Marketing is no longer just limited to companies or brands; its importance also extends to self-marketing. With a large amount of competition for existing opportunities, each needs to use various techniques that help distinguish him from the rest. Among these techniques, self-marketing appears at the top of the ranking.
What is the importance of self-marketing?
Self-marketing is the way you present yourself to the world, through a set of activities you do, depending on your experience and skills. Getting to the professional stage of self-marketing ensures that you build a strong brand and that people will say what you want.
Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. (Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.)
Mastering the art of self-marketing helps you achieve many personal goals, perhaps getting a great job or increasing your chances of getting more projects if you are a freelancer. The importance of self-marketing can be included in the following points:
Helps identify you
Self-marketing helps your name gets known in the community around you. The more successful you are in self-marketing, the more popular you will be. You can take advantage of this while working as a freelancer to get access to many projects, with project owners confident in the quality of your expected performance.
It gives you a range of relationships.
Not only are jobs relevant at the moment, but they also give you a range of good relationships to expand your network. You can take advantage of these relationships later and increase your chances of getting more projects to work on through this network.
It makes you a personal brand.
Self-marketing is essential when it creates your brand among the audience. This mark can help you get more rewards for the projects you implement because the entrepreneur knows the value of your brand and the amount of benefit from your presence in his project.
Tips to help you master the art of self-marketing
Self-marketing needs time to have the desired effect, especially with intense competition in various fields and many people seeking to reap your desired results. During this time, you can follow tips to help you become professional in self-marketing.
Focus on your uniqueness.
When people focus on self-marketing, they are looking to get everyone’s attention in all the areas they are good at. This seems logical in the context of the desire of individuals to bring out their full potential to exploit this for self-marketing.
But in fact, it is essential to focus effort on one aspect of excellence primarily. On the one hand, there is one thing that a person excels at more than the rest, and that may give him a competitive advantage over others. On the other hand, it is possible to direct self-marketing activities to it, which helps achieve the targeted results and draws attention.
So, you can start from this point and think: What am I good at most? Can I achieve a distinction with it? Are there people interested in it who would like to follow me or get my services? After answering the three questions and determining your aspect of excellence, you begin the path of professionalism in self-marketing.
Keep talking about your side of excellence.
With so many platforms that put you in touch with others, it is imperative to harness your marketing skills to take advantage of these platforms. The best way to do this, leading you toward professional self-marketing, is to keep talking about what sets you apart.
You can’t expect that people will never forget you if you don’t appear in front of them occasionally, especially with the number of people who follow them on various platforms. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the continuity of their participation in what distinguishes you, as this makes them interact with you and helps you increase the number of people interested in the above.
In this case, it is crucial that you not only write content that reminds people of who you are. Instead, it is essential to provide content that has value and adds something new to them, exclusive content that they cannot find similar to. This makes them feel the benefit they get from following you. Some of the ways to help you do this:
- Discuss updates in your field
If you work in developing mobile applications, and a particular company announces a new one, people start questioning some of its details. You can share your information about the matter, drawing on your experience while providing the implicit answer to all the questions that came to your mind.
Get in the habit of doing it no matter what industry you’re in; by knowing the latest updates and doing a simple search, you’ll be able to point them out to people, given your expertise. This will provide you with their interest, as they seek knowledge, and keep them always following you.
- Share your latest work.
If your goal with self-marketing is to get more business opportunities, there is no better way to get your business featured. So, from time to time, you can make sure to display your recent work and share it with your network.
Don’t just make it a point to post the work without commenting, but be sure to share some details about it. If you can publish it as a complete case study clarifying the goal and the path you took to implement it and reach the result will help you communicate the complete picture behind the work.
- Use stories to communicate with the audience.
One of the essential self-marketing skills is having the ability to influence others. What will help you do that more than using stories? Nothing, as everyone loves to listen to stories because it affects them and brings them closer to their owner.
So, instead of traditionally talking about your activities, you can count on telling a story about it, whichever method is used. Start writing, then move on to the videos; in short, try to use all your resources; this will help you self-market and remind people of your activities.
