Go live on Facebook or Instagram and offer free consulting. This is a great way to get more comfortable in front of a camera and helps ground your brand with your clients. People want to support people and by offering free consulting and asking for nothing in return, you raise your brands perceived value with your current and potential clients.
Remake your old logos or projects and explain how your style has evolved. Updating your portfolio is always a great idea. Your style and the quality of your work should get better every time you complete a job. Now is a great time to take a look at some old stuff you’d like to update and share it on your social media.
Offer your services for free or reduced rates to essential businesses. Everyone is struggling right now. I read that over 110,000 bars and restaurants will close their doors for good after all this is said and done. Why not give them and other industries like manufacturing, grocery stores, and medical professional a much needed olive branch and help them reach their customers in a new way using your skills.
Write weekly blogs about your tips and tricks for successful designs. Not everyone is a designer but everyone works on their social media and makes decisions about their brand everyday. We, as designers, look at the world through a unique lens and can offer a massive benefit to anyone trying to grow their brand by sharing some of our tips and tricks. Offering free advice is not a bad thing. Next time someone who found value in your tips has a project, I’d bet you’re going to be at the top of their list.
Remake famous logos like Starbucks, Target, or your favorite Beer Brand. This is a fun exercise to do to sharpen your skills. Take a well known brand and put your spin on it. Do you do awesome initial designs, or hand drawn elements of your designs, whatever you do that’s special, use it to practice. After you have a really cool looking before and after, post it so everyone can come see how good your work looks.
Ask your followers to submit their logos for you to remake. This idea is solely meant to get word of mouth kickstarted for your work. The companies may or may not use your work but it’ll give you some content for at least a week to share. Plus, if they use your work, you have the opportunity to get more paid jobs from them like a website redesign, some paper printing like business cards or letter head, or merch designs.
Design a series of posts featuring your Go To Fonts If you are like me, you are always searching for the coolest and newest Fonts to use. Make a list of five Do‘s and five Do not’s and design a really cool string of six post. You can show off your unique style and give potential clients a preview of your branding work.
Make a post or blog about a design technique you learned in the last year. This tip is another way to get people talking or at least thinking about you. Show off a cool new thing you can do and start giving your followers ideas about how they could use that style in their brand.
Go live on Facebook or Instagram and answer your followers questions. These can be design related questions or questions about what you’re watching or eating. It doesn’t matter, the more face time the better.
Redesign your brand and logo so you can reintroduce yourself to your followers. Now is a perfect time to niche down and figure out how you can offer the most value. Take all that energy and remake your brand. Give yourself the premium treatment you would give a $10k/month client. All the time you invest in yourself now will pay dividends in the future. Once you are happy, make a “Hello” post and reintroduce yourself to your followers and remind them what you do and how you can offer value.
I hope this helps some of you. Please share this article with your friends and family if you think it can help them.
As always, I am here if you have any questions. Just email me at nate@natemadeit.com and I will see what I can do.
Stay Safe, We are all in this together!