Social media marketing for freelancers is a critical issue for freelancers and businesses using social networking sites. This guest article has been written by Robert of Twago.
Twago is Europe’s leading multi language online outsourcing community. Further information on Twago and Robert with links are provided in the Resource Box.
Social media is the buzzword these days and enhances the interactivity of our lives. Yet the benefits for the freelancing world are not so clear at first look.
Sure, social media platforms represent a great way to stay in touch with friends and family, and their potential to help freelancers in project acquirement, project management and business networking is huge, if harnessed and cultivated properly.
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How To Use Social Media To Expand Your Client Base
The first step to utilizing the opportunities that social media marketing for freelancers offer you is to set about reaching important contacts within your field.
If you’ve gone to a conference or event and have got talking to some promising clients or business contacts then try to get connected with them via important business friendly platforms such as LinkedIn.
It may sound simple, but by establishing these online connections you can gain access to a wider network of professionals and potential clients that will prove invaluable to your work.
Moreover, following contacts that you wish to develop a business partnership with, is often the first step in the communication process, as it shows that you are engaging with them in an open, friendly way that is far from pushy.
Social Media Marketing Is About Learning, Sharing and Teaching
No matter what field of freelancing you work in, to land the most interesting and highest volume of projects you need to bring a level of expertise and professionalism to the project that clients will be hard pressed to find anywhere else.
However, acquiring experience and know-how is a constant process, and a successful freelancing career hinges on your ability to remain up-to-date with the latest developments in your field; be it web design, SEO programming or graphic design.
There are many options open to freelancers; for instance you can follow interesting forum discussions within LinkedIn professional groups.
Additionally you can enter the world of blogging to follow other bloggers in your field by learning from their posts and tutorials.
However, if you create your own blog, you can share your experience with the community at large and impress potential customers with your level of expertise.
Once you’ve got a blog you can use it as a great tool to encourage collaborations and contact between yourself and other blogging freelancers through an exchange of guest articles on your blogs. This will expand your profile online leading to more contacts, followers, and clients.
Another approach is to follow leading industry marketers and join their marketing groups, such as Andrea Vahl and Phyllis Khare who were co-authors (along with Amy Porterfield) of Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies.
Andrea and Phyllis have teamed up to start Social Media Marketing School which not only educates you on how to make money from social media marketing consulting, but has an excellent supportive forum from which you are always learning.
This is essential if you are to keep up with the rapidly evolving social media market.
Social Networking And Client Management
Another practical advantage that social media offers freelancers is with the daily tasks of project and client management. Platforms such as twitter offer you the opportunity to develop and enhance the level of communication between you and the client in many useful ways.
Firstly, if you’re a freelancer that deals with an international list of clients, then encouraging your clients to contact you via twitter with queries means that you can operate set business hours during your working day, but are still free to respond to queries sent to you by clients living in different time zones.
Nevertheless, the nature of twitter means that even if you are tweeted during your office hours you can reply to a customer’s query almost instantly.
Lastly, by encouraging your clients to reach you through a variety of means including twitter, this improves communication and will make the transfer of ideas and feedback between you and the client much more fluid.
This is because the use of social media platforms creates the impression of a conversation, and the more open and successful the relationship the better the outcome of the project.
Plus, happy customers are more likely to lead to positive evaluations of you and the power of a positive testimony can never be underestimated when searching for new projects.
So why not use social media platforms to compliment your freelancing, and start to utilise the truly “social” element of the phenomenon to find new clients, work with them effectively and ultimately bring more success to your life.
Resource Box:
Robert from Twago, is a graduate living in Berlin who is passionate about the role that social media can play in enhancing the working lives of freelancers.
Twago is one of the World’s largest international online mediation platform, for customers, freelancers and experts. Twago is Europe’s leading multi language online outsourcing community.
Twago provides access to over 100,000 experts in web design, SEO, graphic design, translation and company services, we are the largest company of our kind in Germany and are heavily active in the Spanish, Italian and international markets.
