Get linked. This is a very important part of web site management. Exchange links. Trading links with other web sites that are strongly related to the subject of your site can bring you more website traffic. These are two-way links as you must offer a link to them, too, and linking to low-quality websites can threaten the reliability of yours.

Do you want to learn more about increase website traffic? If so see our website and you too can begin to increase website traffic.

Publicize your presence. Sit down and write a listing of all the ways that you can think about to get your web address spotted and clicked on. For instance :
If you have cash – consider PPC. The large search engines like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft provide schemes.

Use e-zines. Make your own that relate to your website and form a regular reminder each issue for folks to visit your website. Submit all the free e-zine directories on the internet.

Submit your articles to e-zines, websites and writing sites that accept article submissions. Include your business information and web address at the end of the manuscript. This is a good way to create one-way backlinks to your site. This is the most effective method to get noted on any search website. Customarily, the more topical links you have pointing to your site the higher you’ll rank.

Go past the electronic medium and into the print medium. Advertise in local papers, business brochures, mags, countrywide publications and mail-drop literature. And don’t forget the perennial favourite, the good old Yellow Pages – broadcast version naturally!

Do you want more ideas to increase website traffic? Chuck out our website where you can get more ideas.

1. Brand yourself. Nearly any company or organization falls apart without an established style. Without a impressive personalized logo you will simply fade into the background where literally thousands of freelance designers wander.

2. Create an effective online portfolio. It is nearly impossible to be successful in graphic or web design without having an impressive inline presence. Any potential clients or employers will want to see your work and most of them will prefer to type in a URL and click on what they want to see.

3. Create an equally effective print portfolio, business cards, resume, etc. This is somewhat a combination of the previous two steps. Be sure to create an impressive tangible portfolio that you can give to those who want to see your work “in person”. Also use your branding and identity to create business cards, stationery, etc. Any time you can slap your personal logo on something, do it.

4. Be brave, bold, and professional. Don’t be afraid to call people, offer services, email businesses and more. Recently, I was printing a job for a client and at the printing shop, a man complimented me on the design of the piece. After engaging in friendly conversation, he asked me for some tips on the piece he was printing for his own business. Although I was short on time, I was happy to help him and when I got ready to leave, I offered my future services and handed him a card. Have confidence that people will appreciate your skills.

5. Go the extra mile for your customers. Word of mouth is the most important tool you have. Nothing can help you or hurt you more than rumors and compliments spread by those for whom you have done work before. About 90% of the freelance work I do comes from word-of-mouth advertising.

6. Take the small jobs first. Doing well at a small job for someone can help open doors for your client to do bigger, better things. I entered a logo contest for a particular organization and out of the four logos I entered, two tied for first place pick. They were so impressed, I offered to design their website as well. Similar offers can be made for an organization’s stationery, business cards, etc. Find a niche and then take courage and offer more.

7. Don’t underestimate yourself. This goes along with Number 4. Be sure to believe in yourself. No one will ever hire a designer that thinks he may not do as good a job as the next guy. Be sure to reflect your confidence in your pricing. If your work is good, charge good money for it.

8. Network. Graphic and web design are rapidly changing. Every day new techniques and styles are developed and the designer found sleeping on the job is left in the dust. Sign up for social networks like twitter, linkedin, facebook, digg, and more. Start a blog and frequently add meaningful comments on others’ blogs. Creating a name for yourself in the design world takes some time but can be done using social networking resources.

9. Practice, practice, practice. Nothing will help you increase in confidence and ability more than practice. If work is a little slow, nail down some of those personal projects you’ve been meaning to finish. Join a group at school or in the community where you can freshen your skills. Participate in design forums, contests, and workshops. Nothing can take the place of real life application and experience.

10. Pay attention. I like to carry a small notebook around with me. Whenever I see an advertisement, photograph, building, person, etc. that influences my creative thinking, I try to write it down. When you go places, pay attention to new trends. Collect successful design pieces that you find at restaurants, at the mall, or anywhere you go just to relax. Always be on the look out for creative inspiration.

The most basic goal of any website is to generate targeted and motivated traffic. Doing this requires an ongoing digital marketing plan. So where do I start?

