Promoting Yourself as a Professional Poker Player

If you like my blog please click the BlogTopList vote button to the right. This will give my blog a better ranking & help increase traffic to my blog. Thanks.

To signup to play at Lock Poker:
1. Clear cookies & internet history
2. Either click the banner above or 1 of the following links:

http://refer.lockpoker.com/jaredhubbard

http://download.lockpoker.com/jaredhubbard

After signing up please make sure jhub3000@hotmail.com is listed as a safe sender in your email. You can also email me with any questions. Before you begin playing on Lock, or even if you already do play on there, you will probably want to read this post about optimizing the software: http://jhubpoker.blogspot.com/2011/06/making-most-out-of-lock-pokers-software.html

For daily updates & other ramblings please follow me on twitter http://twitter.com/#!/jhubpoker


Please like my facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jared-Hubbard-Poker/221586851240049

I was planning on posting the interview with Lock Elite Pro Stevie Devlin today for my new weekly interview series but I don't have it yet so I'll post this again.  I typed this up yesterday.

When I hear the term best poker player I think of who plays the best poker at the tables.  When I hear the term best professional poker player I think of a lot more.  Being the best professional poker player is about more than just playing well at the tables.  As the best poker pro, you have to have a strong mental game and not tilt.  You have to have good bankroll management on and off the tables.  That includes shying away from bad habits like playing casino tables tables.  To me being the best pro also means having proper life balance for a long, succesful career.  For most this would mean putting in 35-40 hours a week of poker and taking weeks off.  For others like Phil Ivey, putting in 60 hour weeks regularely hasn't seemed to slow him down, but we need to realize he's an exception to the rule.  I also think that being a good professional poker player means promoting yourself.  I think you have to look at poker as a business, and realize that if you promote yourself well as a pro, you can gets plenty of lucrative sponsorship opportunities.

I'd like to talk about that last point: how you can promote yourself as a professional poker player.  I think this is a big leak among most poker pros.  There's a lot of pros out there who only focus on studying and playing poker, while completely ignoring the business side of poker.  They end up leaving a lot of money on the table because of this.  I'm going to talk about some different ways you can promote yourself as a pro.  All of these can be used in order to get yourself some sort of sponsorship deal.  They can also be used once you get a sponsorhip deal to maximize your value of that sponsorship, the most likely scenario being bringing new players to a site you signed a pro deal with.

It took me forever to give into this, but I think it's very important that every poker player who wants to promote themself has a twitter account and uses it regularely.  Like it or not but twitter is the big thing in social media right now.  You are likely to reach a lot more people using twitter than you will any other type of social media over time as long as you can develop a following.  First off, you should definitely have a profile picture.  If you don't you just look like somebody that never uses twitter.  You should have as much info about yourself as twitter will allow in your profile.  This is also an excellent place to display links to websites, blogs, training videos, etc...  If you're a twitter n00b a good thing to do is use hash tags on your tweets to categorize them.  This way if people are searching for a certain hash tag, they will see your tweet.  You can't have spaces in your hash tags.  The most obvious example for poker players would be ending your tweet with #poker.  Another good thing to do on twitter is follow fridays.  On Friday you make a tweet beginning with #FF & recommend other people to follow on twitter.  The idea is that other people will return the favor, which will get you more followers.  It's definitely something I recommend you do each Friday, even if it looks dumb.  Unless I'm replying to someone, I also like to make sure that my tweet is short enough so that people can retweet it without editing it.  For example, when somebody retweets me the tweet will start with RT @ jhubpoker.  That's 15 characters I need to keep free when you include the space after jhubpoker.  It's even better if your tweets leave more room than that so retweeters can include their own words as well.  However, 140 characters isn't a lot to work with as it is so this isn't always possible.  Regardless, getting retweeted is a great way to get your tweets to more followers and if a tweet doesn't leave room for it to be retweeted you might want to consider breaking it up into 2 tweets if that makes sense.  If they're interested they'll also start following you.  It's also good to retweet others for a couple reasons.  For one, they often have interesting tweets that your followers would like.  Second off, when you retweet others you're also kind of hoping people will return the favor and retweet you at sometime.  It can also be a good idea to create a custom twitter background using a site such as www.twitbacks.com.  Ideally, this background would contain more photos and info about yourself.  I highly recommending syncing twitter with facebook.  If you do this, every time you tweet it will also go to the homepage of all of your friends on facebook.  This way you reach more people.  Using twitpic can also be good to attract more attention, although I have to admit I never do this.