Build a strong network.
Successful self-marketing needs a strong network of relationships. They are your capital to achieve professionalism in self-marketing. This network can increase your relationships, give you a more extensive network, and keep growing. The more you have your unique side, the easier it will be for you to find the right network.
To succeed in building a network, you need to use one of the most important personal marketing skills; Communication skill. For example, when you go to someone to get to know them or even start adding them on a social media site, how you talk to them will affect their response.
For example, if you start your talk by simply explaining who you are, what you do, and what distinguishes you, and then indicate that you like the person and what they do, this will make him more receptive to your presence and increase his desire to communicate with you. He will be motivated to respond to your words. When you use communication appropriately, you get more connections.
Create your own visual identity.
How do you want people to remember you? Content writer, graphic designer, and website developer. What do you think if you start creating your own integrated visual identity to achieve this goal? Even if it is limited to logo design, you can benefit from it in different ways, whether on social networking sites or freelance sites.
And if your primary specialty is not designing, you can hire a professional graphic designer and present him with the idea that you want to get. The designer will help you to implement it correctly according to your vision, and you can benefit from it in self-marketing after you get the final design.
Self-marketing methods
There are plenty of self-marketing methods out there that help freelancers get the best results. It requires understanding each technique and how to use it so that maximum benefit can be obtained from it. Among the most critical self-marketing methods that exist:
- Your social media accounts
Social media platforms are the most prevalent in self-marketing. It is highly effective to achieve this, whether used by itself or with other methods, we will discuss. Of course, it is not necessary to be on all platforms, but instead, direct your focus to the media you see fit for your field.
- Professional CV
A CV is one of the essential tools of self-marketing, as it is the means through which you can view the details of your professional career, such as your qualifications, previous experience, skills, and others. Thus, when you have a professional CV, you can send it to those interested upon request.
Resume content is a significant part of your account on freelancing platforms. You can take advantage of its information and add it to the site in your profile and the skills section. When you add your resume to essential areas, you will increase the importance and effectiveness of self-marketing and your potential for more opportunities.
- Professional Business Gallery
Nothing can help you with effective self-marketing more than previous business models. So, strive to have a professional business gallery containing the best projects you have ever undertaken, whether with other clients or individual projects.
Prepare your gallery of work through a standalone, then benefit from it by publishing it on various social networking sites. This will enable you to reach more people interested in what you offer and make them aware of the quality of your services, which will increase your chances of being hired in the future.
- Website or blog
Creating a website is a powerful self-marketing tool that can be used. It can be considered as your introduction channel or for displaying business models. You can add the link to the site on your accounts on other sites.
If you cannot create a website, creating a blog is an appropriate option. Whatever you choose, it is good to make sure that you provide unique and valuable content to the audience and publish it on your various accounts. This will help you stay in touch with them.
- Writing on other sites
Many sites now offer an opportunity for writers who want to publish content. This method is one of the essential self-marketing methods because it helps you reach a new audience through these sites, thus expanding your circle of relationships. You can even benefit from these writings as business models as well.
If you do not have the appropriate skill to write but have content that you believe is useful, try to formulate it in the simplest way possible. You may find some sites that accept this because of their keenness on the valuable content for the audience. Therefore, do not neglect this option without trying.
- Participation in Fiverr
Fiverr offers many services to its visitors, such as educational courses, articles, and books. Another service the Academy provides, which is helpful in self-marketing, is the question-and-answer service. The site has many questions whose owners are looking for answers, and the rest of the members can do it.
You can take advantage of this option in self-marketing by searching the site and identifying questions related to your field, and you have good experience with them, and then start answering them. When you do that, the answers will also appear in your Fiverr account, where there is a section for posts on Hub Academy.
You can also benefit from the answers by sharing them on social networking sites, and thus have more spread and transfer the benefit to more individuals.
In conclusion, self-marketing methods require a lot of effort, as it is a process that takes a long time to bear fruit. But when you start reaping these benefits, you will realize how self-marketing has changed your chance of competing, giving you more keys to stand out and succeed as a freelancer.
