Personal Branding For Freelancers Marketing You To Generate Leads

Personal Branding for Freelancers: Marketing YOU to generate Leads Darren Fell, founder Pure360.com , FreelanceAdvisor.co.uk & MD of crunch.co.uk

Setup Pure in 2001, by 2008 had over 45 employees and 850+ customers, inc FT, EMAP etc (>3000 users) With no money or investment, forced to find a fast way to sell - 160 accounts in 9 months (on my own) ! Darren Fell – the story

Approached by 2 friends in Aug 2007 with idea for amazing Accounting service for freelancers Whilst doing due diligence for Pure’s sale I worked started to build the then ‘Accounts4you’ into Crunch! Launched freelanceadvisor.co.uk Feb 2008 to help freelancers and contractors FreelanceAdvisor now has 1,000’s pages of advice and 12,000+visitors & Crunch 200+ customers Darren Fell – Crunch & freelanceadvisor.co.uk

Personal Branding – our steps… (1) How to turn YOU into a brand? The big decision - choosing your name or a separate brand identity? Your website & how to use social networking more…

Personal Branding – our steps… (2) The importance of PR & watching out for opportunities Case Study: A real life digital freelancer - 0-12 months & a successful business! Q & A: Your real life situations to analyse?

About creating a brand for you that conveys personality! Where to start? Pick the brand identity… Your name or a brand name – the big debate! - your name for a personal service not scalable - brand name if want to grow a team - example www.john.onolan.org vs crunch What is Personal Branding?

Your brand on the Web If brand image are important, a good website is critical Numerous new methods to get site up quickly - quick & easy: use Linkedin & set ‘ext profile’ - use simplynames.com to get brand/your name - use Tumblr.com to instantly create a site - I.e. darrenfell.tumblr.com or john.onolan.org/

Linkedin / Facebook / Twitter…..which one or all ?? Linked in – yes! / Facebook – NO – setup a ‘fan page’ Twitter? 100% yes – get Tweetdeck on computer & phone! Social networking is highly time consuming – set aside time to engage but DO NOT let it consume you! When and how to use Social Networking?

Get REALLY excited about the potential - w atch Gary Vaynerchuk @ Expo 2.0 Proof for why to use Twitter? When and how to use Social Networking?

Convinced? Twitter grows exponentially… Twitter how’s, do’s & don’ts

Explore and find 100 key/influential people to follow… Going Twitter & engaging with people

Going Twitter & engaging with people See the value in what people say – listen! How can you help people? – your advice/experience/connecting people Twitter - single most useful method of engaging with people (think of it as an electronic way of networking) Social trends changing – twitter being used for support/brand monitoring

Continually look to write blog posts, identify key sites Maximise every piece, change by 12% and post as pdf/ Word docs on article stores with your links Be aware of latest news & write relevant articles Write own blog and offer services as a commentator - may invited to comment in other news/press The Importance of PR…

Started his blog - john.onolan.org Started interviewing web design business owners (creating strong relationships with people higher up) 2 months later - led to a lot of paid work, free books & products to review on the blog Read short story in The 4 Hour Work Week - totally changed his perspective on business John O’Nolan Case Study - starting

Released a free typographic website layout that received a lot of attention: http://john.onolan.org/ono-typography-and-more Took on a full time member of staff: http://john.onolan.org/taking-on-staff-being-the-boss Mission Statement - summarised entire view on life in a single blog post - resonated with quite a lot of people: http://john.onolan.org/not-taking-no-for-an-answer Learning – a client defaulted on £10,000 – let employee go and reduce all of his outgoings. Bad couple of months! John O’Nolan – growing the business

John O’Nolan – Big brands call… Approached by Ubisoft – re-design homepage for major new games title – (they found the typographic layout) Lesson - Won project beating FAR more established designers and studios Tip for making sale : professional phone-call & immediate availability! Next approach by Virgin Atlantic! – design blog & community for new travel division: vtravelled.com

Final Conclusion – Personal Branding & a lot of hard work helping people can build up a following and good reputation! – big brand leads may literally fall through the door! Personal Branding

Interactive Session – your situations?

The Ultimate video: Gary Vaynerchuk @ Expo 2.0 Article: W h y use Twitter? Impact on purchase decisions Twitter’s exponential growth Twitter – What NOT to do! Article: the real secret of getting twitter followers Reading material & resources (with links)

Next Seminar – to be announced…

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Personal Branding For Freelancers Marketing You To Generate Leads

by Freelance Advisor on Mar 31, 2010

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Personal Branding For Freelancers Marketing You To Generate Leads — Presentation Transcript