Now let's talk about what to tweet about.  As a poker player, I think a very good idea is to give daily updates on how many hours you played, how many games/hands, and how much you won or lost.  You can also do weekly, monthly, and yearly updates on top of your daily updates.  While showing how much you have made may look a little douchy, it will help promote yourself as a player.  It will also be interesting for your followers to see what kind of ups and downs you go through.  This is why I think it's important to not only tweet daily updates when you win, but also when you lose.  If you're an MTT player you can tweet key updates during MTTs.  Another great way to use twitter is to announce new blog posts, videos, interviews, etc...  You can also use tweets as a way to ask people for suggestions for your blog or website.  You could even create a poll using www.twtpoll.com.  I recommend that you interact with your followers.  Reply to their tweets & respond when they mention you.  Your followers are more likely to stay happy and continue following you.  While I like to keep my tweets poker focused, I think it's also important to have non poker related tweets.  Tweet about things that are happening in sports or a funny thing that just happened in your life.  Funny always works.  Make sure your tweets don't all look like adverising.  It's important to advertise stuff as well, but all of your tweets look like spam you are unlikely to get a good following.

You should try to tweet mostly when your followers are online.  This is something I'm working on.  If you tweet when your followers are actually online they're a lot more likely to see your tweets.  Don't overdue it though.  If you have 10 tweets ready to go don't wait until the primetime and tweet them all in a row.  That can get annoying.  Spread them out some, tweeting more of them around the optimal times.

The next thing you should do is start a blog.  World press or blogspot would be a good place to post your blog.  Make sure to not only post pictures in your permanent blog background, but also post pictures in your blog entries.  Admittedly, I need to get better at this.  It would probably help if my wife or I actually took pictures first.  When my buddy voss1313 had a blog he made sure he posted at least one picture each entry.  I think this is a good idea.  You should also post a twitter feed on your blog, which will display your last 4 tweets with your twitter profile picture and a link to your twitter page.  Also make sure that any facebook fan page, training site, or any other site you want to promote has permanent links to the side.  You should also have a section for links to any media you have done, such as interviews and articles.  Once you have been blogging for a while you can have a section with links to your most popular blog posts you have done.  I also think it's a good idea to have a links section to other people's blogs or websites.  You can then talk to other players and ask if they want to do a link exchange.  This way you can bring in more readers with free advertising.  This is something I will be doing on my personal website when the html version is released.  In regards to content, much of what I suggested for tweets works here as well.  However, you have a lot more space to work with for blog entries, so you have a lot more options and don't need to blog as much as you tweet.  Personally, I like to do a monthly update.  I'll talk about how my poker month went, and sometimes discuss things I did outside of poker.  Sometimes I'll also discuss other recent happenings in the world, usually in sports.  As noted above, I think it's good to post pictures in your entries.  I also think it's good to post graphs from somewhere like sharkscope or holdemmanager, which is something I'm starting to do.  I usually like to post anytime any really important poker news comes out.  I'll post links to articles about the news and make some comments about the news of my own.  This was especially true with Black Friday Events.  You could even do a weekly poker news feature where you review the biggest poker stories of the week.  This is something I have considered and might do in the future.  I think it's definitely good to have at least one weekly feature to keep readers interested.  Other ideas include a weekly podcast, player interviews, weekly strategy post, video blogs, and member competitions rewarding the winner merchandise with your branding on it or a small % of your action in an MTT.  If you are a SNG player I think you should definitely post a blog icon next to your name when people search you or your name is on leaderboards.  This is a great way to bring in new followers.  When at the sharkscope homepage, simply click options & click on blog icons/tools.  You can set everything up there.  An example of a blog that generally has good content is http://www.daleroxxu.co.uk/.  His blog is filled with funny posts like http://www.daleroxxu.co.uk/2009/11/10-questions-not-to-ask-me-about-poker.html and http://www.daleroxxu.co.uk/2010/08/poker-avatar-tells-5-easy-ways-to-spot.html and he also does video blogs (http://www.daleroxxu.co.uk/2010/09/video-fanboys-and-girls-going-crazy.html) and player interviews (http://www.daleroxxu.co.uk/2009/09/interview-with-jared-jhub3000-hubbard.html).  He also does a good job of using the side panels for good links.  Most people who have a had a blog get lazy with it at some point.  They start posting less, stop posting interesting content, and may even top blogging all together.  I've done all of these myself.  However, I think it's important to stick with it, especially as other social media has become a popular place where you can promote your blog.