Whether you are just beginning the design and development of a new site, or are wondering why my existing web site is not generating the leads you were hoping for, these 8 tips are sure to provide the ground work that will help increase targeted traffic to your site.

Keyword Research:
Whether you hire an SEO firm or do it in house, be sure to uncover the exact phrases that your potential customers are searching for. This is by no means a guessing game either. There are a variety of keyword research tools that can provide insight into what people are searching for and how competitive it will be to rank for those particular words. Wordtracker and Google Keyword tool are a couple of the more popular options.

Copywriting:
Nobody knows your business better than you. But sometimes it takes a talented writer to take what you know and “buff it up” to really make it shine. Good web copy can be the hardest part of the entire digital marketing equation because compelling web copy is based on a unique set of rules. It must draw readers into your site effortlessly giving them the information they need as they navigate around. It must be clear, concise and benefits-centric; using language readers use. It must also flow well within its layout and design. When writing for the web you need to consider at least two audiences: humans and the search engines’ that visit your web site.

Optimize your site for the Search Engines:
Onpage optimization involves populating your site with the keywords you’ve determined as your most critical. Other then ensuring your keyword phrases appear throughout the body, items such as title tags and meta descriptions are the place to start. It is also very important to make sure your site is visible to the search engines. Things like full flash interfaces and graphics for navigation are impossible to be read and indexed for search.

Inbound Link Creation:
Inbound links are links that point users to your page and content. Search Engines see them as a vote of confidence that another site has given you. When a high page rank site has a link that is pointing to you, particularly one that uses your pre-determined keywords, this is SEO gold. In our case, whenever we comment on a blog or submit our link to a directory, we always use the words “Calgary web design” and link those words directly to our site. Search Engines in turn read that link and see us an authority on “Calgary web design”, or Kelowna, depending on the origin of the link.

Social Media Optimization:
Not only are these easy to get powerful inbound links, but this is an incredible tool to talk directly to an engaged and typically supportive audience. Social Media has created a dialogue back and forth not only with the company but also the people that are brand advocates and fans. Experiment with this. Find your voice and take advantage of a communication tool unlike any before.

Offline Advertising and collateral materials:
Ensure that any offline activities like traditional advertising or Direct Mail are in sync with your online messaging. They should always be working together and not inefficient money wasting silos. All offline communication tools are either driving viewers to the website or to simply pick up the phone.

Public relations & article marketing:
Get the word out through both traditional channels and online news and article sources. Write a press release announcing the new venture and submit to both local media as well as online sources. Online news and article sites are typically free and offer two main benefits: they get your story out to the masses and they also offer those important inbound links back to your site. Are you starting to see a common theme? Everything you do, ties directly into your online marketing strategy, and most of it happens outside of your corporate website alone.

Get out and shake some hands:
I’d be remiss if I suggested that all this will benefit your business without getting out and making some personal connections. Face to face relationships for most small business will never be replaced completely by any amount of internet marketing. Public speaking builds credibility, volunteering builds character and networking builds backbone. J Clients that know and trust you, are that much more likely to buy from you.

This may seem like a lot of extra work, especially if you were one of those who thought, “If I build it, they will come”. But the reality is, if you have a plan, work at it consistently with passion and integrity… they will come.

Your site doesn’t need to be the biggest, or even the best. It just needs to be effective in helping you reach your goals. Start small, stay at it, but most importantly, start with a plan.

Read more: http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-ebook/how-to-use-facebook-for-business#ixzz0mXP7gjMG

Create a Skype Me Button

1. Step1

   Navigate to the Skype Web site then click Share on the menu bar at the top of the window.

2. Step2

   Locate and click on the Skype Buttons link at the bottom of the page under the heading Skype Share.

3. Step3

   Enter your Skype username in the field provided.

4. Step4

   Select the Skype button you want to display then preview your button by clicking the “I’m not telling” icon.

5. Step5

   Select either the Web HTML or Email HTML button located near the heading “Copy & paste this code.” If you will be posting this button on a Web site, including a forum or message board, choose Web HTML. For email and instant message signatures, choose Email HTML.

6. Step6

   Select all of the text in the code box. You can do this by clicking just to the left of the first symbol and dragging your mouse to the end of the code.

