I recently advised indies (independent producers): artists, craftsmen, photographers, painters, song writers, comedians, authors, and all creatives to make self-promotion an important component in their marketing arsenal.
I expanded on the theme in an article I wrote for Ezine Articles dot com recently. Here are the first three paragraphs of that article:
It was Archimedes who said, “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and single-handed, I can move the world.” And Sir Isaac Newton famously said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants”.
Used mostly in finance to express the relationship between debt and equity, the principle of leverage can be exploited in all spheres of life. Using a layman’s language, I describe leverage as a tiny tweak you can exploit or a simple action you can take wherever you are in your artistic endeavour to maximize your impact and result.
For an example, let’s say you’re a musician, an author, or a craftsman, you can produce a one-minute video and upload to YouTube, Vimeo, or Invideo, and if properly optimized, your video could go viral. With that tiny tweak to your strategy or that simple action, you could attract thousands if not millions of viewers in one fell swoop. BAAM! You’ve moved from a virtual unknown to a celebrity.
I concluded the article thus:
If you want to promote yourself with video (it’s the most popular way to self-promote), do not try to go overboard by gunning to create HD (high-definition) videos. It’s not necessary, at least in the beginning. You can use your smart phone to produce a simple video.
If that is too hard, you can get a graphic designer to design stunning covers for your book, or eBook, or song cover, and upload them to free video making sites like Animoto, Issuu or Invideo, and before you know it, you have a video people can link to. You can even upload your video to your one-page website. You can get a web designer on Fiverr to design a great-looking site for you for pennies. Or you can design your website by yourself on Weebly if you’re the tech-type.
In summary, exploit the principle of leverage, particularly self-promotion, to catapult yourself to the next level until you reach the proverbial tipping point and the world will beat a path to you.
If you want to read the full article, here is the link.
Meanwhile, my books, The Celebrity Speaker, and Oh Calgary!, have just been released as a paperback, and an eBook respectively on Amazon. Be the first to grab the books at the current rock-bottom prices before the prices go up. Here is the direct link to the books.