Following ~ part one
Following ~ part one
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| My Behance profile information panel |
I was writing to a client who was asking for advise about how to get more noticed on the internet. This is based on the idea that the internet is a good place to use as a free marketing tool. Anyway, as the information was quite general, I thought I would share the information in case it helped others.
This will come in several parts, as it’s been an exhaustive process to build up my audience. I started with Behance. Mainly as it’s a professional platform, and has great opportunities to get noticed and spread the word. The image above is of my landing page. I will refer back to this in a while, but note two things (through these lessons in online presence), I maintain an image (Rob Snow | creative) and make other social media linking opportunities available whenever possible (the string of icons).
So to the message I sent the client;
“As a creative person, it is key to have an image, identity, etc. and to maintain that over the many areas where you will place yourself.
Again, I am sure that you have this expression; Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
I have been in many discussions with other more successful people, asking how can you get online work with the same kind of work, or at least get attention, when my work is just as good. Their response has been very helpful, and 6 months ago, I started to put some of these ideas into practice.
First, Social media can help a lot. Regardless of your interest in it or not, having your name and your service tagged on a site is an extra outlet that someone may come across you.
It’s hard to say in one blog post all the things you can do, but I will give you an example.
This is my Behance portfolio: https://www.behance.net/RobSnow. As you can see, its says “MEMBER SINCE: OCT 8, 2010”
When I first joined then, I asked friends and ex-clients and some others to follow me. I had around 120 followers, and followed around about 350. I slowly got appreciations and comments, but in the three years no more than 500 appreciations.
I was curious to know why I couldn’t get followers, or likes, or so forth. So I asked a popular user at Bahance via a LinkedIn group. Their reply, after looking at my profile was:
You are doing everything wrong! Your project icons were uninviting, your layout of the profile wasn’t nice, etc, etc.
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| My profile today |
So I took their advise and looked hard at it. This happened in the summer.
Now it’s known that there is a lot of rubbish on there and a lot of agencies look at Behance, so if you stand out, then you will be seen.
I changed the icons to show the project in a more open and inviting way, I stopped adding followers unless i liked there work, but the appreciations still didn’t come.
Then two things happened. The first was I put up a project, both on Dribbble and Behance and Facebook, and it helped speed my numbers. One project…https://www.behance.net/gallery/Pimp-My-Ride/10136201
This is the project “Pimp My Ride” all in all over the social networks it has been viewed over 8,000 times and most places have over 500+ likes.
People started following me, and I was getting more attention.
Another thing that was important at BeHance is to have projects curated on their sites. You will see on the left side of my profile, three curated projects. These have all happened in the past two months. Mainly this is due to more advise I took.
Firstly, the curators look for whole well presented pieces to curate, not single pieces.
Also, well presented projects get more attention.”
To continue outside of the original message. One thing I found was when I do my daily scan of Behance (a good practice to look through comment and appreciate work you like), is that I saw people with less followers, and to be honest less creative work, but with more appreciations. So, I asked one of these people, “How do you get over 100+ likes on a project when I hardly get 25?”
They took a look at my profile, and came back with something I didn’t consider for. They said that I should increase my Feedback Circle. On Behance I always though of that as a private club type affair. But taking the advise I found new followers, and it rose from 120 to over 500 now.
What you can do with your Feedback Circle is send a group message to them when you publish a new project. This is more advantageous as they have a reminder on their profile and in their email inbox. Whereas the normal follower will simply have that on their feed, and it may get lost.
There are a few other tricks you can employ, but this is a good start. Commenting, even in reply to your own projects can keep them higher on the feed thread, and get you noticed via other peoples projects.
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