Yesterday, I had a great talk over Skype with Bob Knorpp of The BeanCast and Cool Beans Group. Like me, Bob is a freelance copywriter and brand consultant, who is fighting for a foothold in the scree field of this economy.
One of the things we touched on was the need to be better self-promoters, and by that we mean we need to be more obvious about our service offerings. Bob runs a popular podcast–Danny G. and I will be on again Sunday night–and one might think that clients and agencies would connect the dots and see that Bob’s the guy to call when podcasting is the solution that’s needed. Naturally, the same holds for me. If an agency or a client wants to create a media property, I’m clearly the guy to call.
Yet, it’s not clear. People come to a site like this or to The BeanCast for information and entertainment, not because they’re looking to hire a freelancer or a consultant. So we maintain other Web pages that sell our services, and that’s fine, but this site and Bob’s are “proof of concept.” It would make sense to receive business inquiries via this channel, but I can tell you how rare an occurrence that is.
Which brings me back to the need to speak it, and write it. To make it real and to make it real obvious.
Here’s a Craigslist appeal I put out last night in my continuing effort to find and connect with a very special type of small business owner:
By the way, I’m all about the barter economy and I’m particularly interested in working out part cash/part barter deals with Northwest wineries, breweries, restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, clothiers and alternative energy providers.
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Other entries from this series: Self-Promo Ad #6 | Self-Promo Ad #5 | Self-Promo Ad #4 | Self-Promo Ad #3 | Self-Promo Ad #2 | Self-Promo Ad #1
