I know a lot of people that have recently decided to leave 9-5 jobs to become self-employed.  One of the first things they do is hunt for someone to build them a great web site where they can blog, be tweeted about, and announce their services and portfolio.  And those things are all great to have, but it shouldn’t be the first thing you do. I know… because I did that first and it was wrong.

The most important thing you can do is start connecting with an audience.  An audience that’s composed of advisors, potential customers, and people that generally subscribe to the same world view that you do.  It’s your audience that will serve as your source of inspiration, client referrals, and support staff…it’s not easy to be self-employed and you need to surround yourself with people that can point you in the right direction from time to time.

Just remember that you can’t just focus on building this audience online. You need to attend local events, trade-shows, & meet-ups related to your line work work. Anywhere that your customers and fellow competition might be… you should be there too.

Hand out business cards and get people to subscribe to a newsletter you’ll send. Yes, despite what you read, more people are engaged with email newsletters than with Facebook pages.  Getting someone to sign up for a newsletter is also the first form of a currency exchange. They are trading you their attention for your ideas.  It’s not money yet… but it’s a great start.

If you’re a freelancer, you know there’s a lot of competition out there. Regardless of what field you’re in, it’s imperative that you separate yourself from the crowd. Let’s face it, a Fortune 500 company isn’t going to hire just anybody. Something about you needs to grab their attention.

Let’s put aside how you typically win business for a moment. If you met someone in the street and didn’t have a business card or a pen, would they be able to find you based on your name? If you Google yourself, what would you find?

More and more employers turn to the Internet to see what they can find on potential new hires. It usually starts out with Google and then moves over to Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. Why do hiring managers and HR personnel go to the net? It’s the easiest and fastest way to find information that normally won’t make a resume, which is a document that the person applying has full control over.

So how can you better brand yourself as a freelancer? Here’s what I recommend:

• Create a website. If possible, yours should be yourname.com. In many cases the domain will rank high in the search engines. Here you can showcase your resume, portfolio, case studies, testimonials and achievements.
• Build a blog. Preferably on your site. Write about your ideas, your experiences and your line of work. I’ll explain later how this content can be utilized for business purposes.
• Join social networks. Linkedin should be the first one you join. Place your resume on it and keep it current. Anyone you’ve done or do business with should be added to your profile. You can then expand your network. Sometimes it’s who you know that gets you more work or a job. Plus, people tend to look in their network to find a freelancer. You can also ask for recommendations for work you’ve done in the past.
• Build other profiles such as Twitter and Facebook and keep it professional. A common problem many people have is leaving these profiles public when they really shouldn’t. If you post pictures of a night out drinking on Facebook and your profile is public, anyone can see them.
• Try to use your real name or an understood variation for all social networking accounts. Using your real name in your profiles will help them to show up in the search engines, boosting your visibility. Most accounts can be linked to one another, furthering any one account’s reach.
• Socially bookmark the content you create on your blog. You can automatically have anything published on your blog sent to your Twitter and Facebook pages, especially if you use WordPress. You can also bookmark your content to other networks like Stumbleupon and Digg for added exposure.
• Write articles about your area of expertise. You can submit your article to free article sites like ezinearticles. Use your real name so these articles rank for your name as well on the search engines. Try adding 1 unique article per site over a few sites each and every month. The more sites you hit with unique content, the more listings you’ll have under your name.
• Get involved publicly in your area of expertise. Request some guest posts or interviews from other bloggers in your field. You’re likely to get a reciprocating opportunity, furthering your exposure to their audience. Even if you don’t, most blogger will link to any off-blog o off-site endeavors they’re involved in, thereby still introducing their traffic to you.
• Try doing a podcast or video segments, which are usually free to post and cost little in the way of equipment to create. Share your knowledge by giving tips and advice.

Doing all of these things will help ensure that when someone searches for your name, they will find an array of information. More importantly, if you’re in marketing, it will help show that you’re good at what you do. As an added bonus, everything you do can be added to your resume and portfolio, making your credentials stand out from the rest of the field. It may seem like a lot of work, but if you do a little at a time and keep at it, your reputation will grow. When I started my podcast I had less then 100 listeners the first month. By then end of year two, I was receiving 10 – 12K in downloads each month.

