work you are doing for them, the photographers and illustrators and copywriters you’ve gotten to work with on that project, the techniques you’ve learned in the process, and the fabulous awards you’ve received. It’s also a way of getting worldwide exposure for your work — without a world-class budget.
In short, like Peter Corbett wrote in FullBleed last year, social media can be used to market yourself and your business. So your overall social media strategy should consider questions like: what are my strengths? Who is my target market? Who inspires me? Whom do I inspire? What would my target market find valuable about my strengths?
In Part I, I described how I’ve been helping clients and students understand the importance of websites and newsletters as a baseline for promoting their work. In Part II, I’m building upon that foundation to describe several social media tools that I’ve found are helping people extend their reach. Specifically, here’s what I’ve learned about writing for social media and using some popular tools.
WRITING
Being active with social media involves a lot of writing, which can be intimidating. You want to demonstrate your expertise, build trust, and land new connections and projects. To do that successfully and sustainably, I’ve found you have to write about what you know in a way that’s true to your voice.
For example, remember the e-mails that Katie O’Brien sent out to the listserv for the Art Directors Club a few years ago? They were ideal examples of communicating expertise in a friendly, upbeat tone. Her creative ideas and “Gee-whiz, I wish I’d said that” style seemed easy. But Katie said it was hard work, and difficult to keep up that level of inventiveness and commitment over time. Her communication efforts went a long way to build community and good-will, and that sort of model is perfect for finding success in social media.
Know your limitations. Take writing courses, or ask colleagues how they approach writing on the web. Once you start, stick with it; like anything, it’s best to create your own regular deadlines. If you don’t enjoy writing, or aren’t disciplined enough to do it consistently, you might want to hire someone else to learn your voice and do your writing for you. (Even Obama admits he’s never tweeted, but his more than 2 million Twitter followers might not have guessed as much!)
BLOGS
Blogs are a good way to share industry news, promote your latest work, and hone your writing skills about what is happening now. They are structured to provide feedback in most cases, offering a “comments” field (like here in FullBleed) to encourage responses. I’ve found that blogs, like newsletters, are at their best when there is an overall topic (like http://www.ilovetypography.com), and their advantage over a newsletter is that you can post quickly and easily whenever you have new information without worrying about contacts or recipients. It also exists permanently on a website — instead of buried deep in someone’s e-mail — and search engines can see it, so it becomes a searchable reference.
STRATEGY:
Post new and interesting information regularly; find blogs that are important to clients like yours and participate in them.
POSITIVES:
Blogs are good for quick updates. Relatively easy to maintain. Can capture readers’ information if they respond via the “comments” field.
NEGATIVES:
Content and style needs to match your business and your audience. And anyone can respond, so needs to be monitored to avoid spam or inappropriate postings, or respond positively to negative feedback.
Facebook is an informal way to find and keep track of people you know, and to let people know what’s up with you. You set up a profile and request to be friends with people in your network or those whom you find through the “friend finder” search feature. It’s really useful for keeping people in your network up-to-speed about new work you’ve created, new links you’ve found, or that great new design exhibit you’re going to. A standard Facebook profile isn’t searchable by search engines, but you can set up a profile for “Fans of” your studio site, which is searchable.
STRATEGY:
Connect with friends and let them know what you’re up to or what you have questions about. You never know who knows the answer or who might need your skills.
POSITIVES:
Easy to expand to people you don’t know well, easy to push new information and post new work.
NEGATIVES:
Easy to get involved in your friends’ lives and lose sight of professional aspect.
LinkedIn is a professional connection site, based on the theory of “six degrees of separation“. You create a LinkedIn profile listing who you are, what you do, where you’ve worked and where you went to school; LinkedIn will help you find associates you’ve worked for previously and people you went to school with. Then you can search your associates’ contacts for the connections you need. You can also post your latest business news, which is broadcast to all your associates. Your associates can also “recommend” you. LinkedIn’s format is formal and managed; for your protection, you probably only want to link to people you know. Joining groups on LinkedIn also lends itself to the professional social networking benefits of gaining access to information about what’s going on with that group.
STRATEGY:
Link to your clients, collect recommendations from your clients, request connections.
POSITIVES:
Formal; intended for business connections (more than Facebook). Possible to create connections to business contacts who work places you want to work; who know things you need to know. (Very useful for job hunting.)
NEGATIVES:
Limits to what you can post.
Twitter allows you to send out a 144-character message about what you are doing. People who want your updates will “follow” you so they can receive your “tweets” much like they would a newsletter. Tweeting about accomplishments should be occasionally sprinkled among more general information — like upcoming events, interesting links, or questions about specific challenges — that you provide followers. It’s informal and quick, and you can follow anyone from your neighbor to big brands like Starbucks or Dell.
STRATEGY:
Post short snippets of useful information and events that confirm your business strengths, build community, and validate your expertise.
POSITIVES:
Keeps you up-to-date on what’s happening with people and brands you want to hear from.
NEGATIVES:
Having something useful to say; knowing whose tweets are worth following.
FLICKR and YOUTUBE
Flickr and YouTube are media sites. On Flickr, you can maintain portfolios of still images and videos, and YouTube stores videos only. Each has the capability of allowing viewers of your uploaded pieces to comment on them. In the Fall 2009 issue of PhotoMedia magazine, writer Rosh Sillars says that Getty Images searches Flickr in search of new talent, so it can increase your chances of being found by distributing your content to social media sites like these two.
STRATEGY:
Post new work to create additional exposure.
POSITIVES:
Searchable, more exposure.
NEGATIVES:
Duplication of effort and content management, if you maintain these separate from your website/portfolio.
OVERALL
Social media is a class of online tools that facilitate publicity and interpersonal relationships. They help people connect with supporters, current clients, or prospective clients. Plus, there are tons of tools out there not mentioned above (like Posterous & Tumblr) that also help to bridge the gap of distribution across social networks.
But using social media tools appropriately takes time and effort even though they’re almost all free — and it has to be something you *want* to do. For example, if you are just punching the design time clock, so to speak, then social media probably won’t be useful. You have to be excited about the work you are doing, or it just won’t come off well or be interesting to others.
If you are better at talking to people directly, you may be more productive going out and networking. But consider social media tools to help you follow up with the leads you generate by networking and help you find new leads online.
With tens of thousands of people jumping on the bandwagon every day, hitting the jackpot through social media is as probable as hitting any jackpot. But if you pick your media carefully, and limit your intent, it can be worthwhile — and you’ll gain expertise that can be valuable for your clients, and new connections that can be valuable to you.
