Successful Freelancer Spotlight: Rachel Weingarten

Good Monday morning readers!

Today, I’m shining the spotlight on Rachel C. Weingarten, a creative brand strategist and president of Octagon Marketing Group (Formerly GTK Marketing Group). Rachel also is the author of Career and Corporate Cool™, Hello Gorgeous! Beauty Products in America, and a contributor to Fortune Small Business.

Rachel’s comments on small business, trends, and marketing regularly appear in the Associated Press, ABC News, The New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, Crain’s New York Business, and other top media outlets.

Most recently, she created a series on women entrepreneurs for CNNMoney.com, worked with internationally best-selling authors and directors, and appeared on Good Morning America to discuss discontinued brands and brand loyalty. She’s also a sought-after public speaker nicknamed Ms. Biz Manners, whose next book will be about effective business communication and etiquette.

With all of our recent talk on The Golden Pencil about learning how to market yourself as a freelancer and create a brand for yourself, I thought that Rachel would be the perfect resource.

How long have you been freelancing full time, and how did you get your start? What did you do prior to freelancing?

Well gee, why don’t we just start with a really easy one. I come from a family of entrepreneurs and really strong female role models, so I’ve been working for myself in some form or another since I was in my teens. I took various turns through the corporate world and then have done everything from working in diamonds to being a celebrity makeup artist, to developing cosmetics for celebrities/cosmetic companies, to owning a muffin business (the first low-fat mini muffin approved by the FDA) to running a web shop in the dawn of the Internet as we know it to segueing into marketing and promotions and of course writing. I’d say that I’ve been self-employed as a writer/marketer for about 8 years now but it’s probably longer.

Can you talk a little bit about some of the marketing/branding work that you’ve been involved in? Any campaigns that people would recognize?

I’m sometimes amazed at the clientele that I’ve worked with over the years. Everyone from celebrities like Christina Aguilera and Wyclef Jean, to NYT best-selling authors and series like Gossip Girl (both the books and the TV series), cosmetic companies like Shu Uemura and L’Oreal, pharma groups like Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble, corporate clients like Nokia and Nuance, NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s office—specifically small business services and economic development, Ivy League universities like Yale, American Idol when it was still struggling to gain an audience, to Links of London, Dansko shoes and tech darlings like Mimoco. Who am I kidding? We’ve worked with nearly every studio and publishing house on some level or another. I’ve also worked with politicians in need of personal branding and marketing but the NDAs in that case limit me from breathing a word of it. I’ve worked with publishers trying to figure out if a title they’d like to buy is marketable, new television shows struggling to find or reclaim audiences, authors who need a boost in sales so that they can sell their next title, partnerships between like-minded brands, trying to keep businesses in NYC after 9/11, trying to help a book series segue from a teen to a young adult audience. I also produce a lot of events—so work mostly in NYC and LA creating events around Fashion Week, the Golden Globes, The Academy Awards and more. I’ve consulted for newspaper, Web and magazine groups trying to figure out which of their sections have gone stale and what to add to the mix to continue to retain readers. It’s hard to narrow down the focus, but generally people come to us with a problem and we figure out a way to engage and excite their targeted audience—even when they’re not sure who that should be.

In many freelance circles, you are known as a marketing maven and branding expert. Some freelancers are really comfortable with the writing/editing side of the business, but not so comfortable with self-promotion and marketing. What advice would you offer to freelancers who fall into this category?

You know, it’s unnatural if you think about it to expect someone who is most comfortable hunched over their keyboard in near isolation to also be the person who is comfortable in large crowds online or in person. Believe it or not, though there seems to be so much known about me (Google me and a kazillion Web sites come up with quotes, comments or more) that’s actually a carefully crafted public side to myself, my private life is a fairly well-guarded secret.