Improve the “Linkability” of your Content
Having “static” web pages, e.g. brochure-style or storefront pages, are definitely useful for product information. But to optimize a site for social media, we need to increase the frequency and linkability of the content. My favorite method is to add a more-personal blog that shows your personality and thoughtfulness about a particular topic area. Other types of content, like white papers or aggregated selected links to related articles, are also quite useful for potential readers. Remember, the idea is to create something valuable beyond your core product offering to keep potential customers coming back.

Enable Easier Bookmarking and Sharing
Once a reader thinks your content is worth sharing, make the process as easy as possible for them! Adding website features like ReTweet and ShareThis buttons are a great way to allow your users to spread your content via their preferred channels. I also like to make sure each page has concise meta tag data (Title, Description, etc), because it will be easier for places like Facebook to import and show pertinent information about your link. As mentioned before, make sure your content is valuable and interesting because buttons-alone cannot get people to share your work.

Encourage Inbound Links
Inbound links from other blogs and websites are crucial to enhancing your search optimization and overall rankings. Listing trackbacks with each article or post will entice users to link to your site in the hopes that you will reciprocate a link. However, be aware of trackbacks from unrelated, spammy blogs or sites that are merely republishing your content without permission. For these reasons, I like to approve trackbacks manually before allowing them to enter the comments.

Help Your Content Travel
Building multiple channels of distribution for content can be a very effective way to gain exposure and attract links. Use Email newsletters, RSS subscribers, Facebook status updates, Twitter updates, content syndication, video syndication with YouTube, etc can all improve your social reach. With the number of possible channels on the web increasing, you need to make sure to stay current with popular services in the industry

Encourage Video Sharing
Online video is a growing medium, and in my opinion a rich and effective channel for entertaining, informing, or just getting a message across. If you have the resources to create compelling video content, please give it a shot. Since distribution is VERY inexpensive, especially with YouTube and embedding capabilities, you can potential receive a high return on your efforts. Encourage and embrace others who republish your videos.

Participate in Conversations
Let’s say you have a decent social presence – your Facebook page has fans, your blog is receiving comments, people are contacting you through your site. Take the time to connect one-to-one with these active readers, they’re often your best customers! Foster dialog in whatever public forums you have, but also think about dropping a quick email or note in private to create a more personalized relationship. Show your true passion for the topic at hand. You just might be connecting with a top influencer or champion of your service.

Get to Know Your Audience
As long as you understand your subject matter and that community’s interests, you’ll be able to set yourself for successful social media connections. Don’t stray too far from your niche, leverage the latest tools and industry trends, and try to stay focused on content that will drive interest in your expertise.

Thanks for taking a look at our thoughts! What tips for social media marketing and optimization would you add?

At first you only skip a day here or there. But eventually, days turn into weeks and months. This is only natural, considering the busy lifestyle that most freelancers have.

That’s why, when it comes to backing up their data, freelancers really love the automation and convenience that comes with online backup services. You just install the software once, and you never have to think about it again until something bad happens. You can just feel safe knowing that it’s there, working in the background for you.

However, there are MANY different services to choose from. And prices range from FREE to $10 per GB. With so much variety, how can you pick a solution that’s right for you? Well here are a few features that freelancers should keep in mind when looking into automating their data protection:

Automation and ease of use
Because freelancers work alone, they don’t always have access to reliable technical staff. For this reason, you’ll want to pick a solution that installs quickly and runs fully-automated in the background while you work.

Also, since your time is the only product that you have to sell, you can’t afford to spend hours learning how to use a new application. It has to be intuitive enough to start using right away. That’s why any new software you buy has to be very easy-to-use in order to minimize the learning curve and prevent any problems down the road.

Continuous protection
Every freelancer has had the experience where they’ve pulled an all-nighter, working 12-hours straight for an important deadline, only to have something disastrous happen at the last second.

In order to prevent this, you’ll want to select a provider that offers Continuous Data Protection (CDP) capability. CDP simply means that the software will back up your data files every time you save instead of waiting until a scheduled daily backup time. This means that your potential “window” for data loss will be kept to only about 5 minutes instead of 24 hours.

If you decide to go with a CDP solution, make sure that it also offers block-level uploads. Block level capability allows the software to analyze your files, and only upload the portion that has changed since the last save point. This can significantly speed up your backup process and minimize the load on your internet connection.

Laptop-specific features
Most freelancers travel a lot, and often end up in places that may not always have the most reliable internet connections. Make sure that the solution you select offers laptop-specific features that can protect you on the road.

