Reading forum posts brings up many issues, learning and helpful tips for freelancers. In forums, you can receive answers to your questions and figure out your target market. Through reading forum posts and other blogs, learn how to promote yourself without being obnoxious.

1. Offer value. Bloggers like Darren Rowse and the team at Copyblogger consistently tell us to offer value. By doing this, we give to others first and build trust. Through offering value to market yourself to your audience, you establish yourself as an industry expert.

Take Dean Rieck, for example, at Pro Copy Tips. He offers tips to copywriters and expresses his authority in copywriting. On his “About” page, he has a link to his business site, where clients can hire him. Corporate level and budding copywriters can see his expertise and he monetizes his knowledge through both sites.

2. Write a specific helpful post before anyone else. Raza Imam, owner of The Coffee Maker Store, recently posted a brief write-up (in a private forum) about having Guy Kawasaki, creator of Alltop, re-tweet a link to his website. He showed everyone in the forum exactly how he did it and what he did. This is another way of offering value more specifically. Write a post that can help many people that no one else is writing about.

3. Be a real person. When someone responds to you, respond back. By making yourself accessible, you create relationship with others. Respond to what someone says to you. Make responses individual to each person instead of using a canned response. Many people enjoy attention that directly responds to them.

4.  Talk about what you do for others. In a recent post, Imam mentioned that reading Copyblogger inspired him to teach inner city high school kids how to start a blog and make money online. He didn’t start the post with this information.

Instead, he mentioned it after a few replies to other people’s comments about his original, helpful post. If you contribute to charity or help teach kids to read, this establishes credibility for you. However, you have to say it right without throwing this fact out first. By linking his inspiration with what he does to help others, Raza did it right.

5. Give advice. I like the system that Zoetrope has set up for short story critiques. Give and get back. It’s based on a points system. You have to give reviews of others’ work before getting advice for yours. By responding to others’ problems on forums, you are more likely to have people click through to your site and see your work. Advice builds trust with others and establishes your authority.

6. Keep people informed. In Christina Katz’s blog, she mentions updates on her forthcoming book frequently. If you are involved in projects, keep your audience and clients updated. They want to connect with you and find out what you are doing. A secret to this is that they might be experiencing the same problem your current client has. If it isn’t trade secrets you are giving out, you can show off your client through the work in progress.

This certainly is not the end of the list for how to promote yourself without being obnoxious. What do you do to promote yourself? Respond in the comments section.

photo credit: ShaZ Ni *Fotogurafiku