I generally advise clients to have elements of themselves and their lives that they are comfortable sharing publicly and to keep the rest to themselves. Unlike celebrities, who despite protestations to the opposite, generally live most of their lives for public adulation and the limelight, writers usually can handle it better in measured doses. (Of course we’re not talking about the Stephenie Meyer and the J. K. Rowlings of the world). For that reason, I think it’s useful for most writers to have one or two places where they are in complete control of the information flow about themselves—be it a Web site that showcases their best work, provides their approved bio or headshot, and perhaps links to a blog that contains the writing they’re passionate about but don’t necessarily get paid for. I know that while I’ve been so busy in the past few months that I haven’t updated my blogs, I’ve gotten amazing opportunities from people who read and reacted to my posts.

In contrast to the previous question, other freelancers are a little too comfortable with self-promotion and marketing—and make some embarrassing social gaffes as a result. What are some common mistakes that you see people making and what advice would you offer?

I think I touched on some of them above, but will continue. Too many people—writers included—are so busy shouting about their success, project, or new book that they forget to take a step back and see how people are reacting to the deluge of announcements. It’s in bad taste to only talk about oneself at a cocktail party, much less in the professional world.

I also think that many people think that the ease of connecting with potential audiences make them marketing professionals and that their every idea is thus valid and should be mass promoted. People make really stupid mistakes—everything from doing giveaways without protecting themselves from potential lawsuits (there’s a good reason that major corporations include the legalities, rules and regulations at the bottom of every sweepstakes) to dispensing potentially damaging advice after declaring themselves an expert in a subject they’re only peripherally associated with, to spamming (by any definition) contacts and colleagues with endless exhortations to buy, and promotional e-mails that tend to diminish the value of their desired end result. It’s important to treasure your contacts and to treat them with respect and not simply as potential consumers.

How important is it to build a brand for yourself as a freelancer? And when we talk about branding, what should that include?

That really depends on a variety of factors—everything from the type of writing you do, the type of clients you’d like to attract, your long- and short-term goals, your financial objectives, and more. In other words, there’s so much more that goes into building a brand than simply declaring yourself to be one. I think an easy (or excruciating, depending on the results) test of your brand would be to ask trusted friends or colleagues how they perceive you, what they might describe as your best and worst professional qualities and see how that adds up to the image you’d like to portray.

It’s also important to know who your true friends are and whose opinion is perhaps welcome as a friend but not quite helpful to your professional self. A friend might be feeding you less than helpful, if not outright damaging, career advice. Knowing who to trust and not abusing that trust is a crucial element in any kind of brand creation or promotion.

As for creating your own brand, I’d advise looking to your greatest past successes and assessing if this is the direction you hope to take moving forward. It can be hard to take a long hard look in the mirror and decide on what to keep and what to discard. Brand elements can include everything from hyper professionalism to a sense of humor, to mass outreach or privacy. Your specialty, your network, your platform, your ideas, your background, your viability for the long term all come into play. As does your budget since some people hire a team of professionals to help them through the process—though not all admit it!

There are so many social media tools out there these days. Do you recommend use of any of these as part of the marketing/brand-building process? How would you recommend these be used, and are there practices that people should avoid? (e.g. 10 Tweets per day about the same blog post).

Social networking seems to be a phenomenon that’s not going anywhere—until the inevitable next wave of course. There’s no formula though, but it’s important to think about those that annoy you and try not to be like them. I know that in a post of yours you mentioned respecting Tim Ferris’s not following anyone. But frankly, he strikes me as someone who is lacking in the spirit of online generosity and sense of sharing and interacting, and seems to expect others to do for him what he is not prepared to do for them. It makes sense for writers to have presences on the larger sites like Facebook, or to some degree, Twitter (because there are so many people who are passionately against the mass exposure) and again guard what they share and not only promote their links or projects, but engage and interact with others. This way if they have a book coming out, it’s not like they’re suddenly struggling to appear on everyone’s radar at once. The best self-promoters genuinely enjoy (or learn to enjoy) the ongoing interaction with past, present and potential readers instead of only seeing it as a chore. You can’t make yourself love public exposure online or otherwise, but you can control the way you respond or react in most situations.

