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Here’s the secret to marketing: there’s no secret. Just strategic hard work, a willingness to adapt, and an incredible amount of persistence.

I’m not going to give you the standard “have a social media presence.” Not only is that super obvious in 2013, but I see many brand pages actually doing more harm than good for their brand.

I’m going to give specific examples of approaches that have worked for me in the past. Ten minutes from now, I hope you’ll be more confident than ever at branding and promoting yourself.

Website

Your personal and/or business website is your home base — your hub. Everything else is fleeting and owned by someone else.

Make sure you own yourname.com and yourstudio.com because it costs just ten dollars a year. Even if you’re just temporarily redirecting your domain to Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/SoundCloud until you get a proper website up, it’s ten dollars a year to secure your personal real estate on the internet. When you’re ready to properly host a site, it’s as cheap as just $5 per month. Well worth it.

Design

Design matters. Good design and usability builds trust. It’s not 2005 where simply having a website is enough. The differentiator in 2013 is great design and usability (including mobile). If you want to future-proof yourself, find a theme that’s responsive and retina-ready.

Themes

Good design doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Sites like Themeforest let you browse through thousands of flexible and professionally designed WordPress or HTML-based website templates. If you ever plan on blogging (which I highly recommend you do), set up a self-hosted WordPress site. There’s also a difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. You probably want dot org.

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