To find success in the freelance world these days, freelancers have to be on social media. No buts about it! Having a good career as a freelancer is based on being effective at social marketing. After all, you want to find clients to throw you work, and social media is an efficient way to get in touch with people and start networking.
There are many social media platforms from which to choose. It seems like there’s no shortage of them. Of course, they’re not all created equally. Going on a social media platform like MySpace, for instance, would be disastrous because not many people use that website anymore, so finding leads would be difficult.
Here, then, are the very best social media platforms freelancers can’t live without.
LinkedIn
A lot of reputable sources recommend LinkedIn as the go-to social media platform for freelancers. The reason should be obvious: LinkedIn is used by a lot of people to find the professional, business services that they’re looking for. That includes freelancers, no matter what your niche or industry.
Another reason that LinkedIn is the place to be for social marketing is because its users utilize it exclusively for business, marketing and self-promotion. In other words, you won’t be looked at as excessively pushy or “salesy” when you focus on prospecting and trying to find leads and clients.
If you’re a freelancer and you’re not already on LinkedIn, then start a profile and fill it out, so leads know you’re a freelancer looking to be hired.
You may be asking yourself, “Why Twitter? Doesn’t it have a 140-character limit or something?” Even though that’s true, you’d be surprised at the number of serious business owners, marketers and even editors who use Twitter as a way to connect with and hire freelancers. Freelancers can find marketers and business owners relevant to their niche by doing keyword searches and following specific, industry hashtags.
After you’ve located a possible lead, be sure to retweet their shared content, but not in a noticeably brown-nosing way. From there, freelancers can also find other freelancers with whom they can collaborate on future projects.
The beauty of Twitter is its free-wheeling and informal culture, meaning you may get results with 140 characters or less that you wouldn’t see with a formal letter of introduction or networking push.
When it comes to social media marketing, no list is complete without Facebook, the world’s second-biggest website. Some people still think that Facebook is primarily for people who just want to post immature pictures and updates to their friends, but from a marketing standpoint, it’s really one of the best platforms to advertise services and connect with brand audiences.
Freelancers can also harness this quality of Facebook for their own purposes. For example, you can always research your prospects by checking out the profile pages of companies in industries that you follow. If you spot a sub-par profile page or, from there, a sub-par business website, you can always pitch your services to that particular company to get them to improve their public profiles.
Google Plus
This social marketing site should be a no-brainer because it’s Google’s social network. That means it is connected to Google’s powerful search engine. There are also more than half a billion people using the network, making it one of the biggest platforms around. In other words, there are plenty of prospecting opportunities for motivated freelancers.
Google Plus allows you to also search for prospects. Simply start to add people and businesses to your circles. Once you’ve done so, you’re able to see who’s in their circles, which leads to more opportunities for finding leads and clients.
This social marketing tool’s a bit of a wild card because it’s not your conventional platform. Here, you only use images that you pin on your Pinterest bulletin boards; you don’t use any text or characters. While this may seem weird or even difficult to manage, this website can help certain kinds of freelancers more than others.
For instance, let’s say you’re a freelancer specializing in marketing. By pinning content to your bulletin boards that features vibrant images and extremely useful information to those in your industry, you can succeed at making them click through all the way to your website. As a bonus, Pinterest is a site that’s also experienced rapid growth, making it chock full of prospecting opportunities.
Social Media: A Winner for Freelancers
Freelancers should become more comfortable with using social media. It’s a well-connected and efficient way to find new leads, network and land job opportunities. As we stated above, not every social media platform is created equally, which explains why you can’t expect, for instance, to get the same, good results for finding new leads with YouTube as you can with LinkedIn.
At the end of the day, all that matters is finding a platform that you can use effectively. By learning which specific social platform is appropriate for your industry or niche, you will increase your marketing prowess, too. And every freelancer should always take care to hone his marketing savvy to keep growing his business.
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