7. Step7

   Hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard then press the C key once. This will save all the data you just selected to your virtual clipboard.

8. Step8

   Open a text file on your computer. To do this click the Windows Start button then click Run. Type the word notepad into the window that pops up, then click OK.

9. Step9

   Hold down the CTRL key then press the V key once to paste your HTML code into the notepad file.

10. Step10

    Save your document before closing it.

Add a Button to a Web Site

11. Step1

    Depending on the program you use to build your Web site, you may have to find the option that allows you to add HTML code to it. Select that option.

12. Step2

    Open the document you created containing the HTML code from the Skype Web site.

13. Step3

    Hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard, and press the A key once to select all the text.

14. Step4

    Hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard, and press the C key once to copy all the text.

15. Step5

    Place your cursor in the Web site design program.

16. Step6

    Hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard and press the V key once to paste the code to your Web page.

17. Step7

    Save your Web page and take the necessary steps to upload your new and improved page onto your Web site.

Add a Button to a Forum or Message Board Signature

18. Step1

    Visit the message board you belong to and log in.

19. Step2

    Go to your Profile page.

20. Step3

    Find the Signature Settings menu and paste (CTRL + V) the code from your text file into your signature.

21. Step4

    Save your new signature and view it to make sure there are no errors.

Add a Button to Your Email Signature

22. Step1

    Create a button as instructed above, but choose Email HTML rather than Web HTML. Copy, paste and save the code in a text document.

23. Step2

    Open Microsoft Outlook or your mail program. From the main Outlook window, on the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Mail Format tab.

24. Step3

    Under Signature, click the Signatures button and then click New. In the “Enter a name for your new signature box,” enter a name.

25. Step4

    Under “Choose how to create your signature,” select the option you want, then click Next.

26. Step5

    In the Signature text box, type the text you want to include in the signature.

27. Step6

    Open the text file containing your Email HTML code. Select all the text by holding down the CTRL key and pressing the A key.

28. Step7

    Copy the text (CTRL + C) then paste it (CTRL + V) into the signature text box.

29. Step8

    Save your signature then view it to check for errors.

For the past couple years jQuery has been gaining in popularity, from a hot script with easy CSS selectors released by John Resig in 2006, all the

way to jQuery 1.3.2, probably the most widely used Javascript library today. The jQuery core has been constantly expanding, offering new methods and performance tuning with every release, in addition to the wide variety of jQuery plugins that are released almost daily.

Known for publishing resources for the latest development trends, Packt Publishing has recently released an updated version their jQuery book: Learning jQuery 1.3, by Jonathan Chaffer and Karl Swedberg of Learning jQuery (the website). This new resource provides an excellent introduction to jQuery as well as going into detail o

n some of its finer topics. I’d highly recommend it for anyone who is fairly new to jQuery—it will give you a great head start in this wonderful and complex library.

But even if you know jQuery inside and out (like I pretend to do), this book will still teach you a thing or two. In addition to providing different and better practices for the things you know, this book can help you stay current in a library that is constantly evolving. So read the chapter below, and if you don’t learn a single thing, don’t buy it  :

I think it comes down to a difference in mouse based versus keyboard based control. When I first was on the Mac of course I hated it because all the keyboard shortcuts were different. Now that I’ve learned them all, I don’t think they’re nearly as good as windows in terms of tabbing between items. They are however better for scrolling between windows.

Mac is a more visual environment and uses a lot of mouse actions to make things “user friendly”. I normally hate user-friendly and find that it actually impedes workflow. But not in this case. Mac’s mouse commands, mainly the windows flyout where you can select any window visually, combined with ordinary keystrokes (e.g. command-tab) and unique Mac keystrokes (command-tilda) make for an optimized window selection environment. Add to this a dramatically increased ability to drag and drop items from program to program, and you have a very optimized workflow. You can even drag things into the terminal! I can’t express how useful this is, mainly for directories.

Web design is great on Mac as well. It’s a known fact that Macs runs PhotoShop CS3 (and CS2) faster than comparable Windows machines. Also the window flyout and drag and drop is extremely useful for integrating programs and many pieces of artwork. To summarize, workflow on Mac is way better for both web design and development.