Another free thing you do is setup a facebook fan page.  As far as content, most of the stuff said above applies.  You can sync your tweets with the page as well, and use the page to announce new blog entries and other projects.

Making training videos and writing poker books are strategy articles for magazines and websites is a great way to promote yourself.  However, it all depends what your stance is on training other players.  As you all probably know, I'm not really for it, so that's why I'm not willing to take this step as I think there are other viable options for promoting yourself and the hourly rates paid by sites simply aren't worth it.  However, if you don't mind teaching other players these sites usually get a lot of unique visitors each month and can be a great way to expand your following.  The same goes for books and articles.  I think a good time to make training videos is when you are starting to move onto a different game.  That is why I'm considering making 6 man SNG videos.  My main issue right now is I'm already busy as it is with playing, studying, and my Lock pro obligations, as well as all of the social media.

All of the above suggestions are free or relatively low cost.  If you're willing to put some money into promoting yourself it can pay dividends in the long run.  Also, don't forget that you can deduct this stuff on your taxes!

I think it's good to have your own personal website.  This will be a nice organized place that links everything above together and makes it easier for your fans/followers to navigate through everything.  You should also have an about me section that talks about your poker career.  To get an idea, you can visit the flash version of my personal website here: http://www.jaredhubbard.com/.  I'm currently having an html version designed, which is an overall better design, has better blog integration, and has some new sections.  Over time, using search engine optimization and linking everything together will lead to better google searches when people are trying to find out more info about you.  My website was designed by http://www.pokerfacepr.com/.  I would highly recommend them to anyone.  They not only design your website, but also help promote you through their website and twitter, and give you lots of really good ideas.  In fact, many of the ideas in this blog entry I got from PokerFacePR.  If you purchase a package from PokerFacePR please make sure you mention that I recommended you.

Lastly, most players who get pro deals and other marketing opportunities have an agent.  I have never had an agent myself but if you think you're close to getting a deal and could use an extra boost, it's probably not a bad idea.  If you're interested in an agent please visit http://www.pokerfacepr.com/#/agency-partners/4553863385 for more info.

I think a lot of players are afraid of self promotion because you're "tooting your own horn" and some people might think you're a d-bag because of it.  I say let the haters hate.  Do you care more about making extra easy money or what some random internet poker player haters that you will probably never meet think of you?  Think about it.  Often it's just not worth caring what others will think.  Besides, I always say, people don't hate on the Royals and the Timberwolves.  They hate on the Yankees and the Lakers.  Sometimes having haters can be a complement.

Thanks & GL,

Jared

http://www.jaredhubbard.com/

http://twitter.com/jhubpoker

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jared-Hubbard-Poker/221586851240049

http://jhubpoker.blogspot.com/