With so many web and graphic designers out there, getting the attention of potential clients and landing work can be a major challenge. The portfolio site is one of the most important assets for a designer, and an effective portfolio site will be an invaluable resource for keeping the business moving forward.

For many designers creating an attractive portfolio site is not the problem, getting people to see it is often much more of an issue. In order for the portfolio site to truly do it’s job it must be well-designed and it must attract the right types of visitors. In this post we’ll look at 15 things that you can do to increase the effectiveness of your portfolio site by getting more exposure for it.

1. Have a High-Quality Design for Your Portfolio Site

Not only is the quality of design of the items in your portfolio important, but the design of your portfolio site itself will also have a big impact on potential clients. Clients will expect a designer to have an attractive and usable site, otherwise they will question the work that the designer will be able to do for them.

When designing and coding your portfolio site be sure that it is getting all of the attention that it deserves. After all, it will be one of the most important aspects of your business, so it should not be rushed.

Impressive portfolio sites are great for encouraging visitors to contact you about their project, and they are also more likely to attract links and attention from other designers and bloggers.

2. Get Published in Web Design/CSS Galleries

There are hundreds, possibly even thousands, of gallery sites out there that exist for the purpose of showcasing beautiful websites. Having your site featured in a few of the more popular galleries will help it to attract attention from other galleries and design blogs, which can result in a flood of new visitors and a significant number of inbound links.

Getting your site featured in design galleries isn’t easy, but if you’ve done your best work with your portfolio site you’ll probably want to submit it to some galleries. Submitting to galleries can be rather time consuming, so you may want to consider a service like Gallery Rush that submits your site to a bunch of galleries for a relatively small fee of $17.

In addition to general design and CSS galleries, there are several that focus on showcasing the best portfolio sites, including:

• Folio Focus

• Pixel Perfect Portfolios

• Foliostars

3. Start a Blog

Possibly the best way to attract visitors to your portfolio site is to start a blog on the same domain. As you maintain the blog and publish new content your site will benefit from blog subscribers and repeat visitors, more content that can attract search engine traffic, increased ability to attract links, and a platform for showcasing your skills and expertise.

There are a number of different approaches that you can take with your blog. You may simply want to publish blog posts and content that will appeal to designers in attempt to increase your profile, build links, and establish the quality of your domain. You may want to publish case studies about your client work that will appeal to other designers who want to learn, as well as to potential clients who may be interested in knowing more about how you work. In this way you are able to use the blog to put a spotlight on your work, and hopefully the quality will lead to new clients. Or you could write posts that might answer questions that potential clients would have, or that would be optimized to be found in search results for queries of potential clients.

One of the most important benefits of blogging was mentioned briefly, and that is link building. If your portfolio site includes only a few pages of content (for example, a home page, portfolio page, about page, contact info page), it will be pretty difficult to attract any kind of significant search engine traffic. However, with a blog you will be drastically increasing the amount of content on the site, and that content will be much more likely to draw links from other blogs and from social media sites. Having a blog that attracts links will give your site/blog a chance to rank well for long tail search phrases, and in time your site should receive exponentially more search traffic than it would without the blog.

4. Pursue Freelance Blogging

In addition to publishing posts on your own blog, writing for other blogs also presents some great opportunities. Whether you are writing free guest posts or freelancing with larger design blogs that pay for contributions, you’ll usually receive an author bio at the end of the post that can include a link to your own site, and you’ll also be building up your name recognition.

Major design blogs like Smashing Magazine, Webdesigner Depot, and Six Revisions accept articles from designers and developers, and they pay for published articles. Aside from the larger blogs that pay contributors, writing free guest posts for smaller blogs can also be an excellent way to build links and gain exposure.

5. Build it to Be Search Engine Friendly

If you’re just starting your portfolio site it is unlikely that you’ll get more than a handful of search engine visitors for a while. But if you build the site to be friendly to search engines and if you work on publishing quality content on your blog and attracting links from other sites, you will be in a good position to see that search engine traffic rise over a period of time.

