Once considered to be a hub for artists only, Behance is increasingly becoming popular as a viable medium to promote business activities in the online space. We recently included Behance in our overall social media marketing strategies, and we suggest you do the same too. The benefits over the long-run can be enormous.
The importance of having a strong online social presence can hardly be overemphasized, for any business. Till even a couple of years back, Facebook and Twitter were the only two channels that most professional companies targeted to gain a decent level of exposure on the web. Pinterest and Tumblr, for sharing images and infographics respectively, came into prominence soon after. At present, the buzzword in the world of business is about Behance – a social platform launched in 2006, and acquired by Adobe six years later. While this channel was initially meant for artists and creative experts to showcase their work, you can use Behance for business promotions effectively too. Here’s how you go about it:
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Get an Adobe ID – Since Behance is currently owned by Adobe, you’ll need to have an Adobe ID to sign up for an account. The process is simple enough – all that you need to specify is your email (which doubles up as your username) and a secure password. Fill up the ‘My Profile’ section carefully – and make sure that you have mentioned your area of expertise. For instance, if you are a UI/UX developer or a graphic designer, write that in the designated box. Link up your other social media accounts with Behance too.
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Start posting – And make sure that you are posting only the finest of your works. As is the case on Facebook, it’s all about generating virality on each of your posts – and unless your posts appeal to viewers, they would not ‘appreciate’ the same (more on that later). Apart from completed projects, you can also add the ones that you are working on at present (work-in-progress, or WIP). People love to get an insiders’ view of the products/creations of companies!
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Follow others’ work – Unless you have an extended network on Behance, you can pretty much forget about making it to the first page of the site (which is important, for grabbing the eyeballs of potential clients). Start ‘following’ the works of people/corporate houses which are in the same line of business as yours. When an account for our mobile apps company was opened on Behance three months back, we spent quite some time looking for other app developers and designers – whose work we could follow. There are two benefits of getting in touch with others on this site. When you follow someone, chances are high that (s)he/it will reciprocate the action. Also, you can get valuable information, ideas and pointers from what others are posting.
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Keep an eye out for curated galleries – Becoming popular on Behance is not an overnight task – but you can definitely speed up the process by doing this. Search for the dedicated curated accounts that many leading business houses as well as academic/non-profit organizations maintain, and find out how you can get your work ‘featured’ on them. Ideally, include images, videos and wireframes in your project. A well-organized ‘work’ has greater chance of getting accepted at a curated gallery, than a haphazardly presented one.
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Customize your profile interface – You wish to stand out from the thousands of other people who use Behance for business, right? Give your profile a personalized touch, by changing up the display of your project covers, panels and profile headers. Both the color as well as the overall layout of your account can be changed. Choose a display option that would be user-friendly (pay attention to navigation), and would suit the general theme of your business. Unless you are an artist, don’t go for a splash of bright colors!
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Upload images and videos of optimal quality – This is vital. Many software developers and mobile app development experts make the mistake of not cropping their work-related images properly, and/or not checking the resolution and playback of videos, before uploading them. This, in turn, not only reduces the chances of your work getting liked by others – but also creates a negative impression about your company in general. It’s important to add a creative touch to each of your work. It should never appear that you have a fixed template, and are simply altering the details in the various projects. An optimal blend of quality and variety – that’s what matters on Behance.
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Keep track of the insights – Behance offers two key insight figures on every project you add – the number of ‘views’ and the count of ‘appreciations’. The latter is, in essence, similar to getting Facebook ‘likes’. Once your business is on this platform, your aim should be on gradually increasing both of these figures – through guest blogging, networking, press releases, and other such valid activities. Our iPhone app development company already has over 150 ‘appreciations’ in all – and before you consider that as impressive, check this: there are featured projects of others which have almost 50000 ‘views’, with proportionate ‘appreciation’ counts. If you strategize properly, the potential for generating a positive buzz about your business is indeed huge. For projects that are doing better than others, consider doing a re-post on them, including more details.
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Use Behance on the move – You don’t need to always be in front of a computer, to access your Behance account. There are two official mobile applications, which can help you monitor your uploaded projects on a real-time basis, simply by tapping on your smartphone. In case you need to display a presentation of your projects, make use of the Creative Portfolio app. The more frequently used Behance Mobile App would be instrumental for letting you get notifications (about followers as well as appreciations/comments), and other activities within your community on the platform. Download both the apps on your iPhone/iPad, and use them as and when required.
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Give your account a little extra push – You need to remember that on Behance, you are jostling with more than 2 million other account-holders, to get proper visibility for your projects. When we started out on the website, we shared our Behance account details on Facebook (both on our company page, as well as the personal pages of our in-house mobile app developers). You should follow our suit, and can ask reliable friends and professional peers to ‘appreciate’ your work as well. Getting a generous amount of ‘appreciations’ within a relatively short time-span would increase chances of more organic views coming in later on. Link up your Behance account with Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Flickr, Dribble, and other social media profiles too. You can also upload the same images on Instagram, and link them back to your Behance page.
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Start earning money from your Behance presence – That’s right – Behance is not only about generating awareness about your work on the World Wide Web. Once your account starts generating a steady flow of views, appreciations and comments – you can start getting fruitful sales leads through it too. Behance has a custom ‘Work For Sale’ page, where you can upload your best projects, in a free e-commerce setup. Viewers would have the option of directly linking through and purchasing your offerings, and your revenue figures will start spiralling up. Don’t be in a tearing hurry to earn money from Behance though, a new account with hardly a couple of projects won’t generate much attention.
If you work in collaboration with any other person/partner company for a project, do not forget to give the necessary credits in your Behance profile. Review your portfolio at regular intervals, and, implement viewers’ feedback/recommendations (whenever relevant and necessary). You can even launch an email marketing campaign to give some early exposure to your new Behance account. Matias Corea and Scott Belsky’s social platform might still have a long way to catch up with FB and Twitter as a medium of social media marketing – but it is certainly catching up fast!
Ready to promote your business on Behance yet?
Hussain Fakhruddin
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