What I Learned About Freelance Marketing from Flashback Weekend

family guy corn mazeOctober means the harvest, Halloween season, and best of all there are a massive load of horror movie conventions all over the country celebrating the scariest time of the year. I’m attending Chicago’s legendary Flashback Weekend this weekend (Oct 23-25 ’09) to promote my vinyl collector/DJ blog Turntabling.net, and wouldn’t you know it, I found a way to tie it in to Freelance-Zone.

I like to take lessons on the freelance game wherever I find ’em, and this morning while Googling directions to the event (at the Wyndham Hotel in Rosemont) I noticed that the official site for Flashback didn’t have the hours listed in a prominent place. In fact, I wasted several minutes searching for the hours (I finally located them buried deep on the schedule page–it’s too early in the morning for such a bug-hunt).

Here’s a lesson in marketing freelancers can learn:




When you have important information you want your clients to know, put it in a prominent place. Don’t let it get buried or overlooked. On your WordPress blog or resume home page, put the critical stuff in a widget on your sidebar where it will always be seen and close the top of the page. If you need to run your phone number, e-mail address, links to contact information, try placing it in the upper right side of the web page for good visibility.

Also, while we’re on the marketing front, it’s better not to promo something and deliver it later if you get caught up and don’t have time to follow through than to promo a feature or special section and not deliver at all. Sometimes NOT talking up your latest addition to a resume page is better than promises.

For example, if you have video clips, just plop them up there rather than creating an empty space and say “Video clips coming soon”. Some may differ, but I personally find the empty promise distracting, especially when Mister Murphy steps in to enforce his law with regard to web design, time management, and other problem areas. Murphy’s Law is one of the few consistent things about freelancing, or so it seems…