In this economy, the competition for work is fierce. To stay ahead, you must combine two key elements in your approach:

• Quantity: The more jobs you respond to, the more potential leads you create.
• Quality: Present yourself well and stand out from the crowd.

Here are some tools and tips to help you land more freelance gigs:

1. Keep a Polished Resume & Portfolio

Make sure your resume is up to date and in tip-top shape. Create a PDF version to attach to your email cover letters (more on this below). If you have a website (which you should), make sure it’s updated and presentable. Show off your attention to detail by creating a well-designed and professional web presence.

2. Write Effective Emails

Take the time to craft a well written and concise email cover letter to use as your response to online job postings. It should include a short pitch about you, along with a link to your website or online portfolio.

Try out various approaches and phrasings. See which emails generate the most responses. Once you have perfected your email cover letter, use it as a template for future emails. That brings us to the next tip.

3. Use Gmail’s “Canned Responses” Feature

If you use the Gmail, turn on the “Canned Responses” feature. In Gmail, go to Settings > Labs > Canned Responses, and click “Enable”. “Canned Responses” allow you to save the body of an email as a template so you can quickly insert your message in future emails. If you don’t use Gmail, you can simply save your email in a text file for easy cut and paste.

Do not send the same generic email response to job postings. The job poster will sense this immediately and trash it. Here’s what to do next:

4. Personalize and Tailor Your Message for Each Job

Read each job post in its entirety to gain as much information as you can. Extract as much information about the job and employer as you can. Then use this information to enhance your email cover letter. Modify or add to your email template with a note about why you are a perfect fit for their specific need.

For example, if the job post is for a t-shirt retailer in need of a website, you might mention that you specialize in e-commerce web development. You could also provide a few links to online stores you built for other clients.

But don’t stop there.

5. The Importance of Email Subject Lines

A single post in a popular job board can generate hundreds of responses in just a matter of days or even hours! It’s easy for your email to get lost in the mix. It might not even get opened. Stand out from the crowd by crafting a subject line that’s relevant and speaks to their specific need.

If the job calls for a copywriter who can work on-site in New York City, you might use the subject line: New York-based Copywriter.

If it’s a blogger seeking a web designer to create a custom WordPress theme, you could try the subject line: Web Designer (WordPress Expert!).

6. Maximize Your Job Search With RSS

Many online job boards offer RSS Feeds for job search results. This can be a powerful tool in your job hunting arsenal. Search for a keyword that applies to you, such as “composer”, “HTML”, or “designer”. Then add the RSS feed for that search to your feed reader of choice. Mine is Google Reader.

With Google Reader, you can view multiple feeds at once by grouping them in a folder. Doing so allows you to search several job boards simultaneously. This is the best way to stay on top of the most recent job postings from across the Internet, giving you a head start against the competition.

7. Extend Your Reach Beyond Local Jobs

Lots of freelancers have the ability to work remotely via email and over the web. So why limit your job search to your local city? Expand your reach by going after jobs in other markets, even internationally.

RSS feeds are very useful here, especially for Craigslist job hunting. On Craigslist, you can’t search across multiple cities in a single search. But you can combine Craigslist search feeds using your RSS reader. Choose 10 major cities and visit the Craigslist sub-site for each city. Search the “Gigs” or “Jobs” section for your keyword or field. Then grab the RSS feed for each of the 10 city searches. Group these 10 feeds in a folder in Google Reader. Now you can view Craigslist job postings from all 10 cities at once!

Here’s a look at my nation-wide Craigslist job search:

8. Persistent, but Respectful Follow-up Emails

Once you are in a dialogue with your potential client, you want to keep the discussion alive in hopes of closing the deal. If they don’t respond to you in a few days or a week, send a short follow-up email as a reminder that you’re available to address any questions or concerns they might have. New clients often need a little extra motivation to get them to pull the trigger. Hopefully your extra effort will result in their business.

If you still don’t hear back from them, don’t sweat it. Move on. Do not send additional emails. Do not add them to your newsletter without their permission. This will only annoy them and ensure that they won’t consider you for future projects. It’s also a waste of your valuable time.