Having a search engine friendly website simply means that it is built to make it easy for search engine spiders to crawl the site and to determine what it is about, and to have a chance to rank well. It involves proper coding, use of page titles and headers, proper site structure, etc. (For a more detailed look at the subject see How to Create Search Engine Friendly Websites.)

6. Participate in Social Networking

Social media and social networking sites present opportunities to attract visitors to your portfolio site or blog, as well as to connect with other designers and build your professional network.

For getting visitors to your blog there are a number of niche-specific sites that are excellent alternatives to major social news sites like Digg. If you’re looking to reach a targeted audience of designers and developers try sites like:

• Design Bump

• Design Float

• DZone

• The Web Blend

• Design Related

• FAQ Pal

Aside from news/voting sites, there are excellent opportunities available to showcase work from your portfolio at networking sites like:

• Behance

• deviantART

• Flickr

• Carbonmade

7. Be Active on Twitter

Twitter is extremely popular with designers, so if you are looking for a place to connect with others you really should be active on Twitter (find us at @Vapvarun). In terms of getting visitors from Twitter, you can share tweets with links to your blog posts, or tweet links to recently completed projects, or even projects that are in process when you are looking for feedback. Like any other type of social networking, you must genuinely become a part of the community of users in order to have much impact for yourself. If it seems that you are only there for self promotion and not to interact, users will notice and the positive impacts will be minimal.

8. Distribute Freebies

Everyone love freebies. As a designer you can give away free templates, Photoshop brushes, PSD files, vectors, textures, icons, or just about any other type of resource that can be used for design. Giving items away can help to draw new visitors to your site, and maybe they’ll check out your portfolio while they are there. Freebies are also good for building links from other blogs and social media sites, and just as importantly, it gives you an opportunity to show your quality of work to the world. Just because you are giving it away for free doesn’t me that it can’t help to make you land clients or make money, so be sure that whatever you are giving away is up to your level of quality.

In addition to giving away freebies from your own site, you can also produce items to be given away at other sites and blogs, which may help to give some added exposure to your work. Many design blogs work with various designers to produce freebies to give to their readers. If you’re hoping to get your work noticed by a large audience, this may be a great opportunity.

9. Do Interviews

Designers are frequently asked to do interviews for blogs or for students. Although it will take some of your time to do the interview, they are great for getting exposure to new people and for allowing others to get to know more about you. Most people like to work with others that they know and like, so it can even sometimes lead to new clients. Even if it doesn’t lead to a new client, the interview is likely to include a link to your portfolio site and it may even include some screenshots of your work.

10. Join Flickr Groups for Showcasing Your Work

Flickr groups present an opportunity to showcase your work to others, and to receive feedback on your design. There are plenty of Flickr groups that focus on web and/or graphic design (this post is old but much of it is still relevant – 99 Flickr Groups for Design Inspiration). While these groups are unlikely to send a rush of traffic to your site, it is a supplementary way to showcase your work and draw a smaller number of visitors.

11. Design for a High-Profile Client

Some designers have been able to get valuable exposure by designing a site for a high-profile client. In situations where the designer is not yet established, the project will often need to be done for a discounted rate or even for free, but the resulting exposure may more than make up for it.

It’s not rare for clients to ask for a free website in exchange for the “exposure” that you’ll get from it, and in 99% of cases it’s not worth it. However, there may be situations, such as designing a custom theme for a very popular blog, where real exposure could justify a discounted or free service. If you agree to this be sure that you know specifically what type of exposure you will be getting. Are they simply giving you a link in the footer or are they publishing a review of your design services on the blog?

12. Run a Pay-Per-Click Ad Campaign

PPC ads are a great option because they can work with just about any budget, they can be highly targeted, and they can be turned on and off at will. When you’re looking for some new projects you can set up a PPC campaign, and you can even target only local clients if you’d like. You set the maximum amount that you are willing to spend on a daily or monthly basis, and you’ll start reaching some potential clients that are looking for what you have to offer. When things pick up and you are not looking for work you can easily pause the campaign and then restart it when you need more work.

