Sunday, March 11th 5:00 pm
Gina Trapani
Molly Ditmore Molly Bloom
Matthew Haughey MetaFilter
Annalee Newitz Freelance Writer
Penelope Trunk Brazen Careerist
Shouldn’t my work sell itself? I don’t want to become a spammer.
If you want to be able to support yourself, you need to make the intellectual leap that what you look like and present yourself matters. You don’t have to go over the top, but you still need to have some sort of plan. You need to be a sales person – don’t call it sales, it is networking. You need to be able to get your work in front of the ppl that need to see it or need it.
It is hard (as a nerd) to go up to ppl and sell yourself or your stuff. It’s hard because it is you vs. selling some other company product that isn’t you.
Really important in marketing yourself – “The Elevator Pitch” – What do you do?
Concise carefully practiced statement about what you do. What is it you do – not what you don’t do. Your mother should be able to understand it. Practicing it is important.
Takes time to get your name out there.
Just as important to be a good listener as it is to talk about yourself – don’t be the creepy person that just keeps talking about their website. Avoid backash.
random cool site: http://www.videosift.com/
You need to find that level where it isn’t simply self-promotion, but finding places relevant to post your stuff. Rule of thumb: more than one or two venues is probably too much.
Getting to the right ppl is the most important.
Play a little hard to get – some allure to being busy.
Important to chose jobs that take you on the right career path.
You don’t have to put EVERYTHING on your resume. The crap stuff doesn’t need to show up.
Much fear and hunger when starting. Create a plan for the inbetween. Think about goals and find a way to balance it out and who you need to market to to do that. Where do I want to go with this and how do I spend my time? 2 yrs 5 yrs
If you can’t get that dream job, do it yourself. Create your own site and create that track record.
50% of your time should be promotion and marketing – need to be patient.
Need to be ready for rejection.