If you look closely, you will see that today, marketing strategies takes place in social media platforms. And if you are a freelancer, with so many people providing the same service as you, it becomes difficult to compete with everyone. This competition makes it your responsibility to make sure you do your best to reach out the target audience who are in need of your service. For that, you have to keep up with the new trends, make sure to generate quality products and also manage your client demands. When you look into top leading brands and their social media platforms, you will surely notice some unique patterns that help them to reach great heights among all the competitors. In this blog, let me share with you some of those tips to maintain your social media platforms for your freelancing jobs. I will share the best 5 tips, c’mon let’s begin with tip number one!
1. Choosing the Ideal Social Media Platform for Your Clients
If you are a freelancer, one of the issue you face is the temptation to fit and spread across various social media channels, spreading about your service but with over 65 social media platforms, it is quite difficult to be available in each of them. But, even if you try to be present in all the platforms, there would still be a drawback of having poor interactions with the audience and uneven posting. Rather than facing all these obstacles, what you can do is target a specific platform that serves the objectives of your clients. Each platform can be ideal for specific business, for example, if you are having a brand in the fashion industry, you can choose Instagram and Pinterest with so many images but if you are having a B2B company, you would see that LinkedIn would be more preferable.
Key Steps:
- Get to Know the Target Audience of Your Client: Start by researching the audience your client wants to target by getting to know in which online platform do their customers spend their time mostly on.
- Be an expertise in Few Platforms: It would be hard to be an expert in all the platforms, knowing their tips and tricks. Instead, you can choose to hit your target by learning to master the tips and tricks to use specific platforms.
2. A Constant Posting Schedule
You might have heard the proverb, consistency is the key to success. You have to keep on posting so that your audience keeps getting a reminder of your brand. Let’s say, you keep posting amazing contents on your social media post, but you don’t post it in a constant manner, surely the audience won’t be loyal. But, in contrast, if you post continuously without a proper blueprint, it would also backfire. You might be wondering what the solution for this is? A simple solution is that you can use a content calendar. To create content calendars you can use softwares and apps such as Google Sheets, Trello or Asana as well. Making a content calendar allows you to plan and have a stable line of posts. By planning a proper time frame for posting, you get away from issues that come with the rush at the last minute.
Key Steps:
- Using Tools for Scheduling: There are specific tools like Hootsuite and Buffer, that lets you plan and schedule your posts in advance, like weeks before you actually post it.
- Creating Content in Batches: You can make several pieces of content at one time. For example, If your content includes videos or images, you can shoot as many images and videos you want in one day and then schedule to post them on different days.
- Interact with Audience Regularly: A main issue which most social media freelancers don’t fix is that they just post and leave, instead you have to interact with the audience through comments, answering to their questions and so on.
3. Interaction With Audience
Your social media is not a one-way highway, where you just keep going and going. It’s much more like a conversation you have with your audience. Thereby, interacting with them plays a major role in the success of your freelancing. When you interact with them, the audience gets the impression that you are there for them, when they need help and have doubts. This interaction will help you create a loyal bond with your potential customers.
Key Steps:
- Respond As Soon As Possible: When you reply to the audience’s comments, likes and messages instantly or by 24 hours, it creates them assurance that you are active and not just running away after posting.
- Use Stories, Polls and Q&As: Certain platforms such as Instagram and Twitter offer features that increases buyer-seller interactions, which makes it easier for you to maintain a conversation. Some of the features are usage of polls, stories and question & answers.
4. Keep Updating Yourself About Trends
Social Media is basically like ancient humans in my perspective, they keep evolving respective to their needs and environment. Similarly, even these social media platforms evolve, producing new features and trends, which makes it necessary for every freelancer to keep adapting to these new trends to gain success. Additionally, when you know and learn about these new features and trends, it allows you to be one step ahead among competitors.
Key Steps:
- Following Blogs and Influencers from Relevant Industries: You can keep going through leaders who are leading social media, analyzing what they say about the new trends and practices.
- Joining Social Media Communities: Start engaging with communities online who focus mainly on social media marketing. With members who are similar to you in the same field, it will be beneficial as they share personal tips and strategies with you. Some of the leading platforms where such communities exist are LinkedIn, Facebook or Reddit.
- Going to Webinars and Workshops: Some platforms like HubSpot or Hootsuite provide free or budget friendly webinars focusing on the trends, tools and strategies in social media. You can try using them as well to stay updated.
5. Create a Professional Online Profile
As a freelancer, your online appearance is a must, as it reflects your work. Potential customers and clients usually search for your online information to get to know about you before they give you their work. Thus, having a professional and outstanding profile in the online platform is a must.
Key Steps:
- Creating Separate Personal and Professional Accounts: Keep most of your private life in private itself, some touch up of your personality does help the audience to gain trust and reach out to your brand, but its better to have it on a different side. Create a boundary and maintain your professional attire in your profile.
- Optimizing Profiles: You can use a profile photo that looks professional and make sure your contact information is updated. Additionally, your bio should be interactive and describing your skills and services.
- Sharing Portfolio and Testimonials from Clients: When you are creating a website, or Instagram stories or LinkedIn articles, keep highlighting the work you’ve done previously and the reviews you’ve got to develop credibility among the potential clients.
As per today’s digital world, social media freelancing is a a great way to earn money. Whether it is an online or offline business, attaining success needs you to use a proper plan, dedication and a stable growth. If you focus on a platform that is ideal to your freelancing service, as well as following the above mentioned tips like making sure you have a consistent posting schedule, interacting actively with the targeted audience, having a content calendar, and keeping yourself updated about the recent trends and practices, it will surely help you gain a lot of potential clients. So, what do you think? Are you ready to follow the above steps and to get a shooting income?
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. Can you suggest social media platforms to use in freelancing?
The perfect platform depends on what service you provide and your target audience. For example, if you provide visual services or like provide services in the fashion industry, you can use Instagram or Pinterest as it is heavy with images.
2. While posting content on social media platforms, as a freelancer how many times should I post?
To produce a constant and well panned content is crucial for maintaining your presence in social media. You should post often but not too frequently as well, you can use content calendars such as Google Sheets to create a schedule to help you with posting contents. Additional tip would be to make contents in batches, it would help save time.
3. What are some ways to interact with my audience in social media?
You can use features from different platforms, the most common ones are replying to likes, comments, shares and also giving answers to the questions they would ask. It helps build confidence in the audience that you are trustful and active.
4. Is it a must to have a separate professional and private profile?
Your professional profile that is presented online will be the profile, potential clients search for when they want to hire you. So, if you have some of your personality reflected in it, it’s a good way to build trust in them but it will be better to keep a boundary between your private and professional profile.
