Since reading How to Brand and Promote Yourself Online (Part One), you’ve probably already starting thinking about the image you want to project online, but what’s next? Well, it’s time to put yourself out there by establishing yourself as an expert in your field and creating consistent,  relevant content. There are lots of ways to engage with others and make yourself well-known within your industry. Let’s get started!

Create a newsletter

Create a newsletter for your website or blog and send it out once a month. Visit MailChimp.com and see if their free plan will work for you. If you have WordPress for your blog or website, you can easily add the code supplied by MailChimp to a text widget and insert in one of your sidebars.

Giveaways and Contests

A great way to promote your blog or website is to have giveaways. Find something to giveaway, such as a gift card, book, or anything directly related to your niche and have people post comments to enter. You can offer additional entries by asking visitors to like your Twitter or Facebook page, tweet about the giveaway, etc. and come back to post another comment showing they have done so. Search for “blog giveaways” on Google to get lots of ideas on ways to do this.

Share Buttons

Make sure you make it easy for people to share your articles and blog posts. If your blog theme does not already include share buttons, search the plug-ins for AddThis or other related plug-ins so it will be easy for others to like and share your content with others.

Be an expert

The easiest way to be seen as an expert in your field is to teach others and/or help others. For example, if you are a graphic designer, you could design a free graphic once a month for others to download and use, or if you are a software developer, you could write open source software. Whatever your field, you could start a blog with “how to” type articles focusing on what you want to be known for, while helping others.

More ideas:

• Make a commitment to write a certain amount of articles a week and stick to it
• Join free article sites like ezine.com and submit your articles there as well
• Join sites like Quora and answer questions that focus on your niche
• Put together a free tool branded with your information that can be downloaded and used by your audience
• Look for industry blogs, communities, and LinkedIn groups that are important in your industry and get involved
• Start producing free, helpful podcasts, videos, and/or webinars
• Interview people of interest
• Be a guest blogger (make sure to include a link to your website)
• Write an ebook
• Start a Facebook page about a specific part of your industry (not a personal page)
• Find out about Google Authorship. This will help brand your articles in search engine results

Follow experts

Find blogs that specialize in your particular niche and add their RSS to your Google Reader. Search for experts in your field and follow them on Twitter, Google+, and other social networking sites. Respond to the very best tweets or blog posts by commenting or sharing.

Set up Google Alerts

Set up Google Alerts with your name and keywords to your topics of interest. Monitor these on a daily basis. You can also set these up through RSS and view them on your Google Reader.

Tweet about your topic everyday

Tweet several times a day on your topic. You can use Hootsuite or TweetDeck to set up tweets in advance.

LinkedIn

Don’t just complete your profile, make it interesting! Look up ideas on how to make a better professional header. Connect with your current and past colleagues. Write recommendations for others ask them to reciprocate. You can post these recommendations on your blog or website as well.

Content and Keywords

Think like a Googlebot crawling the web for content! While images are interesting to look at, you need actual words with specific keywords that match your niche. For instance, if you want to have your resume on your website, do not upload an image, actually type in the words for your resume. If you post videos or podcasts, add the script below it. Do not use Flash sites! They are pretty, but unreadable by search engines  unless you plan to have an identical html site to go along with it. Look up Google keywords tool and see what are the most popular keywords and strings of keywords words searched for in your industry. Try to use these words when appropriate.

Continue to connect!

Be engaging, ask questions, and start real conversations; be yourself. Write, tweet, and post on social media sites frequently; make this an everyday routine.

Have other suggestions or tips? Please leave a comment, we would love to hear from you!