13. Have a Memorable Business Card

Although most of the methods that we have covered in this post involve online marketing or promotional efforts, it is still possible to draw visitors to your site from offline methods. Most designers have business cards that they give out to people that they meet here and there, and hopefully they lead to some business. Having a memorable and attractive business card will help you to stand out and give you a better chance of being the designer that is contacted by the potential client.

14. Sell Templates/Themes

More and more designers are generating income by selling premium WordPress themes or HTML/CSS templates. Selling themes or templates doesn’t have to be your only source of income, they are also great for picking up work from customers who want to get some customizations done to the theme or template. Adding some quality themes or templates for sale from your portfolio site can help to generate interest in your services, in addition to making some money from the sales.

15. Leave Comments on Other Blogs

Another way to attract visitors to your site is by leaving comments on other blogs. Instead of leaving links to your site in the body of your comment, which can lead to your comment being marked as spam or deleted, leave a thoughtful, intelligent comment and provide your URL in the proper field when entering the comment (almost all blogs allow you to leave a URL). No one comment is likely to generate a huge amount of traffic to your site, but if you are leaving a lot of comments that provide useful information and are relevant to the posts/blogs where you are commenting, it can result in a decent number of targeted prospects entering your site.

What’s Your Experience?

If you have a portfolio site, what have you found to be especially effective for gaining exposure, visitors, and new clients?

VOiP clients Fring and Skype are engaged in a war of words over video calling and alleged service blocks. Of course, the real losers are the end users.

Fring is a relatively small player when compared to Skype, but it has been successful in large part because the service is interoperable with other VOiP services, including GoogleTalk, SIP and Skype. The fact that you can make Fring-to-Skype calls within the Fring app has been a real boon for platforms that either have limited Skype support or for users who want to take advantage of some of Fring’s other features.
Last week, Fring introduced two-way video calling support for the iPhone 4 over Wi-Fi or 3G. This was a big hit. It was such a big hit, Fring had to turn off Skype support over the weekend in order to deal with the onslaught of users wanting to make video-to-video calls.

The company has now expanded its capacity and says it wants to turn Skype support back on. According to Fring’s official statement, Skype is refusing to let them do so.

On its blog, Fring calls Skype “cowards” and says it is “afraid of open mobile communication.”

However, there are two sides to every story and in this case, Skype has already responded. In direct contradiction to what Fring has said in its public statements, Skype says that the allegations that Skype has blocked Fring’s access to its network are untrue.

Skype goes on to say that Fring has been in breach of its API Terms of Use and End User License agreements. It also says that Fring’s misuse has been “increasingly damaging our brand and reputation with our customers.”

Amazingly, Skype cites the fact that Fring had to temporarily shut down Skype access due to high call load as an example of this sort of damage.

While Skype claims it has not blocked Fring’s access to its services, it also makes it very clear that, as a company, Skype is unhappy with the current situation.

What Does This Mean?

Drama aside, what does this really mean? Well, it means that making Skype video calls on the iPhone 4 and Android devices is currently impossible. Regardless of who is at fault, that’s the reality.

Here’s what we don’t understand: Why hasn’t Skype ramped up its own mobile video calling efforts? While there were reports back in May that Skype would be bringing official video call support to Android “later this year,” a detailed roadmap for Skype’s mobile video — or mobile plans in general — hasn’t been outlined.

Skype recently signed a deal with Verizon that, among other things, brought an official Skype application to Android users who are on the Verizon network. However, Skype doesn’t have an app available for other Android users, which makes options for HTC EVO 4G users more costly and limited.

On the iPhone side, Skype only recently added 3G calling support and that feature will eventually come at a price.

Skype has a huge infrastructure and user base, but on the mobile front it’s falling behind. Frankly, many Fring users only use the service because it’s the best way they can connect with their Skype contacts on their mobile handsets. If Skype would support more devices and carriers, or at least offer some official timeline for video call support, its users wouldn’t have to look at other options.

Regardless of who is to blame for the current situation, Skype and Fring’s pettiness means that no one gets to benefit from multi-device video calling across the largest VOiP network in the world. What a shame.

