Do What Gets Talked About, Talk About What Gets Done

Anybody else on LinkedIn? That’s the social media site for business, as opposed to the fun and games of, say, Facebook, or a purely personal blog.

I have a LinkedIn profile because I’m a commercial freelance illustrator who wants to attract clients.

LinkedIn members can publish posts on the LinkedIn platform at no charge. It’s a new feature, just introduced this year. It’s a way to demonstrate your expertise on a subject.

So far, I’ve published three posts on LinkedIn. The latest was titled The 2 Things You Have To Do To Attract Clients. I created this graphic for it:

Basically, it’s all about attracting the right kind of attention. I think an artist does that
by creating work so good (or beautiful or funny), it has to be shared. It’s work that Gets Talked About.

But it can’t be shared unless it’s seen. Which means the artist has to Talk About What Gets Done in his studio. One way to do that is to post work on his blog, and on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.

I needed some social media icon buttons to represent what the two people are talking about. I did a Google search for same, and found a beautiful set by Martin, a digital
artist in the Czech Republic. Here’s a close-up:

A few remarks on the background for any Photoshop users out there:

I have some vintage “sunburst” patterns, and I thought one of these would provide some energy in a fun way. Here’s what it looked like when I first pasted it in on a separate layer:

Obviously, it overpowered all the main elements in the drawing, and had to be muted. I added a layer mask, but that left everything looking thoroughly washed out.

I don’t have any magic solutions when things like this happen. I just start experimenting.

I wound up adding a layer of flat yellow color, then overlaying it with a retro dot pattern, which created this effect.

I liked it a lot, but it needed a color boost. A good way to achieve this in Photoshop is to group the layers together, then duplicate the entire group and experiment with layer blending modes.

Here’s the Layers window for the final result. I’ve indicated the blending mode for each layer in dark blue type.

Here’s the final again, all by itself:

One final note: You might be asking yourself: Why bother to write separate posts for LinkedIn? Why not just use the WordPress Publicize feature so all your WP blog posts are automatically posted to LinkedIn?

Three reasons:

1) Publishing directly on the LinkedIn platform looks more “professional” simply because LinkedIn is a business network.

2) An original post always scores points because it is original. Someone made a special effort. That carries more “weight” than a previously published post, no matter how good the latter may be.

3) According to this recent post on Social Media Blunders by my go-to blogging expert, Time Thief, autoposts can be perceived as low-value, or, even worse, spam. And as Ben Huberman writes in this Daily Post entry, not every WP blog post is a good match for LinkedIn, especially if you write on non-business topics.

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Do you have a strategy for attracting clients? Would you care to share it?

Are you a member of LinkedIn? If so, have you found it useful in attracting clients?

Would conversations be more enjoyable if when people talked, little icons came out of their mouths??

Hope you’ll leave a comment.

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