photo credit: thinkpanama

Whenever you are starting your business you learn, most of the time, the hard way that you absolutely need to market yourself and whatever it is that you do. A Lot of people are better at this than I am, way better, however I figure that I have the advantage of writing from a beginners perspective. So over the past few weeks I have become acutely aware of this need and thought I would share with you what I have learned so far.

Recognize Who You Are

One of the most important lessons I learned from the get go was who I was, vocationally, in my new endeavor. Whenever I was introduced or was introducing myself I did so as a graphic designer/web developer and in doing so I have actually attained the majority of the business we have enjoyed thus far. I do this at my day job, when I am out for fun, in the grocery store and even when I pick up the mail from the mail man. You have to think, you are no longer a customer service rep or an IT for a large company, you are actually a professional writer, graphic designer, web developer or photographer. Hopefully you are also passionate about your new found freelancery and that definitely needs to show whenever you are introducing yourself, people need to know that you love what you do.

Make Some Commentary

You have blogs that you read because you think the information is useful or at least entertaining and hopefully both. One way to get your name out there is comment on the blogs that you like and become a part of the community. This can actually be a little time consuming for me so I resolved to making five well thought out comments per day so that I don’t end up spending all my time reading blogs.

Write A Guest Article

Writing for another blog has a lot of potential to generate some revenue for your business and I know a lot of people have recommended it in the past. What I have found when I did this is that it introduces you to a whole other realm of people and contacts and most importantly it gets your name out where people can see it. It also lets people get to know you a little better and lets them know what you are capable of. Whenever you do write a blog be it on your blog or someone else’s make sure that you always respond to the comments that are given, nobody likes it if you don’t interact.

Get To Know Your Community

This one actually involves leaving your precious computer and safe inner sanctum that is your house. There are tons of local business’s around your neighborhood and all you have to do is talk to them, don’t even hand out your business card at first, just get to know them. Once they figure out that you are awesome they will eventually ask what you do at which point you refer to quick tip number one. Take some time and look for local restaurants, grocery stores and flower shops and make a schedule to stop by and get to know the owners. You can also accomplish this by getting involved with your local chamber of commerce but there is so much pretense in those settings it’s not even funny. Pretense is never funny, ever.

Serve People

That’s right I said “serve”. No one likes to say it but the truth is that you are providing a service and once you have some clientele you need to serve them with proper respect. Believe it or not this is huge and a key quality to have for when you need a testimonial or referrals, not to say that you need to bend over backwards and break your back for people but leave them raving about how you do business. There are tons of writers, graphic designers and photographers out there but you can be the one that leaves people amazed with how you handle your clients.

The Bottom Line: It’s All About Relationships

It’s true, it really is all about relationships, simply because people are not going to go with your services unless they know who you are and are comfortable with you as a person and as a businessman/woman. The more people know who you are and what you do the better and if those people can get to know you as a person then even better, assuming that you are a good person anyway. So get out there, be friendly and show people what you are capable of.

Are there any quick marketing tips that you have that were not listed here? Don’t be shy! Share them in the comments!