On Twitter and some other social networking sites, some people are shameless self-promoters and take a look-at-me approach to marketing. How would you advise people to strike that delicate balance between smart promotion/marketing and an approach that irritates or just ticks people off?

Okay, I’ll open another can of worms here. I think that too many people are so starry-eyed about the accepted experts in each industry that they’ll accept from them what they would not from others. I followed Guy Kawasaki for a while, but then stopped because I couldn’t stomach his shilling for his new project in between his attempts to appear helpful. As with most things there are some people who will never get it, and a majority who will see through attempts at trying to get away with something. If you genuinely don’t care about the people you target—they’ll know it. If you only appear on their radar when you’re pushing your own agenda, they might buy into it the first time, maybe even the second, but it’s unlikely to happen a third time.  Everyone’s promotional style is different and while we can all agree that those ubiquitous Viagra ads or Nigerian schemes are spam, sometimes even the smartest people get caught up in the web of someone like Bernie Madoff.

My somewhat muddled point is that all of us sometimes fall into the category where we follow someone on Twitter or buy someone’s book because everyone else thinks it’s a good idea. In trying to formulate your own brand or messaging though, it’s foolish to try to please everyone, because we all have different tolerance levels built in not only for spam or overt marketing messages, but also the subtleties that are tolerable to some and unacceptable to others. Annoying a majority of your target audience will likely destroy any of your credibility or future potential with any one group.

For freelancers who are trying to build a brand and effectively market themselves, what are the top three pieces of advice that you would offer?

• Know yourself. Know your strengths, your weaknesses, and your ability to deliver on your promises.  Don’t try to be something or someone you aren’t but rather highlight and enhance your skills and target the prospective clients who can appreciate these things and need them to grow their own business.

• If something works keep it. Don’t change an element of your brand because it seems outdated in some way or others can’t grasp why it works for you. By the same token, if it’s stopped working it’s time to drop it and regroup.

• Constantly evaluate and reevaluate your brand and realize that you don’t necessarily own it once it’s out there. Contrary to popular belief brands need to breathe, grow and evolve to retain maximum success.  Conversely, if you’ve reached that level of success people are going to get angry with you if you mess with what they now think belongs to them—New Coke anyone?

What are some effective strategies that have worked for you as far as marketing yourself, your business, your books, and services? What are some things that you’ve tried that you would not recommend to others?

For better or worse I’m fearless. Some might call it stupid. I relish challenges and will dive head first into a potential opportunity that will have others quaking in fear. I have many diverse skills and my experience has allowed me to frequently bring these together professionally. When my first book, Hello Gorgeous! Beauty Products in America, came out, I sought out as a partner not a small boutique but one of NYC’s preeminent department stores, Henri Bendel. I worked with them to create a weeklong retro in-store experience, when the most they’d ever done for an author was a cocktail party. When Career and Corporate Cool™ launched, I thought I’d shoot even higher and partnered with Nokia for the launch.

What I’ve come to realize over the years is that there’s a lot that I do better than people who are traditionally accepted in any one category industry or field. Instead of fretting that I’m not qualified to do something, I figure out what’s lacking in my proposed partner’s brand and figure out a way to fill that void. I got Dansko as a client after a cold call (well, and a whole lot of pitching and creativity!). I loved their brand, but realized that while they were popular with some, they were completely missing a segment of the female shoe-buying population. I created what was supposed to be a one-time promotion that actually went on for several years and was their most successful promo in the history of the brand. I also tend not to dwell on the past, so I feel great about a partnership or promotion and then move onto the next. My years as a celebrity makeup artist taught me not to be impressed with flash. If you can do something better than someone else can, there’s no reason to be modest about your abilities and no reason not to try to achieve your goal. What’s the worst that can happen?

