As a solopreneur, you are the storefront. You may have a killer business name, but your clients will remember that you — yes, you specifically — did something amazing for them.

In addition to always doing amazing work, you need to start some new habits as a one-person business. Your clients and prospects evaluate you based on what they can see — your email address, your web site, and your social media profiles. If they can’t find you there, they wonder whether you are actually in business. Watch the screencast below for tips on polishing up your image and acting like a business.

Slide deck is HERE

MP3 (audio-only) file is HERE

HOMEWORK

If you haven’t already, register a domain and start using that email address for everything — listings in directories, contact information in your social media profiles, all your correspondence.

Set up a basic web site, using the words and phrases your clients use to describe what you do (which you learned from those woozle-hunting interviews). If you haven’t yet done your interviews, set up a redirect from your domain to your LinkedIn profile, and get going on those interviews!

Set up (or update) your profiles in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and any other social media platforms your clients are on, such as Pinterest or Instagram. Establish a schedule for posting updates in all your networks. (Consider using a tool like Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule and post on multiple social profiles from a single platform.)

Set up a blog on your web site; you will be reposting your social media updates here, appropriately modified as needed.

Set up a subscription form on your web site for your client e-newsletter and establish a schedule for sending out new issues. You needn’t have more than one or two “articles”, each of which can be several paragraphs.