You have been working really hard for last couple of projects as well as got excited about your upcoming projects / targets to achieve. I have seen a lot of freelancers who only work for a particular client for several years and they are still happy with it if you ever ask them. I got a question from one of the freelance group saying “how do we get more clients and get recognized with a wide range of target group?” That’s how my post came in to say “Tips to promote your work for almost FREE”.
I assume out of 24 hours, you spend at least 30mins on internet for either sending emails, social networking, posting on twitter about your current project status or interesting links to your friends. Somewhere, you look at the new T-Shirt design print that says “Wow, that’s nice..I think we could do that…” to yourself or either send that link to friends saying “checkout the new design by xyz designer”. If your design style matches with the one you saw recently, you may have end up getting such ideas before going to bed…
a. How do they do it?
b. Does it take time to achieve these?
c. Yes, I do have a lot work but how to make them published?
d. How do I get more clients?
e. Is it secure? I am confused…
You are no alone if you ever come up with such above questions or ideas. Well, we are not good at everything than good some something that we love the most i.e. cooking, paining, talking, interacting, reading, studying, working or even teaching. We have to learn that we are not good at and off-course it would take time. The following points are for those having a great work samples ?but never tried how to promote.
Here i am putting down 4 points out of 100, which are easy enough to do, at least you can think, plan about it.
Requirement
a. Decent internet connection (to upload your work)
b. A folder having all your work samples
c. Multiple folders having multiple work samples (i.e. Identity,Campaign, Website, Mobile etc)
d. Spare time (upload folder structure pic here)
Steps
1. Promote them by using social networking sites.
On facebook, you can create a folder saying “my work” or “what i do”, keep on adding screenshots of your work with a copyright symbol and share these screenshots to a ‘selected group’ who has a little bit understanding about design, art or even similar fields. you can also disable the option for commenting for such work samples if do not want any comment from them. Alternatively, you can also make a facebook fan page similarly and let others get all the updates whenever you update any work, message, status etc on the page. This would help you create an awareness to a wide range of friends and audience about your work. Never forget to keep your business email under contact info (under your facebook profile page) so that someone can connect with you.
If you are on twitter, upload the same pictures via “add an image button” when you post a new tweet. The same link goes to all your followers including clients and friends.
2. Promote your work via online portfolio sites.
There are a lot of portfolio sites where you can upload your work, publish them and share them with your friends and clients even though you have no knowledge about how to create a portfolio webpage. You can checkout some of these best portfolio sites and sign up if you do not have one yet. Behance, Coroflot, Carbonmade, SHOWN’D or even?Deviantart. Make sure your email id exists on such portfolio sites so that anyone can contact you directly.
Additional benefit: If you know how to create a webpage then you should register a domain (you@your company.com), get a hosting and publish your work samples to your own web space that gives a nice impression when you share your work to the communities.?Make sure you include a contact page followed by a contact form or email id?so that anyone can contact you directly.
3. Wear a customized T-Shirt for the Local market.
This seems to be funny, but let me tell you it would increase your brand value & recognition if you wear a T-Shirt that says your company name, your expertise along with a link to your work. If you have a better budget, you can design a series of T-Shirts with tag lines, ideas followed by your company name or link to your work. Keep wearing this whether you are meeting a new person or even a regular client. Someone would connect with you by seeing the personal message on your T-Shirt that says “Hi, I am a Graphic Designer. Let me create a Logo for you” (similarly, you should try a different line if you are in a different field)
4. Get yourself involved in charity work
The word ‘charity’ sounds like no money for work. Most of the time we take up client’s project that pays us rather than spending both time and energy on charity work. But the hidden fact is “This is not always true” because you are likely to meet new people & share your personal contacts whenever you contribute in such charity projects. You may not get paid but your network would increase definitely.
5. Create a remarkable campaign
We decrease or increase the price tags based on the criteria ?(quality, number of revisions, venders, maintenance to customer support) to such clients who are not your regular client. No matter what you do, the risk factors would be there for sure. So why can’t we take a huge risk which is not in terms of ‘investing money’ or ‘taking a loan’ either than spending your man hours and ideas as you can.
For an example: create a logo design campaign and name it something like “Get a Professional Logo for $1 in a day”. Sounds crazy is n’t? Actually it is out of the box thinking just to get a client data base and let them know how creative you are. You can start with such campaign by creating poster (some nice logos created by you) that explains the concept, create a fan page on facebook, a main landing page of your campaign (this is where all your target audience would be landing up and filling up the forms to submit their requests). ?”Get a…in a day” is a condition based (like no design options, no iterations) that you should putdown in the poster in the bottom section with smaller font size and grey tones. I am not explaining this process in details since this post is not about how to create such campaigns rather than make you think in a different line all together.
Conclusion
There are many more ways to promote your work today. I just came up with 5 points which are pretty easy to do but it also needs dedication, time and patience at the same time. If you have more views or ideas on the same you can contact me directly or put down the comments bellow.
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