http://willsherwood.com/website-design-in-santa-clarita-ca/15-ways-you-can-use-social-media-to-boost-business/
Social media can be a great way to connect with new people,
including potential clients. Having a presence on one of the highly
trafficked social-media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn can also
help your own website rank better in search results and help you get
found by prospects.
But here’s the problem: You’re not supposed to “sell” on social media. It’s supposed to be mostly a place to hang out and socialize.
As a result, it takes a little finesse to use social media for
prospecting. Messages like “Got any design work for me?” tend to get you
unfollowed, disconnected and/or blocked, depending on the platform.
Also, each social-media platform has its own flavor and etiquette.
It’s hard to make time to figure them all out and use your time on them
productively…without becoming distracted and ending up playing Mafia
Wars or forwarding funny YouTube video links. But if you focus on
specific marketing and network-building activities, social media can be
well worth your time investment.
If you think it’s all a waste of time, let me report that I’ve gotten
several high-caliber clients off LinkedIn and Twitter that booked tens
of thousands of dollars of work with me in the past couple of years.
Full disclosure: The collection of tips below represent author Carol
Tice’s personal take on what she’s seeing out there that’s really
working for business people in social media.
Besides having social buttons on your own blog and hoping to heck
someone retweets your stuff and a prospect sees it, how can social media
help you find clients?
If you’ve only got a sec, the short version is: Connect with and then help others, and they will help you.
Want more? Here are 15 specific social-media marketing techniques you can use:
Blogging
1. Guest post on big blogs. This is the mother of
all social-media promotion strategies. You want to appear on the most
prominent, highly trafficked blogs you can.This puts you in front of
millions of viewers and can get you exposure across many social-media
platforms…which greatly ups your odds that a prospect might notice you.
If you follow the guidelines, you’d be surprised at the popular blogs you could guest for, even if your own blog is brand new.
If you follow the guidelines, you’d be surprised at the popular blogs
you could guest for, even if your own blog is brand new. Any site that
posts its guidelines is wide open.
Also, just the fact that you’ve got it together to write for a big
blog — even if it was a free guest post — impresses many prospects. I
know quite a few writers who get all their clients from their guest-post
exposure, and for a while I got a steady stream of small-business
clients from one major blog I contributed to regularly.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is like no other social-media channel in that it is focused on business, rather than chatting about what happened on
The Walking Dead
this week or whatever. You can do more proactive marketing of your
business here, without pissing people off, than on any other platform.
If you only get into one form of social media, make it this one. My LinkedIn tips:
2. Set it up to get found. Many quality companies
use LinkedIn like a phone book, meaning they do searches within LinkedIn
for services they need. That’s why Job One on here is to completely
fill out your bio and stuff it with keywords.
For instance, where most people’s top bio line has one or two identifying words,
my LinkedIn profile
says, “Freelance writer, copywriter, journalist, blogger, and writing
mentor” — all key search terms prospects can now use to find me on LI.
You can also up your search juice on here by listing your
skills and getting
recommendations from your clients.
3. Status updates. Another thrill of LinkedIn is nobody expects you to spend hours a week on here. If you come on once a week and
update your status and maybe comment in a couple groups (more on that later), you’re good.
One way I use my status to remind people I’m a freelance writer —
without overtly begging for work — is to post about needs I have for
sources. “Looking for a company that recently got business interruption
insurance to interview for an upcoming article,” was one recent update,
for instance.
You can also post about collaboration partners you’re looking for, or
about finishing a recent project, or ask for help connecting with a
prospect you’d like to meet. People love to help out with that last one.
4. Who’s Viewed My Profile. A cool feature of LinkedIn is that one sidebar widget shows
who has been looking at your profile.
If you’re on the free level some of this information is hidden, but not
all. I’ve used Who’s Viewed My Profile to identify prospects I then
reached out to on LinkedIn’s internal email system known as InMail, with
a quick message like this:
Subject line: Were you looking for a writer?
Hi — I saw you were checking out my profile. If you’re looking for a
writer, I have experience in [your industry]. Happy to send you some
samples or hear more about your needs.
Let me know if I can help!
[Signature]
By the way, that ‘experience’ might be that you once worked in a bank
and it’s a financial-services company. You’ll be surprised how little
knowledge will set you apart and make you seem like an expert to a
client.
Besides InMailing people who’ve been viewing your profile, you can take InMail further:
5. Direct prospecting via InMail. If you pay for
premium membership, you can send all the InMails you want monthly, even
to people you aren’t connected to and who haven’t viewed your profile.
This allows you to simply research companies you wish to work with, find
likely decision-makers, and pitch them right inside LinkedIn.
LinkedIn reports InMail gets a
30 percent response rate —
which in the world of direct mail is ah-mazing. There’s a novelty factor
with this form of communication right now, so take advantage of it.
(Even at the free level, you can send three InMails a month.)
6. Check the full-time job ads. LinkedIn’s job ads
are a gold mine, because the companies have to pay to place them on the
platform. That immediately qualifies this as a quality prospect group.