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum.

Running a small business is filled with unknowns and crash course lessons. You’re always going to have questions about hiring, acquiring customers, raising money, and building viable products.

Nobody expects you to know everything that’s going in. In fact, that’s why you should always find the right advisors for your startup, so that you can benefit from their experience. But they won’t know everything, either.

Luckily, there are several powerful and convenient tools that can help small business owners get their questions answered. While you may not find the silver bullet that shoots your company to the stratosphere, there are thousands of people with the knowledge and experience to help you solve your small business problems.

Here are a few online tools for connecting with experts who may have answers to your small business questions:

1. Quora: This crowdsourcing and collaboration Q&A tool allows users to ask the Quora community questions, most of them technology or startup-related. Not only can you ask questions of its knowledgeable community (it includes some prominent VCs and CEOs), but you can follow topics such as “leadership,” “venture capital,” or “Google” to stay up-to-date on conversation occurring in those areas.

2. OnStartups Answers: This site, powered by the same platform that runs StackOverflow, is focused on answering the burning questions of startup founders. Everything from product pricing to sleep schedules is addressed by this community.

3. Hacker News: This programming and startup-centric community is very open to answering questions from entrepreneurs. Just go to the submit page and start with “Ask HN:” in your title.

4. Twitter: If you’ve been active with other small business owners on Twitter and built up those relationships, there may not be a better place to get your questions answered faster than on this micro-blogging phenomenon.

5. Open Forum: Yes, I know what you’re thinking, but guess what: OPEN Forum has active discussion forums where members can ask their small business questions and get them answered. It can’t hurt to ask.

This list is a jump start for getting on the track to having all of your small business questions (or at least some of them) answered. Are there any online tools that you continuously reference for solving problems and getting advice as a small business owner?

If your business has a presence on Facebook, then you’ve already taken the first step toward connecting with your current and potential customers on one of the most popular social networking sites to date. But to fully benefit from having a fan page on Facebook, you’ll need to actively engage your fans to maintain their interest and keep the momentum going for your business.

So how can you accomplish that? Let’s look at seven ways:

1. Advertise your fan page. To get the most out of your page, you can’t rely on the mantra: “Build it and they will come.” You’ll need to get the message out to your current and potential customers by advertising your new Facebook page. At the very least, you should link to your fan page directly from your website, blog, Twitter page, or other online forum. You’ll want to make sure that the link is at the top of the right or left column on your website, especially in hot spots like the masthead. Including a Facebook icon is the best way to draw attention to your link.

   To boost your advertising even further, try using Facebook ads, blog posts, or other messaging to communicate your page’s existence to future fans.

2. Build your brand. You should mention your Facebook page on all of the elements in your marketing program. One of the quickest ways you can do this is to include a link in your email signature. You can also mention your Facebook page on any fulfillment materials, invoices, packing slips, company brochures, or business cards. To gain popularity, you’ll need to spread the news through every customer contact avenue that’s available to your business.

3. Include company information. On your Facebook fan page, there’s an Info tab that allows you to include information about your business. At a minimum, you should provide an overview of your company, information about your products or services, and a link to your website. But you don’t have to be constrained by the current categories. With a little creativity, you can expand on this part of your page and use it to drive conversion in other areas. For example, in the Company Overview section, you can place links to specific pages on your website, or you can add a sign-up form that lets people subscribe to your email newsletter. This area is also a great place to put links to your other social networking sites, such as Twitter.

4. Create a landing page. One of the greatest aspects of Facebook’s fan page is the ability to create a landing page that leads into your “actual” page. Facebook provides an application called Static FBML (Facebook Markup Language), which allows you to use basic coding to create a small landing page that becomes the first thing people see when they come to your fan site.

   To install this tool, log in to Facebook and add Static FBML to your page. Once you’ve installed it, you can insert your code and adjust your settings on your wall so that people who aren’t yet your fans will land on this particular page first. To get the most out of this technique, you should provide a short description of your business and request that people become a fan of your page. I’ve known businesses that have used this technique and have been highly effective in converting visitors to fans.