One such feature would be the hybrid capability to create both local AND remote backup copies of your data.

In other words, the solution should give you the option of creating a local hard drive partition which can be accessed in an emergency… even if you don’t have internet access. And of course, this should automatically synchronize with your online data backups as soon as you connect to the internet again.

And if you’re working out of an area that has only a slow internet connection, the CDP functionality we’d discussed earlier should ensure that your data still gets backed up without causing a significant burden on your connection.

Security and privacy
Often, freelancers will deal with very sensitive information. Make sure that the online backup service you select offers proper encryption.

But more importantly, make sure that the application you select allows you to encrypt the files with a password that only YOU know. In other words, make sure that the online backup provider can’t access your encrypted data once it’s on their servers.

Not all providers offer this feature. So make sure to ask before signing up.

So there you have it! If you want to protect your freelance business from data loss, just make sure that the solution you pick offers:

• Automation
• Continuous Protection
• Laptop-Specific Features
• Proper Security

If you follow this simple checklist, you can feel confident that you’re making the right choice for your business.

About The Author: Storagepipe Solutions offers online backup and backup software for freelancers & other small businesses.

Hosted Exchange is a viable option for those individuals and freelancers that want to harness the power of an Exchange server but don’t want to pay for a full server license, buy the appropriate hardware and deal with the maintenance. Much like the web hosting industry where a company bundles many customers on a single web server, Hosted Exchange is a cost-effective option for individuals. The Exchange service provider bundles many customer mailboxes on a single Exchange server for a monthly or yearly fee.

A hosted Exchange plan typically costs between $10 and 20 USD per month. That cost typically includes a centralized e-mail server that stores email, contacts, appointments, notes, and tasks all in one place. You can have this information synchronized (via Direct Push synchronization) with multiple mobile devices, as well as your Outlook client or directly through an Outlook-esque web interface. When traveling as a freelancer, this is an especially nice feature and the increase in mobile productivity may be worth the price all by itself.

When working with on projects with external clients, you might also benefit from Sharepoint capabilities that are often bundled with hosted exchange. SharePoint combines a centralized document repository with collaboration, project tracking, and content management tools. Using SharePoint, you can easily and efficiently manage projects and enhance the flow of communication in your business.

Online printing services like PSPrint.com are great for saving time and money, while maintaining quality. Their digital printing methods allow you to reduce both cost and waste with small-quantity orders. Also, those methods don’t involve as many steps as other printing processes or technologies, so less time is needed in producing your prints and the turnaround time is quicker.

Sure, you can say that many digital printers are using similar (if not the same) printing technologies. But the reason I chose PSPrint specifically, is actually the same reason why many freelancers can have lasting success. It’s due to their reputation for offering excellent and attentive customer service. In a world of comparable technologies, what better differentiator for success can a company have than to truly pay close attention to their customers’ needs?

1. Market research is crucial
There are so many bloggers out there who really have no idea who is coming to their blog. They may know that all these people are interested in a common topic, but who exactly are your readers? Where are they from? How old are they? Are they male or female? What is their occupation? The list goes on and on.

It is vital that bloggers get to know who their readers are. How do you do this? Well, the easiest way is to just place a survey in a post asking various questions about their demographics and interests, and offer a prize to further encourage readers to fill out the survey. Make it short, sweet and questions optional, just in case someone feel that a certain piece of information is too personal to share.

Knowing who reads your blog will not only help you get advertisers, it will also help you write content that is better suited to your readers and help make sure that your marketing efforts are targeted towards people who are actually prepared to read your blog.

This can be done subtly as well. To see an example of this in action, simply head over to ProBlogger. Darren frequently creates polls and analyzes the results for his readers. While some of these polls aren’t about demographics and are really meant to help bloggers get information about other bloggers, Darren often asks questions like ‘How old are you?’ and more recently ‘How much social networking do you do?‘ This not only gives readers information about the ages of their fellow bloggers, it also provides Darren with valuable demographic information.

2. It is not what you know, it is who you know
In blogging, networking is everything. While you can try to do everything by yourself, writing content and marketing your blog with no help, it is much easier and more fun when you work with other bloggers in your niche. Find other blogs that talk about the same things you do, try to interact and partner with them.