9. Don’t Stop Hunting For Your Next Gig

The key to remaining busy for the long-term is to continuously be on the hunt for your next gig. That means keeping up your job search efforts even when your current plate of work is full.

Don’t put off your job search just because you’re swamped this month. If you do, you could quickly find yourself in a slow period. Avoid this by always keeping new business leads active and moving forward.

Remember, it often takes a few weeks (if not months) to close on a lead. You need to balance your time between working on actual projects, and pursuing new business.

10. Professionalism, Honesty, and Confidence

Professionalism - Communicate clearly. Return every email and phone call promptly. Compose emails with proper spelling and grammar. Always offer a positive and constructive attitude.

Honesty - Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Display your expertise where applicable. If you don’t know the answer to a question, don’t make something up. Assure them you will look into it and get back to them. Then do it. Be yourself, and earn their trust.

Confidence - Speak clearly and definitively when conversing with potential clients. Draw on your past experience, and address each of their questions with straightforward and informative answers. Show them that you have what it takes to meet all of their needs. Then exceed their expectations.

Here is a scenario like this: “I want a website for my business.”

You: “What kind of business do you have?”

The client states the nature of the business, launches into a list of pages that he or she wants on the site, and then asks you for a price quote.

Not a very satisfying encounter, is it?

The clients seems most interested in price, and you? Well, you’re interested in a relationship. As in, the kind that lasts for years.

It might not be possible to have a meaningful relationship with price shoppers, but it’s worth taking the time to learn what your potential clients want in a website. This recent article I came across from Martha Retallik will help you create a prospect qualification questionnaire that can be used via telephone or Internet or in face-to-face meetings.

The best Web design questionnaires focus on:

1. What the site’s supposed to do for the client’s business.
2. What the site will look like.

I’ll take you through the questionnaire that I use, and explain the rationale behind each question.

1. Why do you want to have a new website, or have your current site redesigned? This question uncovers the client’s motivation for getting in touch with someone like you.

2. What will happen if you don’t have a new website, or have your current site redesigned? This is the question that starts getting at the client’s pain. His current site may not be functional in current browsers. Or it could be that they’ve decided to sell online, and the current site doesn’t enable such a thing.

3. Please describe your organization in a few sentences. Since this answer will be something like an elevator speech, it could be incorporated into the home page copy. (If you’re a copywriter – or work closely with one – take note!)

4. What is there about you and your background that sets you apart for a special (niche) group of potential customers? If nothing else, this is a question that gets the prospective client thinking. And you may have to help her with the answer. It might be that she’s been in business twice as long as any of her competitors. Or that his customers stay with him for an average of 10 years.

5. What problems do your prospects have that your business solves? Yes, I know. The word “solutions” has been overused of late. But this is an opportunity for your prospect to brag. Let him have that opportunity.

6. How can your particular work background help prospects, compared to others in your industry? What’s special about your work experience? If you’re dealing with a consultant to the construction industry, it would be good to know that she worked as an electrician for 15 years. Her website visitors would appreciate knowing that too.

7. Why do you believe site visitors should do business with you rather than with a competitor? Face it, on the Internet, the competition is but one click away. Which means that your prospect’s site will probably be compared to a lot of other sites. So, it’s up to you and the prospect to make the site memorable.

8. Do you have a slogan or tagline that clearly describes what you offer in terms of benefits or features? While many prospects may be eager to trot out their company’s slogan, others will be absolutely mystified. Why? Because they don’t have a slogan. And, people, that’s not a mortal sin. It’s okay not to have a slogan, or have one so simple that it sounds dumb. I’ve done business with a home repair guy whose company slogan was, “We Do A Better Job.” And he did.

9. Please describe your potential customers. Pay special attention to their income, interests, gender, age, even type of computer they use, e.g., old with dialup account or newer with broadband. If your website is a business-to-business site, what sort of companies are you hoping to attract? This is the Demographic Question, and you may be surprised at the level of detail that your prospects include in their answers. I recently dealt with a prospect that defined his expectations right down to the target audience’s preferred monitor size. 

10. What is your budget for this project? Don’t be surprised if this question goes unanswered. Some people have no idea of what to budget for a website project. Or maybe they’re being cagey. Whatever the reason, it’s time for you to take the initiative and give a fee range. Your range may turn out to be too high for the prospect, and that’s okay. Your job is to find those who have the desire to work with you – and the ability to pay what you charge.