5. Provide engaging content. Having a Facebook fan page provides an ideal opportunity to interact with people. The more information you include on your page, the more inclined your fans will be to stay involved. But remember, interaction requires the efforts of both you and your visitors. And when your fans are more involved, they’re more likely to take advantage of special promotions you might be offering or to suggest your fan page to their friends.

   To encourage interaction, you can adjust your wall settings to allow your fans to post comments, links, or videos on your page, and you can host a miniforum by using the Discussions application. If you have videos on YouTube that are related to your products or services, you can educate your fans about your videos by using the Notes application. You can also import an RSS feed through this application, which is an excellent way to provide relevant content to your readers.

6. Make offerings. Besides creating a landing page, you can use Static FBML to create coupons and rewards, promotional announcements, or even a little shopping area. If you can imagine it, you can create it. Start thinking of your Facebook page as an extension of your main website. If you publish an email newsletter, you can use the markup language to create a subscription form for sign-ups. If you use an email marketing program, you’ll need to put the code for your subscription form in FBML to create a tab on your page.

   Above all, make sure that you’re following the Facebook Pages Terms to avoid making mistakes that could inadvertently cause your Facebook fan page to be deactivated.

7. Do your research. Facebook provides the Insights tool that allows you to view certain metrics about your fan base. It’s not extremely robust, but it does provide a snapshot on things such as the number of active fans you have in various age groups, the geographic breakdown of your fans, and the growth of your fan base over time. This is helpful information when you’re deciding which promotions to advertise to your fans or whether you should target your messaging to a specific age group.

   You should also research other businesses on Facebook to see what they’re doing to promote their page or to engage their fans. Pay attention to what features they’re using, what kind of content they frequently post for their fans, and what methods they use to interact with their visitors. There are a lot of very successful Facebook fan pages that offer a number of creative and effective ideas you can try on your own page.

Offline Promotions

1. Always put your URL on letterhead, business cards and in e-mail signatures–wherever potential visitors are likely to see it.

2. If your employees wear uniforms, put your URL on them so every one of your customers sees a walking advertisement of your website.

3. Include your URL on all promotional items you give away–coffee mugs, T-shirts, key chains and so on. A daily reminder is a good way to get people to visit your site.

4. Be sure to include your web address in all press releases you send out to members of the media. By having it at their fingertips, they may be more likely to include it in articles they write about your company.

5. Don’t forget to put your web address in your Yellow Pages ad. That’s one place people see it every day.

6. Do you own any company vehicles? Be sure to put your URL on the side of any car or truck that’s out there delivering your products.

7. In addition to listing your toll-free number, put your web address on the bottom of every page of your catalogue so customers have easy access to your online store.

Online Promotions

8. Process so you can get the best exposure possible.

9. If you’re still itching for more exposure, you can explore search engine marketing, wherein you pay to have a text ad appear when visitors search for certain keywords.

10. Launch a sweepstakes that offers anyone who registers on your site or subscribes to e-newsletters within a certain time frame the chance to win a free gift.

11. Send out a weekly newsletter to registered site members that offer tips and news related to your company or industry with links back to your site.

12. Offer content to other sites. It’s a win-win situation: The other site gets free articles to beef up their offerings and you get a link back to your site and the cachet of being an expert.

13. Send a well-planned, customer-focused promotion to a targeted list of potential visitors and offer a credit toward the purchase of anything from your site. Spend time on your e-mail’s look and content: You want to offer value to customers and not have it appear to be spam.

14. Create your own exchange by asking sites complementary to yours (but that don’t compete) to put your link on their pages and you’ll do likewise.

15. Hook up with web affiliates–hundreds of sites that all link their traffic to yours–and get visitors from sites with related content.

16. Get active in online discussion groups and chats and always include your URL in your signature. (Don’t do any hard selling, though. Most groups frown on such behaviour and will think you’re spamming the group.)

17. Any time someone orders a product from your site, include a catalogue with their order to get them coming back for more.

18. Inspire your visitors to spread the word for you with viral marketing techniques, from the aforementioned newsgroup participation to including an "e-mail this link" on every page of your site.

