It’s vitally important to be where your customers are, but how, exactly, do you do that? Here are four actionable suggestions:
1. Forums
Probably the most powerful online method to put yourself in front of your customers and hang out where they hang out is to participate fully in one or two popular forums for your niche. The operative words in that sentence being participate fully. Do not join a forum just to see what you can get out of it or so that you can pepper your signature link all throughout the forum. Put your gloves on, roll up your shirtsleeves, and dive right in. Be a real member, a real participant. Be active and involved. Don’t just respond to topics, but start your own. Be as helpful to other forum members as you can possibly be.
2. News Sites
Many news websites have commenting capabilities similar to blogs, and some have related forums. People who want to keep informed in a field will be reading news at these sites, and that puts you in front of them. In some cases, these sites have and encourage people to become human editors for a topic on the site (like Topix.net).
3. Magazines
Consider magazines as a strategy for placing yourself in front of your customers. There are several ways to do this. Magazines often have their own websites. That means that they are likely to have their own forums you can join and even (more and more) blogs you can leave comments on. Even if a magazine website doesn’t have a forum or a blog, you can contact its editors and writers, introduce yourself, and simply say hello and add people into your network. You can write letters to the editor where appropriate. And certainly, you can advertise in a magazine.
For those of you who can write well enough, you may even consider writing a magazine article. Best of all, you could be the subject of a magazine article. It’s not as impossible as you might think. Writers are always looking for new and relevant people to interview and write articles about. Contact them and introduce yourself. Make sure you have read some of their articles so you are familiar with them. Tell them you like their work (be sincere, don’t contact someone whose work you don’t like or don’t know) and that you’d like to present yourself as a subject or at least as a resource because what you do is relevant to what they write about.
4. Trade Shows and Conferences
This is a big one, because it involves more than an investment of time. Trade Shows and Conferences cost money to attend. This is where you will do some of your most powerful networking and you will meet tons of new people. If you can speak or have a booth at the show, great! But even if you’re just an attendee, the opportunities are astounding.
The opportunities are even more amazing when you go across industries. Here’s an example: say you’re a graphic designer and you have a blog. Sure, it’s great to go to a graphic design conference, but you may not get a lot of new freelance work that way. What if you went to a conference in a completely unrelated industry, like home appliances and furnishings? Don’t people in that business need graphic designers? They sure do! And here you are, one of the few people not directly in the industry, handing out a pile of business cards sporting your URL and phone number.
The World Will Not Beat a Path to Your Door
There’s an old saying: build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. We know that’s not true. The world will not beat a path to your door. You go to the world. You need to be where the people are who have a mouse problem.