11. Who are the decision makers on this project? What is the turnaround time for making a decision?Ideally, you’ll want to deal with someone who’s in charge, rather than someone who works for someone who reports to the assistant to the person who actually makes the decisions. The latter scenario tends to lead to weeks-long waits while decisions are being made.

12. What staff will be involved? What are their roles? Is there a webmaster on your staff? Many will be the times that you’ll be dealing with a website committee. And this should be where the prospect tells you so. Make it clear that there’s nothing wrong with having more than one voice involved in the website process, but ask your prospect to appoint a contact person to deal with you. This will avoid the “conflicting inputs from multiple people” problem.

As for the webmaster, don’t settle for a yes/no answer. Gauge the skill level of this person. You may be dealing with someone who’s been using computers since the punch card era. Or you may be dealing with the new hire who just had “maintain the new website” added to his job description.

13. What is your deadline for completing the site? You may be dealing with people who want a 10,000-page e-commerce site done by next Tuesday. Then again, you might not. This question, if handled carefully, can provide you with an opportunity to educate prospects on how long good design takes.

14. Please list the names of five other sites that you like. Why are they attractive to you? In general, I’ve found this to be one of the easiest questions for prospects to answer. And don’t be surprised if they offer more than five links, plus a detailed explanation of why they like each one.

15. Have you researched your online competition so you have an idea of what you do and don’t want on your site? Here’s a little secret about competitors: Some of them can be real blabbermouths. Especially on their websites. Others have sites that say little and explain even less. It’s important for your prospect to decide on the right balance between openness and secrecy – and it’s a tough decision.

16. What do you NOT want on your site in terms of text, content, etc.? There are some things that justdon’t belong on a website. (Provocative sentence, that one.) Every company has a different answer to this question. For example, some splash employee pictures all over their sites and others are like the Central Intelligence Agency, which shows no employee photos.

17. Where is the website content coming from? Who’s responsible for updating it? Is it ready for use on your website? Content is one of those things that takes forever to arrive at your studio. If you have copywriting skills – or can team up with someone who does – you can turbocharge the content production process, and finish the project faster.

18. Do you have a logo? Attention web people with logo design skills: You may be able to make an additional sale if the prospect doesn’t have a logo or doesn’t like his current logo.

19. Are you planning to do online sales? If so, what is the product, and how many items do you want to sell online? A few years ago, the word “e-commerce” took the world by storm. And all manner of companies fell under its spell. Many of them found out that e-commerce has a lot of moving parts – online order-taking that makes people feel comfortable sharing their credit card information, order-filling, shipment tracking, customer service, and the list goes on.

It’s best to clue your prospect in early. Help him plan his e-commerce strategy by directing him to Ralph Wilson’s E-commerce Research Room. Ralph has helped all sorts of people avoid expensive e-commerce mistakes, including me.

20. If you’re planning to sell online, are you set up to accept credit cards? Believe it or not, there are some people who still think that online buyers will send them a check. Sorry, but accepting credit cards is mandatory in the online business world. Getting set up to accept credit cards can take time, and lots of it. Personally, I found that my merchant account application was more intrusive than the form I had to fill out for an FBI background check. (The FBI didn’t like the quality of my fingerprints, but that’s another story.)

21. How much time will you be able to spend online, responding to inquiries that come in via your website? Once a day? Several hours a day? Ever gone to a big company’s site to ask a question? You dutifully filled out the contact form, then waited, waited, and waited for an answer that never came. This is how you don’t want your prospects to act. Timely responses to visitor inquiries work better – and cost a lot less – than elaborate PR programs.

22. If you were using a search engine, what words or phrases would you use to find your site? Which of these words or phrases is most important? Second? Third? This is one of those questions that gets the search engine obsessives going. They’re the people who come up with an impossibly long list of search terms that they expect top rankings on. Encourage them to come up with a reasonable list – say, three to five terms. Refer them to a good search engine rankings specialist.

