Five Freelance Branding Tips You Can Use Right Now
Posted November 25, 2009 in How-To, Marketing 30 Comments »
Can you control what others think of your freelancing business? Do you know how to motivate potential buyers? Have you built customer loyalty?
While these tasks may seem daunting or even impossible, by properly branding your freelance business you can accomplish all of the objectives listed above and more. Good branding effectively communicates what your business is about, motivates buyers, and builds customer loyalty.
In this post, we will introduce you to the concept of branding. We will also identify five quick methods that you can apply right away to improve your brand. Finally, we’ll share some thoughts about branding that you might not have realized before.
What is Branding?
Many freelancers associate branding with having an attractive logo, a catchy slogan, or a popular website. There’s much more to branding, though.
Strictly speaking, branding refers to how others perceive your freelancing business. Branding helps your customers and prospective customers realize how your freelancing business is different from every other business that offers similar products or services.
To find your brand message, ask yourself this question — “what is my business really all about?” Chances are, when you answer this question you will also have a good idea of how to brand your freelancing business.
Now that we understand what branding is, let’s take a look at how a freelancer can build his or her brand.
Five Branding Tips for Freelancers
There is so much information available on how to brand a business that branding their freelancing business can seem like an overwhelming task for many freelancers (so much so, that some freelancers who I know don’t bother with branding at all).
It doesn’t have to be that way, though.
Here are five basic steps to help you start branding your freelancing business today:
- Homework — Do your homework. Ask the question above so that you can focus your efforts on what your business is really about. Developing a mission or vision statement is also helpful.
- Target — Determine who your target market really is and focus your branding efforts primarily towards that group.
- Simple — Keep your branding message simple. The simpler the message that you are trying to convey, the better… Long, complex messages tend to confuse customers or get mistranslated.
- Consistency — Above all, be consistent with the message that you are sending to the public. Sending an inconsistent message will confuse your audience and dilute your brand.
- Presence — In order to brand your freelancing business you first need to have a presence in the marketplace. If you haven’t already done so, establish a website and social media presence.
If this list seems like an awful lot of work, remember that you can tackle these tasks in small pieces over time. Try writing a mission statement one month, determining your target market the next month, building a website the third month, and so on, until all of the branding tasks are complete.
Now that we’ve covered some of the basics of branding, let look at how your behavior impacts your branding. One of the key ways that behavior and branding combine is through social media.
Social Media, Branding, and You
Social media provides an unparalleled opportunity for you to reach your target market with your brand at little or no cost. However, it’s also easy to get carried away with social media and forget that what you do or say there could potentially impact your freelancing brand. It’s important to remember to be careful what you share.
Consider the following scenarios and the possible damaging impact that the freelancer’s behavior could have on that freelancer’s brand:
- Freelancer A tweets that they will be late turning in their project because they put it off until the last minute. Unfortunately, they forgot a) to tell their client that the project would be late and b) that this client follows their tweets.
- Freelancer B posts funny (to them) pictures from their wild high school days on their Facebook account. However, Freelancer B has allowed several clients, including one very conservative one, to friend them on Facebook.
- Freelancer C vents about a difficult client on a publicly accessible message board, giving details about their project as well as sharing proprietary client information in the thread.
Can these social media faux pas affect how a freelancer is perceived (and ultimately damage their brand)?
You bet they can. While in some instances a client is willing to overlook a social media misstep, there are other times when social media carelessness could cost you a client.
The bottom line is that it’s a good idea to be careful about what you tweet and post on social media. If you are unsure about whether you should post something, just don’t do it.
What Do You Think?
We’ve explained what branding is. We’ve also looked at some ways that you can start branding your freelancing business today. Finally, we’ve examined how social media can impact your brand.
Now it’s your turn. Share how branding has affected your freelancing business. Leave your answers in the comments.