Feature the content of other bloggers on your blog. This not only provide your readers with relevant information that they might be interested in, but also would sometimes encourage other bloggers to do the same to your content in a phenomenon we call ‘link karma’. (See Link Karma: How Linking to Others Can Get You Lots of Links in Return for more on ‘link karma’).

Guest posting is another great way to grow your blog, as by doing so, you can expose yourself to a whole new audience of another blog. Networking will help your blog grow quickly. When I first started out I didn’t take the time to make connections with other bloggers and while these blog grew at a fairly steady pace, the amount of traffic these blogs received absolutely skyrocketed when I start partnering with other blogs in my niche.

3. The Best Advertising is Free
There is no doubt that word of mouth marketing, or in today’s web world, viral marketing, is the best and most cost effective way to generate traffic for a blog. Write a post that others will find interesting, whether it means making a list like this one, taking an unconventional stance on an issue, or breaking some important piece of news. If your content is good, people will talk about it and it can spread virally. Use social media websites like Digg or StumbleUpon to help get the process started.

However, one must not confuse the viral marketing and word of mouth marketing as they are not the same. Fundamentally, they have different dynamics. Jennifer over at SearchEngineGuide has written a very nice article explaining this in more detail, Viral marketing is not the same as word of mouth.

4. The Importance of Public Relations
Public Relations is crucial to any marketing campaign and is very important when coming to building brand awareness and reputation for your blog. The quickest way to gain credibility is get credible sources talking about you. As Maki of Dosh Dosh puts it, ‘to influence the influencers’. While getting your blog covered in the New York Times is an arduous task, it is far easier to get your name out there through guest posting on blogs and news sources that has authority.

Many of the most popular blogs in your industry will likely accept guest posts (like this one), and the same holds true with newspapers and magazines (especially their online sections). Call or e-mail the editors and writers of some of the authority media properties in your niche and see if you can guest post on their website, magazine or newspaper. This puts your voice in front of hundreds and sometimes thousands of people. Press releases are also a great tool that bloggers can use. For more information on how bloggers can use press releases, read a guest post I made on JohnChow, How to use press releases to your advantage.

Do you use other principles of marketing with your blog? Let us know in the comments.

The site allows freelancers to bid on as many projects as possible without the hassle of signup or account upgrade fees. You are protected by their escrow payment system, and you can withdraw funds the minute you are paid. Go ahead and build a profile to find Jobs for Freelancers today!

Please visit BidHire, who sponsored the post above.

This is why choosing the right host for your site is very crucial. And to actually look for a host that is free and that is reliable just makes the task even more challenging. Here’s the good news though, there really are good free web hosting providers around. You just have to be very picky to be able to point yourself on the right one.

A few basic things to consider:

1. Check if the hosting company has been around for at least a year. This is a better way to avoid yourself from signing up on a hosting company only to find out after a couple of days or so that they aren’t reachable anymore. This could definitely cause your website a big problem especially if you don’t regularly do backups for your site and other issues.

2. Look for a host that says no banner ads. Some free web hosts, in exchange for the free service that they would provide your website, put tons of ads on to your site. Often times, this really could cause irritation for your visitors.

3. Look for a host that offers free technical support to their free hosting customers. This is very helpful especially when you’re not that very technical yourself. A company that has a good support system is often a sign that they are indeed providing a good service for their customers.

4. Look for a host that guarantees at least 99% uptime.. To actually know if a host is reliable is really very hard to determine.. Since usually you’ll just get to know about a host’s reliability once you have been with them. So your best shot is at least go with a host that gives high guarantees for their reliability.

Free hosting provider I recommend

So far, I’ve been with a few free web hosts and have experienced some of the worst. One free web hosting provider I highly would recommend is Doteasy.com. There are other free good web hosts too, but I have to admit, Doteasy has better offers than others.

Doteasy is a free hosting company that is well established, so that gives me an assurance that my website is safe and secured. They also strictly implement banner-free, this means no annoying ads on your website. Aside from that, I find their support team very reliable especially at times I’m having trouble on my site. I can’t be more thankful, because they still are very willing to help me even when the problem was basically caused by me. And as for their reliability, for a free host, I can say that I hit the jackpot with them. They guarantee 99.9% uptime and they have kept my website up and running all the time.

I get all of their great service for free, this is certainly a very good deal that I just can’t pass up. As of the moment, I can’t think of a better host or just even close on providing the service I get from Doteasy. And to get your own free web hosting account with them, you just need to click here to sign up and open a free account.