23. Other than what search engines will produce, what methods do you have in mind to spread the word about your website? There was a time when a website was such a novelty that you could get newspaper stories written about the fact that you had one. (Newspapers – remember them?) These days, you’ll need to do a bit more planning. Although some of its information is a bit dated, Ralph Wilson’s Planning Your Internet Marketing Strategy is a helpful book.

24. Once your website is completed, how long do you think it will be before you begin bringing in significant business from the website? This question is the younger sibling of the previous question. Once your client’s new website is up, it will take time for the promotional plan to show results. The answer to this question will reveal whether you have a patient prospect – or someone who expects everything to happen yesterday.

25. How do you plan to encourage repeat visitors and referrals? How is a website like a piece of granite? When it sits there and never changes. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to keep web content fresh – blogs come to mind. Making a website refer-able is a much greater challenge. Best advice I can offer is to make the site into a valuable resource – like this one.

Whew! That’s quite a list of questions. And, truth be told, I don’t use every one of them every time. It’s important to respect your prospects’ time, even when you’re looking for long-term relationships. (See? Business is a lot like the dating game!)

More than a few freelancers struggle with marketing themselves, though. Even my self as a freelancer, I’m always on the look out for new jobs, trying to stay on step of the game, getting new clients.  In part, that’s due to the fact that marketing isn’t a big concern for a beginning freelancer. Other issues, like putting together a quality portfolio, take precedence and finding work isn’t as big of a deal as one might think. Between word-of-mouth clients — friends, family and past employers who need a project completed — and low-paying job and other job boards, as a starting freelancer you can at least find a few projects to work on. But as you advance and want to focus on higher paying projects, marketing becomes crucial. Rather than trying to follow any of the sample marketing plans meant to reassure big business stakeholders, though, you can cut directly to a quick and dirty marketing strategy.

The Marketing Strategy

To get the kind of clients you want, you need a cohesive marketing strategy. Handing out business cards willy-nilly isn’t nearly as effective as finding a way to reach out directly to your ideal client. To do that, you need to put a marketing strategy in place. That’s a project that can take some major hours. There are shortcuts that will let you get directly to covering your marketing needs.

The fact of the matter is that most freelancers don’t need the full out marketing plan that larger businesses rely on. You’re not going to be doing in-depth marketing research to see how prospective clients respond to one advertising campaign over another. But there is some basic research worth doing before you start looking at what strategies will help you best connect with your ideal client. Answering these questions are key:

• Who is your ideal client? Whether your goal is landing big corporate accounts or you’d rather work with small businesses, having a detailed description of your ideal client is crucial to finding them. This description doesn’t mean that you won’t take on clients who don’t fit it, of course, but you will want to target your marketing to this group.
• Who are your key competitors? And how are they marketing themselves? Go beyond writing down names or bookmarking websites — decide what their strengths and weaknesses are.
• What are your resources? If you have a marketing budget, you’re ahead of the game. Also consider what skills you have at your disposal: for instance, can you write your own copy for promotions? Add in what you’re already doing in the way of marketing, like attending networking events.
• Where are you at with your freelancing now, and where do you want to go? Set goals for income, new clients and even firing a few old clients.

Once you’ve got your information in place, it’s time to start looking at your strategic options. Should you focus on social networking and finding clients online? Should you look for events where you can talk to your local community? There are literally thousands of strategies you can take — but only a few will lead you to those ideal clients. Think about where your clients are: a small business owner probably focuses more on attending events in his community than hanging out on Twitter, while the opposite is true of someone working with a start-up. Choosing a marketing strategy is a question of putting yourself in a position to talk to your ideal clients more than anything else. It’s almost always worth picking two or three methods to connect with those clients, as well.

Once you’ve picked out a few marketing methods, it’s time to start implementing them. Treat your marketing like a project you’re completing for a client. Lay out a timeline for specific milestones — if you’re creating a brochure, for instance, decide when you need to have each element of the brochure completed. Get the dates of the events that affect your marketing (networking events you want to attend, conferences, even events you create yourself). Planning out approximately three months can make it simple to reassess your marketing efforts and make sure things are going as you expect — and adjust them if they aren’t. From there it’s matter of putting your plan into action: you’ll still have some hard work to do, but this quick and dirty approach will get you started on marketing sooner rather than later.