Today we are launching a brand new weekly campaign to support creative freelancers, graduates or small businesses throughout the UK.

Exclusively on Twitter, the #CreativeBoomer weekly contest gives you the chance to nominate yourself or a friend to win extra publicity and support from Creative Boom.

Each Monday, we will put a call out, asking for your nominations by simply completing the following tweet: “I’m a #CreativeBoomer because…” and don’t forget to CC @Creative_Boom and follow our Twitter account for updates.

Then every Wednesday morning, we will announce a winner who will receive free publicity and support for the rest of that week. 

The winner will get:

• Tweets all week to our 30,000 followers, helping to promote them
• A mention in The Weekly Update email which gets sent out to 3,000 subscribers
• Publicity on our Facebook Page where we have over 10,000 ‘likes’
• Publicity on our Tumblr blog which also gets tweeted to 30,000 people
• 15 minute Skype call with our editor Katy Cowan (optional) to gain some free advice on marketing.

It’s as simple as that. So to get started, simply fill out a tweet “I’m a #CreativeBoomer because…” or “I nominate XXX as a #CreativeBoomer because…” and we’ll pick out the very best every Wednesday morning. 

Please note, the more you spread the #CreativeBoomer campaign - the more people we can help each week. Good luck!

It’s been just over a week since we launched the latest version of Creative Boom and we’ve been overwhelmed by the response. Running for nearly three years, we’ve always aimed to support, celebrate and inspire the creative industries and we hope this new offering is doing that even more.

So what does the new, completely bespoke Creative Boom offer? Well, you can now sign up and become a member, add and edit your own ‘free’ directory listing. And listers take note! The more you update your profile, the more you’ll be seen. The most recent updated free directory listings appear at the top of their category page!

If you want extra exposure and more features, you can pay just £50 for a ‘featured’ 12-month directory listing. This means you’ll appear on the home page of Creative Boom as well as the Directory main section. You’ll also be able to add up to 20 images for your listing and list yourself under three creative fields (Free listings only get one image and one creative field).

Elsewhere, you can add and pay for your own Jobs posts. Sticking to our original ethos, we’re keeping things affordable here at Creative Boom. We’ve checked out the competition and decided to charge way below everyone else. It’s just £50 to advertise a Job with us and that’s for an entire month. Your Job will also get tweeted to our 30,000 Twitter followers and you’ll get exposure across our site including the home page.

Overall, you’ll notice our site has changed in terms of its structure. We have split things up to make things as easy to navigate as possible. All editorial content is now within a new ‘Magazine’ section. All Directory listings are now within a new ‘Directory’ section. And all Jobs are within our new ‘Jobs’ section.

But it doesn’t stop there. We will continue to roll out new features (and sections) in the coming weeks to offer even more value. We’ve got plenty more tricks up our sleeves and will keep working hard to support you.

In the meantime, please keep the news, features and inspiration articles coming. To submit news, please email news@creativeboom.co.uk. If you’d like to take part in a feature - either an interview, review or one of our popular Readers’ Studies, email features@creativeboom.co.uk. To simply show off your work in our new Inspiration section, email a short bio about yourself plus four Jpegs (at least 700 pixels wide) to inspiration@creativeboom.co.uk.

Also - please take note of our new Footer! We’ve hooked up our Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo and Facebook accounts… The two that are hugely relevant to you are our Flickr Pool and our Vimeo Group. Join us on both and start adding things. The videos that appear via Vimeo are the ones I personally ‘Like’, so join us on Vimeo and submit your videos for consideration.

If you’ve got any questions, feedback or you’d like to say hello - please email katy@creativeboom.co.uk. We couldn’t do this without you, so thanks for all your support.

Katy

As some of you know, I’m Katy Cowan and I’m the person who started Creative Boom back in July 2009. It’s something I’ve always managed in my spare time, while hubby Tom does all the coding on the actual site.

Our ‘little side project’ has grown and grown over the past few years - something we just didn’t expect. Despite its increasing demands on our spare time, we’ve always been on a mission to provide free support to the creative industries and we hope that’s what we’ve done and will continue to do.

Of course, Creative Boom is now bigger than just the two of us. We’ve got nearly 1,500 people listed in our directory. We’ve got nearly 27,000 followers on Twitter and 9,000 ‘likes’ on Facebook. And we’re now opening up the floor to other contributors and writers on the site. 

If you’re interested - then read these Submission Guidelines on how to start writing for Creative Boom. If your writing is really good, it’ll make it onto The Guardian website and its Culture Professionals Network.

And because Creative Boom isn’t just about me anymore - I’m taking a more professional stance on Twitter. No more hearing me yap on about how I’m doing in Skyrim. No more tweets about pizza or what I’m eating for lunch. Creative Boom on Twitter is purely going to be about sharing our news, features, inspirations, jobs, opinions and everything that’s on there. I’ll still be the person updating the account. I’ll still be about for a laugh. It’s just not about me anymore.

If you want to follow Creative Boom on Twitter - we’re on @Creative_Boom. Tweets will still be from me and I’ll always be about for a chat.

Thanks guys

Katy

Can you believe  it’s been exactly 12 months since the last time Tom and I worked on Creative Boom!? Believe me, we can’t either!

In fact, this time last year, we launched a brand new web design and lots of new features to keep on supporting the creative industries.

Since then, it’s been an amazing year as we became part of The Guardian Culture Professionals Network and got recognised by lots of other huge brands and names, such as Vimeo, the BBC and (my personal favourite) Paul Van Dyk.

And for the past four months, we’ve been working hard behind the scenes on a brand new design and website structure - something that you’ll hopefully find really helpful when it’s finally launched in the next few weeks.

As you know, Creative Boom is something Tom and I run in our spare time. We’ve got our own business Boomerang to contend with and that has to take priority over anything else as we’ve got to pay the bills! So this means we work on Creative Boom during early mornings, late evenings and weekends. We take little opportunities whenever we can afford the time and money to keep improving the site.

This latest version will be our seventh (I think) re-design and launch since we started on 24th July 2009. It will also have lots of new features - ones that we hope will address all of your needs based on your helpful tweets, emails and general feedback.

So keep your eyes peeled - big announcements are coming very soon! Can’t wait!

Katy

I’m still trying to get over today’s big announcement that Creative Boom has become part of a new professional network on The Guardian. I mean, for one - I’ve always loved The Guardian and two, I’d never have dreamed that one day my name would appear on their website.

The national newspaper has included an article I wrote on How to be a Happy Freelancer. Does it really get better than this? Could 2011 get any better for me and Tom? It’s something we’ll certainly be celebrating this weekend.

But we’re working hard on a new and improved Creative Boom, launching in the coming weeks. It could be next week, it could be the week after. We’re just trying to get something launched before Christmas. I’ll definitely keep you posted, so watch this space.

I suppose I’ll leave you with this quote someone sent me today…

“Hard work is the key to success, so work diligently on any project you undertake. If you truly want to be successful, be prepared to give up your leisure time and work past 5 PM and on weekends. Also, have faith in yourself. If you come up with a new idea that you believe in, don’t allow other people to discourage you from pursuing it.”

Charles Lazarus