It often takes companies many months to replace a full-time designer,
writer, or photographer. Meanwhile, they need to freelance out the work
left by the departing creative person. They may well also have ongoing
freelance needs — and if they like you, they’ll keep using you after
that staff hire is made.
7. Job leads within groups. LinkedIn has scads of
interest groups that you can join. Some groups have job boards, and
sometimes referrals will also come up in the course of a discussion.
Some groups such as
Writeful Share for freelance writers are entirely dedicated to sharing job leads.
Twitter
I know what you’re thinking: “It’s only 140 characters! How can I possibly pitch a prospect on here?”
While it’s hard to make an elaborate pitch on Twitter, you can
discover and get to know editors and marketing managers on here through
keyword searches, following relevant industry
hashtags, and by starting to build relationships. (If you’re looking for editors or journalists you might know who could refer you, try
MuckRack.) If something develops, you can always take it further on email or the phone later to land the actual gig.
Here’s how I’ve used
Twitter to connect with editors:
8. Find and follow prospects. Once you’ve found a
possible client, follow them. Retweet and respond to their stuff (but
not contantly or in a stalker-ish way).
Go comment on their blog, if they have one. This is step one in preparing to ask them a work-related question.
9. Ask easy questions. Once you think they may have a
dim sense who you are, ask a question that is easy for them to answer,
such as “Are you the right editor to pitch an X topic story for X
magazine?” or “Are you the marketing manager who works with freelancers
at X company?”
Twitter has a freewheeling, open-minded culture where people from all strata of success mix and mingle easily.
Twitter has a freewheeling, open-minded culture where people from all
strata of success mix and mingle easily. You might get a response on
here where a formal query letter or emailed letter of introduction might
be ignored.
10. Find collaborators. Even better than trolling
for prospects, Twitter is a great place to find partners for projects.
Follow others in related niches and you might find a graphic designer
for your novel, or a writer for your photographer’s website. Agree to
recommend and refer each other clients, and you’ve just grown your
marketing team.
Facebook
Facebook is notoriously social and tough to do business on if you’re
not a major corporation with a big ad budget…but there are a couple of
useful ways to find clients through this platform:
11. Do prospect research. If you have a particular
type of business you frequently target as a client, you can use Facebook
to search for businesses of that type. Check out their Facebook
presence and see if it’s looking pro. From there, take a look at their
website. Spotting substandard online marketing gives you an easy angle
for pitching companies that they need your services.
12. Have your own business page. Most freelancers
don’t have a Facebook business page — which means you can stand out by
being the only freelancer in town that has one. (For extra marketing
boost, offer some authority-building free product full of links to your
website to visitors who ‘like’ your page.)
For instance, I did a quick search for “Freelance graphic designer”
on Facebook recently, and discovered the most popular site — the top
result — has only 3,500 fans. Four of the top sites are based in Third
World countries.
Put up a page in this niche and it’s going to be pretty easy to start
ranking well and getting found on searches inside Facebook. And if
you’re a freelancer who’d like to manage social media or create Facebook
pages for clients, creating your own page is mandatory.
YouTube
YouTube is a great place to put up a visual portfolio or some short how-to videos that might help your prospects.
13. Build authority with videos. This one’s tough
for writers, but if you’re a visual artist of any kind, YouTube is a
great place to put up a visual portfolio or some short how-to videos
that might help your prospects. Offer a few business writing or
newsletter design tips, with an offer of help if they need it.
Remember, this is the third most-popular site on the Internet. It can pay to have a presence here.
Google+
14. Go friend-surfing. Giving full credit, I learned this technique for
identifying prospects on Google+ from Chris Brogan. As you start adding people to your circles, you should then go check out who is in
their circles.
If you find interesting prospects, start commenting on and sharing
their stuff. Then if they check you out, they’ll see you have a friend
in common and you’ll seem like less of a stalker. You can also identify
people by topics of interest through the site
Find People on Plus.
Your local social-media platform
15. Market to local prospects. All the action isn’t
on the giant, brand-name social media platforms. In many cities and
towns, there are exclusively local social-media platforms that are the
go-to grapevine for what’s happening — and for where to shop for
products and services. Since most new freelancers start with local
clients, this can be a great place to get started in social media.
Maybe it’s a Yahoo! or BigTent group, or even a simple email
listserv. But whatever form it takes, local chat boards are worth
checking out.
On the local community chat board I belong to in my small town, it is
forbidden to say anything negative about a local company on the board.
No one can trash you! It’s a dream environment for freelance marketing,
and there’s even a channel expressly for promoting your business — and
one for patrons to rave about you.
I see freelancers of all stripes on my local list make special
offers, donate their services to charities, and generally put their name
around town. Winning strategies here also include offering a referral
bonus. Leverage your local friends and neighbors who like you
personally. They’ll probably be happy to help you out.
It takes a little sleuthing to discover your local social-media hub,
but it can be well worth the time. Hint: Call your local Chamber of
Commerce or ask other local solopreneurs.
This article is reproduced here thanks to Carol Tice of Freelance Switch. It is presented here for your education, inspiration and enjoyment by:
