How to Build Your Design Business through Social Networks

One of the often successful tips in business is to try to benefit from the many resources and assets around including web resources and solutions. Social network applications are one of the more recent web trends that are built on the cloud computing concept.

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Cloud computing is a new internet concept built on sharing resources, software and information between users, devices and applications. You can find the cloud computing concept on web applications such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Myspace and other web applications where information can shared dynamically.
However, the information you have and update in sites such as Facebook, Linkedin or Myspace is shared information, where any of your connected friends can see it and interact with it. This applies to your business information as well. Thus, your profile and activity on these sites can be considered one of the available assets to build and promote your business.
While many social networks users are building their profile for personal reasons, you will have to go a little further to prepare your profile for business and to be able to consider it as one of your business assets, as we will see in this article.

The web presence

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Before you start to promote your business in your social network profile, you have to have your web presence ready for promoting and really indicate the strongest points of your business either as a company or as a freelancer.
The web presence starts with your company site or portfolio where you present your skills and services. This profile should be your identity on the web and it should include your resume, work samples, blog, the services you can provide, and your contact information. In a previous article about How to Sell Yourself Online as a Designer, you can find more information and details about how to build your or your company’s web profile.
Promoting your business identity is the next step towards getting clients’ attention to your site and your services. However, you have to submit your website to design directories, add it to your email signature and your profiles on social networks as we will see later.
In addition to the online promoting, you can use the ordinary offline promoting methods, such as creating brochures for your services and business cards to introduce your company to your clients…etc.

How to benefit from social networks

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While most social networks started as a communicating site that link users and let them share information and updates with each other, most of these sites started to understand the value of their services in promoting business. Many social networking sites start to add business value to their services such as the business pages in Facebook and the LinkedIn business connections.

The next step after building your web identity is to start creating your profiles on the more well known social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn. While building your profile, you have to understand that adding your profile is not just about submitting it. Building an attractive business profile requires a lot of effort and frequent updates. However, it is better to stay focused and active on only a few sites.
Building your profile for business on social networks is slightly different from building a personal profile; you can even have a special account for your business profile.

When you create your business profile, make sure to give a bigger focus to your company or profile more than to your personal information. On the other hand, you need to connect with people in your industry and with the same interest. This will help you to get noticed and start to inform people about your profile, thus increasing your number of visits.
Frequent updates are one of the important features in social networking sites. However, you can use this updating service to attract clients by keeping your profile updated with your recent projects, technology tips and information that lets your followers know that you have good career skills.

Social networking for designers

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There are a lot of social networking sites that are directed at designers such as Deviantart, Behance and Coroflot. These sites not only provide social networking features but also extend their services for designers to showcase their work and skills through onsite galleries.

Building profiles in these sites can help you get more exposure and visitors to your work samples and website, which can then help you to get noticed among other designers by potential clients. You can build your gallery on these sites by uploading your best work samples. You can get more exposure by communicating with other designers and commenting on their work samples. However, they will comment on your samples as well and turn your gallery into an active page that can drive more traffic to your site.

Like other social networking sites, keeping your profile frequently updated can help you to get noticed and will introduce you to other members who are interested in getting to know more about you and your updates.

Multiplied portfolios

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There is another important reason to have profiles on designer social networks, which is to have multiple profile pages instead of only one. Having profiles in designers’ networks gives you the chance to appear in search results for users who browse for designers.
For example, clients may visit these sites and search for designers. However, you can improve your chances by just listing your profile and services on designers’ networks. Furthermore, when you have a profile on each of these sites, you can get more exposure from the search results and from being listed in these site member directories.

Although it is a good idea to have a profile in different designer’s networks, you have to keep pointing back to your main site and services so that all the users end up with the primary site or location where you can describe your business and services in more detail.

Be Active!!

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The main way to get an exposure on social networks is to be active. An active profile attracts users to subscribe and interact. When you have an active profile and users know you are active, you’ll likely get more traffic to your profile pages that will be consequently transferred to your site.

Most of the social networking sites provide status updates such as Twitter and Facebook. These updates are then populated among your friends and followers. However, this activity may promote you among clients or other members who may visit your site and recommend your services to others.

Conclusion

In this short article, we see how to use social networking sites to promote your business and the tips you can follow to build an active profile that serves your business and increases its exposure.
Social networks can drive more traffic to your site and introduce you to clients, showing your skills and capabilities as well as the services that you can provide to them.