Self-promotion is an essential task for any freelancer…and the need for it never ends. The other day I was reading an interview with the very talented Peter de Seve, a top-tier illustrator. Even with his stellar career, he acknowledged that art directors will soon forget about you if you don’t remind them that you are still out there.
Unfortunately, many art schools don’t do a very good job of teaching their students about self-promotion. So a freelancer just starting out might feel lost, not sure what to do or how to go about it.
The established professional often has a different problem: Finding time to self-promote. The cycle looks like this: You advertise, clients start to hire you, you get busy (too busy to advertise), new clients stop hearing aobut you, work slows down or even dries up completely. And there’s no guarantee that the cycle will start up again.
Thanks to the folks at HOW magazine (an excellent magazine, by the way), now you can have a plan. They’ve just published a free 2008 Marketing Calendar. The calendar has two tracks, one for “Rookies” and one for “Veterans”, and tasks are broken into simple bite-sized chunks to keep things easy and manageable. Just download the calendar and tape it above your desk. Or, if you are more digital-saavy, you may want to enter tasks from the calendar into your computer (I use iCal) to help you stay on top of things.
Download the free 2008 Marketing Calendar here.