19. Not sure what your customers want? Try creating an survey to get their crucial opinions on how well your site is selling to them.

20. When creating your own ads, make sure you understand who you’re targeting, the goal of your campaign, and how to creatively use the ad confines to get viewers to click on your ad, not away from it.

21. Use other selling venues like online classified advertising or online auction sites to increase exposure to your site and products.

XYZ Company
sector 87, Noida

India

(9195555-55555
hr.company@gmail.com

Date

Dear Mr. Raman,

I am writing to apply for the programmer position advertised in the Times Of India. As requested, I am enclosing a completed job application, my certification, my resume and three references.

The opportunity presented in this listing is very interesting, and I believe that my strong technical experience and education will make me a very competitive candidate for this position. The key strengths that I possess for success in this position include:

• I have successfully designed, developed, and supported live use applications
• I strive for continued excellence
• I provide exceptional contributions to customer service for all customers

With a MCA degree, I have a full understanding of the full life cycle of a software development project. I also have experience in learning and excelling at new technologies as needed.

Please see my resume for additional information on my experience.

I can be reached anytime via email at vapvarun@gmail.com or my cell phone, 91-95555-44444.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to speaking with you about this employment opportunity.

Sincerely,

FirstName LastName

Have you ever received an email that was addressed to "undisclosed recipient"? This is a way to send to a group of people without exposing their identities to others. It is a very useful way to, say, update all your customers on your latest new product arrival for example.

When you need to send to a group of people and want to keep their identity confidential, you can utilize the "BCC" function in your e-mail system. Whether you use Yahoo, MSN, Gmail, or any other email service, do the followings:

-in the "To:" field, put: Undisclosed Recipients <youruserlogin@youremail.com>
then replace youruserlogin and youremail.com with your own e-mail address

-put all your email recipients in the "BCC" box, separate by comma. For example: myfirstfriend@yahoo.com, mysecondfriend@hotmail.com, etc

-compose your message as usual

-when ready, simply send

And that’s all there is to it.

1 How I Use Facebook
2 Ways I Embrace My Audience
3 Should My Town Use Social Media?
4 A Community I Love
5 Technology That Empowers Me
6 How Flickr Did it Right
7 How Best to Comment on a Corporate Blog
8 Ways to Save a Bad Time at a Conference
9 How I Find Blogging Ideas
10 Somebody Has to Say It
11 My Children Will Do it Differently
12 How Schools Could Use Social Media
13 The Best Parts of Marketing
14 Presentation Skills for a New Conversation
15 How I Find Time to Make Media
16 Empower Your Best Customers
17 After the Event- Carrying the Conversation Forward
18 Just Jump Into Podcasting- Here’s How
19 My Community and How You Can Engage It
20 Twitter Jaiku Pownce Facebook- And Then What
21 Making a Miniseries
22 If I Were an Advertiser Today
23 My Mother is On Facebook
24 Does a Big Brand Need You
25 Books I Want to Write
26 Serving the Deep Niches- How I Do It
27 How Women Use Social Media
28 A Hard Look at My Media Habits
29 If I Were a Television Producer
30 Social Media Marketing vs Traditional Marketing
31 Elements of a Marketing Campaign
32 Social Media Campaigns are NOT Traditional Campaigns
33 Idea Making and How I Make Something
34 What I Spend Money On
35 Do Rock Stars Need Social Media Strategies
36 How I Use My Website
37 Book Shopping- Buy These Books
38 MTV Changed the World in the 80s- Here is What Comes Next
39 How I Process Blogs and What I Do With All That Info
40 Ten Guilty Pleasures
41 The Internet Application I Haven’t Seen
42 If I Worked for a Venture Capital Firm
43 My Day Job Versus My Passion
44 The Difference Between Fark and Truemors
45 Fixing Conferences
46 Making Marketplaces for Media Makers
47 When I Feel Frustrated
48 Branding Strategies I Use
49 Your Ideas And My Ideas- How We Play Together
50 Friends I Cant Wait to Meet