advice, editorial

Advertise Yourself

Joe Wallace freelance social media.jpgby Joe Wallace

It’s funny what kind of great ideas you get for other people where marketing and self-promotion is concerned, but when I started taking a look at things I personally wanted to do, I realized I’d been missing the boat in a lot of little ways that could really help at some point down the line.

Everybody knows you should put a signature file in your e-mails to let people know important things like “I’m available for hire on your next project” and “Contact me here to hire me or look at my awesome resume.”

But there are other little things I realized I wasn’t doing to promote myself that could have the same result as the signature file. Two of the most glaring omissions? T-shirts and bumper stickers.

Seriously.

When I’m not doing freelance social media management, writing articles, or preparing seminars about using Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as PR tools, I have a little cottage industry going selling vinyl records, t-shirts and accessories for vinyl lovers. Whenever I do a convention, I’m almost always wearing a t-shirt advertising my site for vinyl junkies, Turntabling.net.

So why don’t I do that sort of free advertising for my freelance work?

A t-shirt that simply reads “freelancer” would definitely be a conversation starter in the right social settings, and when one thing leads to another, you could just end up talking shop with someone in need of a writer, editor, social media maven, etc.

I also noticed a distinct lack of shameless self-promotion on my vehicle–acres of bumper space that is just sitting there blank which could be used to direct someone to a resume page, The Freelance Zone, etc.

So now I’m getting ready to start being a bit more active in my self-promotion efforts by wearing my business on my sleeve, as it were. Within reason, of course. It would be insane to get a tattoo on my forehead with a web address on it, and a car that’s completely screaming a business message is a bit of a turn-off. But one nice, legible-from-a-distance bumper sticker could be a good way of adding some extra attention to what I do.