Online Self-Promotion Made Easy
May 18th, 2007 (6:11am) Anne Zelenka 12 Comments
If you get confused or overwhelmed by all the possibilities for promoting yourself and your work online, keep this one rule in mind: focus on value. Only after you have something of value to give away — a Firefox add-on, sample web design templates, useful ideas wrapped in nicely-written blog posts, stock photographs, mp3 recordings from your jazz band, lists of carefully curated links on a niche topic — should you start worrying about search engine optimization, relationships with web VIPs, and other online games.
This week, journalist David Strom offered his top ten ways to promote yourself on Web 2.0 as a riff on the NY Times article about musicians promoting their work online. On his list, Strom includes making yourself reachable by email and other online contact mechanisms, using attention-grabbing headlines, and getting your fans to help promote your work. But the two points I found most important were these, about providing something of value to your community:
3. Give something away for free. Really. You do this to build credibility and also to give people a taste of what you will charge them for. Ginsberg is giving away his latest book on his blog, and he is so comfortable with doing that because he knows this will build word-of-mouth and drive sales. The indie musicians profiled in the Times are giving away MP3s. Some have taken this a step further and are even experimenting with demand-based pricing that turns out to net them more than the 99-cent download standard at iTunes.
4. Think about lists of useful stuff that you can offer others. I have a page of links to various Web conferencing tools on my site that used to be in the top four sites when you searched on Google (today is down to #13, I guess I am slipping up). I have had this page on my site for about a decade, and started it on a whim. Now I get vendors who want me to list their stuff there. Squidoo has institutionalized this with their “lens” approach, and Pageflakes has something similar with their shared pages (You can see my RSS feeds and sites that I frequent here). Each of these approaches takes something that you know, and filters that you apply to the Wide World, and puts a very small amount of your own stamp and value to it.
You need to show value to your community to raise yourself up in that community. That’s consistent with Steve Pavlina’s ruminations on being an A-list blogger, where he says that if you want to join in the A list of bloggers you should “Focus first and foremost on providing value.”
Now if you do create something of value, can you just sit back and wait for the world to notice? Absolutely not. Whatever we might like to think, the web isn’t a flat meritocracy. Still, you will be left at the starting gate if you have nothing of value to offer the web world. The trick of self promotion is this: you shouldn’t simply be promoting yourself. You need to promote your work. Start with making it excellent and useful and you’ve taken the most important step towards building your professional profile online.
[Links to David Strom and Steve Pavlina via Jeff Barr]
12 Comments Post your own comment
Serge Lescouarnec says: May 18th, 2007 7:15am
My friend Barry Moltz says that you cannot ‘force’ sales on clients.
They just need to know that you exist and that you are available when they need you.
My blog ‘Serge the Concierge’ allows me to share things I know about and/or I think could be useful to others.
Some companies I write about on my blog might also bring me new income sources (such as referral fees) if clients for my concierge business use their services at one time or another.
In any case, through the blog, I am constantly adding to my contact list, in the US and abroad.
It is a very valuable source.
Have a good week-end
Serge
Blog:
http://www.sergetheconcierge.com
Biz:
http://www.njconcierges.com
J.T Dabbagian says: May 18th, 2007 8:24am
I like this! I might use Squidoo to bolster some of the freelance work I do! Thanks!
But, what I wonder is how could I do this with Resume writing? You can’t obviously give people a free resume, so any suggestions?
Anne Zelenka says: May 18th, 2007 8:33am
J.T.: you could give away resume writing tips in a blog. You could show before and after sample resumes that demonstrate value and give ideas for how people can rewrite their own resumes too. You could write a PDF booklet with resume tips — have people register to download with contact information then you can follow up to see if they’d like to hire you for help.
Think of your work as resume writing expertise rather than the resume writing itself and then there are tons of ways you can create and show value.
Jazz Online » Blog Archive » jazz online May 18, 2007 12:12 pm says: May 18th, 2007 9:21am
[...] Online Self-Promotion Made EasyWebWorkerDaily, CA - 2 hours agoIf you get confused or overwhelmed by all the possibilities for promoting yourself and your work online, keep this one rule in mind: focus on value. … [...]
Rob says: May 18th, 2007 11:44am
Great points. As a search engine marketer myself that is usually the first question I ask my clients. What is it that distinguishes you from the rest of the pack - what is your value? They generally think long and hard.
It is from this core understanding that we do in fact develop an online marketing campaign for them.
Clyde Smith says: May 18th, 2007 12:04pm
“only after…should you start worrying about search engine optimization”
SEO should begin before all that. It should begin with the choice of name and domain because those choices will have a huge impact on your ability to honestly optimize your website and reach your customers.
And reaching your customers is why you optimize your website. Reaching your customers should be built into your business plan.
That’s like saying you shouldn’t worry about marketing until you have something to advertise.
Ries & Trout’s Positioning is just one work that points to the power of not waiting till later when considering how your business will be viewed by customers and will reach customers.
That said, I’m in total agreement with your approach of focusing on value for your customers. However, I do feel you’re more valuable the easier you are to find and most folks find stuff through search engines, so good, honest SEO is also about creating value for customers.
Top Posts « WordPress.com says: May 18th, 2007 5:00pm
[...] Online Self-Promotion Made Easy If you get confused or overwhelmed by all the possibilities for promoting yourself and your work online, keep this one […] [...]
Ole says: May 18th, 2007 5:54pm
Just a quick info - David’s public page is now available at http://www.pageflakes.com/davidstrom
Regards
Ole
William Spear says: May 18th, 2007 8:16pm
Anna,
Very fine piece of writing which lives up to its own mantra - it creates value. Please keep shedding light on the world of online promotion.
Regards,
William Spear
Publisher and Editor
Lit Between the Ears - Celebrating the Power and People of Radio Drama
http://TwoPlusPlus.wordpress.com/
# 30 #
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103 links to promote your blog for free says: June 16th, 2007 10:49am
useful post indeed.thanks
The 3 Rules of Self-Marketing « Web Worker Daily says: October 24th, 2007 11:00am
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