Connections & Competition
Finding new clients for the modest tweeter.
Marketing has always been, and will no doubt continue to be, an area I struggle with. Some people are good at selling themselves and getting their name/brand out there. I’m not one of them.
What interests me the most is that a lot of friends find new clients and projects through Twitter. That would make a lot of sense if they followed people in the industries that they were looking for clients in, but in a typical business sense, they’re following the competition.
Now I realize our industry doesn’t function in the same manner as most others — You wouldn’t see Coca-Cola sharing their best tips and tricks with Pepsi for example. Ours is a very open and sharing community which makes for a refreshing change but at the same time, these helpful and giving friends are indeed, sometimes the competition.
So, should we be following more people outside of the web industry? I don’t think so. If you’re tweeting links to your personal projects, open source downloads and public repositories, others in our industry are likely to take note, share it with friends and you’re getting your name out there. If you share those very same resources with potential clients outside of the industry, you’re more likely to get an unfollow than an enquiry.
This all sounds well and good. Follow more designers and devs, get more work! Easy, right? Well that’s not been the case for me…
I find it incredibly difficult to sell myself. The oh-so-popular humble brag doesn’t come naturally to me. I even cringe when somebody tweets about a product of mine and I contemplate retweeting it where others would do it all day long. I’m kind of jealous of those able to do that and be happy with it. Fear of mass-unfollowing and giving off the impression that I’m an arrogant a-hole holds me back.
Most of my work comes from referrals from previous clients and the rest by word of mouth.
I don’t necessarily want to change the way I use Twitter though either. Currently, I tweet for me. In order to make it more of a business tool, I’d have to cater towards that and be aware of what I’m posting; making sure it’s of use to the community and considering how it reflects upon me. Screw that.
Instead, I wish there was another tool I could use. A short while ago, @bryanveloso gave a talk on Designing Your Own Open Source Project and covered finding designers to work with, filling in the gaps in your project and learning from each other.
If this were a web app today, I’d be going there for future projects. Hell, I’d love to make it myself — but then I’d need the tool to find the programmer to help build the tool. Chicken. Egg. Headache… t(>.<t)
In all seriousness, imagine you had a site/service you could use each time you needed a designer, developer or hybrid. You would create an account and add friends/peers you can vouch for, those you would be happy to hire for help. Then when you need, for example, a designer, you look at a calendar view, filtered to just your designer contacts, showing availability as set by those users. You haven’t had to email a bunch of people to find out if they’re even available, you can see straight away and get in touch regarding your project. Designers would do the same thing when in need of a developer.
Catering for new contacts would also need to be taken into consideration. Imagine you don’t know any developers — having an empty list to pick from would be useless. In this case, a rating system of sorts could be used in conjunction with a friends of friends mechanic. If people you know and trust can vouch for somebody else, then it’s likely they know their stuff and you’re not going into an introduction blind.
That about sums it up. I’d really like to have a tool like this and I’d love to be a part of building it. If it’s something you’re interested in and you have those programming chops to help me make it happen, then by all means send me an email — I’d love to hear from you.
