Philip Mikal for Open Source Consulting

You may be thinking you don't need to market yourself. You may be saying, "the demand for contract technical labor is so strong, I just need to post on DICE.com to find my next engagement." While this can be true for many, your ability to market yourself can mean the difference between $60 and $100+ an hour.

It's important to understand how to think about personal marketing. It's different from traditional marketing in that we aren't necessarily placing ads for our services. You won't see a commercial for my technical consulting services during the Super Bowl, but you might have visited my web site looking for help with the Apache Software Foundation's Jakarta Project. Personal marketing is the planning and coordination of any activity that influences current and potential customers.

Research The Market

The first step in implementing a personal marketing strategy is to know your customers and their needs. Customers are usually hiring managers, co-workers and recruiters. The easiest way to understand them is to read their job postings. Try searching job sites on the Internet with specific skills and job functions. This technique can be extremely valuable as most recruiters seeking contract technical labor practice skill-based hiring. Pay attention to which of your skills are 'in-demand.' Notice what companies are hiring and which recruiters are helping them. Job postings are a good start, but I find it more beneficial to read trade magazines, Internet news sites and email lists to identify industry trends.

It's also important to know your value. Most popular Internet job sites provide salary surveys. These surveys will often provide data categorized by geographic regions, skills and titles. Overall, these steps are an ongoing process, causing continual change for your personal marketing strategy, but they lead to a solid understanding of your target market.

Sell Yourself

Now that you've spent some time researching and developed a fairly good understanding of the market, it's time to put this knowledge to use in one of your most powerful tools, the resume. Unfortunately, I have found the resume is never read and understood in full. Most hiring managers only scan them looking for something to catch their eye. Some even use automated software to read them. As such, I suggest formatting your resume to emphasize the parts of your background you feel are in strong demand by clients. You may even consider tailoring your resume for each possible contract opportunity. Be sure to think like your customer.

While the resume markets you to a known audience, you still need to establish a presence. A great way to do this is to build a personal web site, including a unique Internet domain name. It's common to use your full name or even just your first name. For myself, I registered mikal.org. When creating your personal web site, design it for usability. Make it easy for customers to learn about you without trying to sell them. Always mention your 'in-demand' skills on the site and place these mentions in as many places on the site as possible. Implement the customer focused web site design concepts described at Jakob Nielsen's Website at http://www.useit.com.

Another key to building your presence is your email signature. An email signature is similar to a business card. If you are sending out useful or interesting information via email, customers who read your message can easily identify you, find out how to reach you and be subjected to additional marketing messages. At a minimum, my email signature contains the URL to my website. Additional information I'll add includes my title, skills and services. When creating your signature, avoid taking up too much space and don't add quotations or personal opinions. Most likely, you already send out hundreds of emails a month -- it's time to put them to work.

Now that you've published yourself in electronic format, try print. Publishing bylined articles relating to your expertise provides an easy forum to gain credibility as an expert and build awareness of your personal brand with potential customers. Getting an article of useful information published isn't very hard. You don't even have to be a good writer! Identify publications that target the customer base to which you want to market . Read the current and past issues of these publications and understand what they are about. Unless you have already prepared your article, send a proposal to the publication's editor. Include a short one-paragraph summary, informal outline, short personal bio and contact information. If the editor likes your idea, you'll be on your way to becoming a published expert.