I’m also very Brady Bunch about learning a valuable lesson and learning from all of my mistakes, not in a paying lip service to a concept sort of a way, but in actually breaking down every step of something went wrong in an attempt to understand what happened and how it can be avoided in the future and more than that—how to incorporate these changes into my own best practices. See? That was quite possibly the most egregious run-on sentence in the history of run-on sentences. I’ll not make that mistake moving forward.

Every single project I work on—either my own or that of a client’s—has to have an element of giving back, and that’s a real challenge. Last year I started a separate PR company to deal with non-profits that needed help with strategies and getting their message out. I’d have to say that much as I’m passionate about trying to help others there was a point where I became overwhelmed with trying to do good things and have had to scale that back to a degree. I’d advise people to have a balance between causes and commerce. That said, this year I intend to spend more time on something I hope to finally launch in summer 2009 called the JAYA Manifesto (with JAYA standing for Just As You Are and Sanskrit for ‘victory’) that is geared toward young women to help them through the pressures that society places on outward appearances over skills and smarts. I have some incredibly strong, successful women working with me on this and can’t wait to get the word out!

In this current economic climate, many companies—including those in the media and publishing industries—are having a tough time staying afloat and are having to shift direction and realign their approach to doing business. As freelancers, many of us are having to do the same. Are you finding this to be true in your business, and if so, what are you doing to adjust to the changing business climate?

I tend to thrive under adversity and it seems to bring out my ornery side, so if you tell me that something can’t be done I’ll find a way to do it better than it’s been done in the past. So if the economy is slowing, if people are spending less, I’ll try to find a way to bring even more value to the clients I have and work hard to attract and retain new ones. I’m loyal to a fault and will work with clients through their lean times too in the understanding that we’ll work together when budgets are more generous. That said, I hate how people and businesses are suffering and I truly believe that the constant barrage of bad news makes it worse.  There’s always opportunity for growth and I know that there will be tremendous opportunity, discovery, and growth coming from all of this.

Along the same lines as the previous question, how would you advise people to rebrand their businesses and when is this necessary?

Well it’s not only crucial to make changes when things aren’t working, but also when things are changing or when you actually have the opportunity to make necessary changes. That’s an opening for me to tell you what we’re doing. For a long time it’s been a case of the shoemaker’s child going barefoot in being unable to really work on my company presence to highlight our successes and methods. I’ve had huge successes with my company [GTK] Marketing Group (which stands for Good To Know!), but have also realized that in the 8 years since I’ve launched the company, the steady growth and recognition have meant that the brand is also growing and evolving at a dizzying pace. For that reason later this month, we’ll be completely relaunching as Octagon Media Group [OMG] which will include Octagon Street and 8Sparks™ —our proprietary method of marketing. I almost feel guilty being this excited about what’s next for our company, and all of it grows out of our 8 years in the marketing business, the 8 different ways we market brands, the 8 things that people notice before they really stop to take notice of your brand and become loyal to you, and what you do and of course the 8Sparks™ way of doing things and more.

In economic tough times, many people have a tendency to cut back on marketing and advertising. What do you have to say about that? Should people be pouring more money into marketing their businesses right now?

Tough call unless I know their finances and projections. That said, we’ve been fortunate in down economies because companies realize that they may have been spending obscene amounts of money on advertising or with large bureaucratic marketing shops without getting the creativity or quality that comes from working with a boutique agency with global reach like ours. To be honest, I think the worst thing that a company can do is to retreat into its own shell. So many businesses are downsizing or folding, which means that on a basic level there is more room for those left standing. Why would you hide when now more than ever people need to know about you and your services?

Any other advice for full- and part-time freelancers?

Give yourself a role model and try to incorporate their best practices into your own. I’d never advocate copying them, but rather studying what does or doesn’t work and trying to improve your deliverables to make yourself more on their level. I used to joke that I’d like to be like Martha Stewart, only without the indictment and jail time. These days, I feel like I’m more of an iconoclast than ever and tend to try to emulate only bits and pieces of my hero’s brands.

Feel free to write to Rachel at heyrachel@octagonmg.com, or find her on Twitter at @rachelcw.