What is your design aesthetic? It’s hard to be objective, but important to know. It helps determine who you are likely to land as a client. And who you are likely to land as a client are your “Client Types.”

So with your aesthetic in mind, what are your “Client Types”, and do you know any / have connections to any of them? To connect with your Client Types use your network — or start building one — and find them.

Join LinkedIn Groups comprised of those types of clients and do the soft-sell. Position yourself as a specialist. Suggest that you are doing contextual research for the specific industry. Because you are!

In other words, if your aesthetic leads you to the conclusion that one of your Client Types is Hospitality / Travel industry (broad, I know) or maybe Music, specifically R&B / Hip Hop, then go find those groups on LinkedIn. I don’t know that they exist but I bet they do…so I’ll go search right now…

Yep, here are 37 groups related in some way to “Hip Hop“:
http://www.linkedin.com/groupsDirectory?results=&sik=1251466552006&pplSearchOrigin=GLHD&keywords=hip+hop

And here are 885 groups related to “Hospitality“: (like I said, maybe too broad)
http://www.linkedin.com/groupsDirectory?results=&sik=1251466552008&pplSearchOrigin=GLHD&keywords=hospitality

Typically you have to request to join these groups, so make sure you tailor your profile on Linkedin as an expert in whatever you have determined your Client Type to be. This will increase the likelihood that you get approved for group membership.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 10:19 am and is filed under Design, Design Careers, Getting Gigs, RESOURCES. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.