May
Basic Social Media Tips For Location Independent Professionals & Nomadic Web Workers
Photo by Felix Francis
Running a business online for the past 15 months whilst moving around from country to country every couple of months, means we’ve had to get pretty smart, pretty fast about how to network online, market ourselves online and generate ongoing new business online.
We had a few false starts and some rather major flip-flops in what we’ve been doing business-wise but what it’s meant is that we’ve had to start from scratch each and every time, build up a client base from nothing and generate enough business to earn a living from to support our lifestyle in rather more expensive places like the Caribbean, Toronto and Dubai, as well as the cheaper places like South Africa, Panama and Thailand.
I’ve been following the internet marketing (IM) field for a couple of years at least now – but quickly decided that I disliked some of the underhand, sneaky and manipulative tactics used to get sign-ups to a list or buyers of a product. So if you’re looking for shortcuts or quick-result tips that will get you a flood of traffic in as short a space of time possible, keep looking because that’s not what this post is about!
Instead, I’m going to share with you the results of what we’ve learned about how to market ourselves online using some of the popular social media tools whilst travelling the globe…
Blogs
If you know me already, you’ll know I have had several! At first, there was no real strategy to them – most of them started on an impulse and with a desire to just share what we were learning. Now however, there is a slightly more coherent strategy and purpose to them all:
Purpose of my personal blog: Represents my own personal brand and builds up my personal profile on the internet.
Purpose of this blog: To be the “go to” resource for anyone interested in creating their own location independent lifestyle; To inspire and motivate others to take the step by demonstrating that ‘normal’ people can do this; To promote and sell our range of products & services (although this was never the original purpose of the blog – it’s evolved over time to become a good platform for doing this).
Purpose of our personal travel blog: A more informal blog primarily for our friends & family; A place to share more of our personal thoughts about the places we visit and live in.
Purpose of writing on other blogs – I have guest-posted on several blogs: To test the strength and quality of my own writing; To spread the word about this blog when I first started to take it more seriously.
Top LIP Tip: If you’re going to have this many (and even if you’re not), get organised and have a posting schedule to write/publish posts for your blogs in advance. We try and keep at least a month ahead with a couple of the blogs – and you’ll find this is even more crucial if you’re visiting places where internet/power access is sporadic at best.
I used to keep this purely for personal networking only and to keep up with friends and some of the more tech-savvy family members! I do “friend” other people but use Friend Lists to control who sees what and the information I share with various different groups of people.
UPDATE 2009: Since the advent of Fan Pages & Groups, we’ve started using Facebook for more promotional/business purposes.
Top LIP Tip: Don’t forget to add new friends you meet around the globe. Status updates are also a great way of checking out who’s going to be on holiday and visiting the place you’re currently staying in – whilst we haven’t quite made it yet, we’ve had a few near misses of meeting up with long lost friends/old family friends from the past, simply by being alerted to their upcoming holidays to places we’re currently living in.
This is something I definitely use for professional networking purposes, to build my online professional reputation and to position our business projects within specific target markets.
Top LIP Tip: If there are influential people in your network that you’d like to meet face-to-face, check out their locations and if you’re anywhere in the vicinity, arrange a meet-up.
Stumbleupon
I first started using this because it was a cool tool to find interesting websites and surf the web whilst I was bored. Of course, it then became obvious that it could be used for so much more:
- As blogging inspiration and to find resources to link to on my posts
- As a bookmarking tool
- To help increase traffic to blog posts
Top LIP Tip: Don’t just select the topics you’re interested in, try selecting a few others you wouldn’t otherwise typically choose. It’s a great way of finding out things you wouldn’t normally – and finding random inspiration for blog posts, articles or business ideas.
I first started using Twitter way back when it wasn’t much fun because very few people were doing it. However, at that time it was (and still is) an excellent tool to send updates on our travel progress to friends and family with one update rather than sending multiple SMS messages that cost you a small fortune.
Since Twitter reached a tipping point however, I’ve been using it more actively to:
- Share relevant posts from my blogs.
- Share our travel knowledge and experience with anyone who asks.
- Connect with Twitter buds from across the globe – some of whom have offered us a place to stay if we’re ever in the area (kind of like couchsurfing but more personal!).
- Re-connect with blogging friends, people who’ve bought our products and other blog readers – it’s been great getting to know more about readers, some of whom I didn’t even know read the blog.
Top LIP Tip: Ask your twitter buds for recommendations for places you visit; it can be even better than having your own personal guidebook!
Flickr
We use Flickr to store and share our travel photos – simple as that! It’s also a great place to search for photos to use on the blogs, although this can be somewhat time-consuming.
Top LIP Tip: Search for photos of the places you’re going to from other Flickr users for a great insider’s view which you won’t find in the guidebooks.
A Small World
This is an invite-only site – and is on somewhat of a different plane to most of the other social networking sites. Think “Got $2m to invest”, “Looking for $10m RE (real estate) in NYC” -type posts in the forums.
Nevertheless, part of its appeal is that the advice you receive in the forums is generally seen to be as trustworthy as if it came from a friend of yours. It’s an excellent forum to get travel advice about where to go, where to stay and where to party – if that’s your kind of thing when you travel.
Top LIP Tip: Get the low-down on the best places to party from other ASWers and if you’re a solo traveller, use the forum to find out who’s going to be around where/when you are and connect up with other ASWers in the same place as you.
Other forums
I’ve saved one of the most important till last…my activity in a number of forums where our prospects hang out is crucial in building relationships with members of our target markets, positioning ourselves as experts in our fields and providing valuable advice where possible to help demonstrate our expertise.
We never overtly sell or promote in the forums, but we do aim to have an ongoing presence and share our expertise, so that should a member ever need any professional help, they know where to come!
Top LIP Tip: If you’re location independent and travel like we do, then it’s always an interesting conversation starter to use in forums and is a good ice-breaker. Used in combination with a blog to direct people to, it’s a great way to let people get to know you before deciding whether to work with you or not.
My personal rule about utilising these sorts of tools for business and marketing purposes is this: Briefly experiment with them all if you must, then pick the ones which help you achieve your goals the most effectively and stick with them.
P.S. It might sound like a lot to do – and you might be wondering when we find the time to go exploring each exotic place we visit…I’ll be writing more about that in coming weeks but for now, I’ll say two words about how we fit it in: Marketing Mondays!
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If you travel alot, you might also want to check out Dopplr. I attend a bunch of conferences and it’s a great way to see who’s going to be in the same city/state/timezone/continent if you want to catch up with them.
excellent advice. I got totally hooked on facebook after I went traveling. its a great way to stay in touch!
@Peter Bell – I’ve used Dopplr a couple of times and it’s great. The only trouble is that not many of our friends, family & clients travel quite as much as we do!
@Nomadic Matt – Thanks Matt, FB can get a little addictive. Have you tried Twitter?