Image by nickwheeleroz
About the author: Laura Spencer is a freelance writer from North Central Texas with over 19 years of professional business writing experience. If you liked this post, then you may also enjoy Laura’s blog about her freelance writing experiences, WritingThoughts
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30 Comments
Have Pack, Will Travel
November 25th, 2009 at 11:33 amOne way to help prevent you putting your foot in your mouth is to also allow your parents to follow you on Twitter of Facebook. What you say those things in front of them? :)
Laura Spencer
November 25th, 2009 at 12:25 pmGood point! Although, not everyone’s parents are on social media…
Keep the comments coming.
Shabbir Hussain
November 25th, 2009 at 1:19 pmI agree on being careful on what we say in Social Media. Toning down on the Sarcasm towards my friends lately since I used my Twitter a/c as an official designer account.
Laura Spencer
November 25th, 2009 at 1:22 pmThanks Shabbir!
Plus, unless you check your followers regularly, you never know who might be following. Also, don’t forget that one of your tweets could go viral and get retweeted all over the place…
Good tip!
Keep the suggestions coming…
Rob V
November 25th, 2009 at 1:39 pmI don’t really agree with some of the social media comments, I really believe in being yourself. If you’re a jerk, you’re clients are going to figure it out eventually, so just don’t be a jerk.
Branding as a freelancer should be about selling yourself, your personality, your quirks, not about hiding them. The best clients and the clients you want, are the ones that genuinely like you and the work you do, those are the clients that wont be offended by you having a good time with your friends and posting pictures of it on facebook.
Laura Spencer
November 25th, 2009 at 2:25 pmThanks Rob V!
Hopefully, the social media warnings won’t be needed by the majority of our readers since I don’t believe most of them will have anything to hide.
However, once in a while someone may be tempted to do something out of character on social media and then be sorry later. Hopefully, this post will help them.
Wagner Rosati
November 25th, 2009 at 3:24 pmSome freelancers uses some messeges on the nickname on MSN that, could be bad to some clients that they have on their list..
watch out for nicks, messages on twitter, don´t use ´em to show your emotions…li
Amber Weinberg
November 25th, 2009 at 4:00 pmYou always have to remember that the internet is not private. While I may use my facebook account for more private postings, I still make sure that I wouldn’t be embarrassed if all my clients read it. Also, when ranting I’ll keep the client’s name out of it, so they aren’t embarrassed and most never realize the tweet is about them.
Marlene
November 25th, 2009 at 5:13 pmI think it’s important for many of us to remember old-school methods as well when it comes to #5 – Presence. Once you’ve identified your target market, you need to go where your customers are, both online and offline.
A good number of my potential clients still aren’t terribly active in social media, so cold calling, e-mailing or even paper mailing, for example, are great ways for me to promote my services. And even for those customers who are in the social media space, using these old-fashioned methods has become a way to get noticed!
Laura Spencer
November 25th, 2009 at 7:22 pmGood comments everyone.
Amber – I really like your comment about the Internet not being private. I think some of us have become so accustomed to it that we tend to forget that.
Marlene – You are so right about having an offline presence. Depending on your target market, an offline presence could be crucial to meeting potential clients.
frankzhu
November 25th, 2009 at 10:20 pmnice website ..I learn a lot
Honey Singh
November 26th, 2009 at 5:16 amThough all the above five points are important but “homework” and “consistency” is above all.
Thanks for the tips.
Mike
November 26th, 2009 at 5:20 amBranding definitely is important for freelancers and wider commerce. Probably no more so than in the design world where you want to make the best visual impression of your brand as people will judge you solely on appearance when they wish to use your services to improve their own brand.
Mary Washington
November 26th, 2009 at 6:34 amSocial media is an excellent medium for freelancers to expose themselves.
Nikhil
November 26th, 2009 at 6:51 amGood tips Laura,
I have a invisible mission, that is my focus is on building trust among the clients. If the client trusts me, I get more involved in my work.
What we say online reflects our own image. So it is important to think about what you share.
Juliet
November 26th, 2009 at 10:27 amHi Laura
Great ways to approach this.
I also like to consider the good old “elevator pitch”.
Juliet
Luke Jones
November 26th, 2009 at 2:19 pmGreat article. I love how Twitter has become the epitome of social media!
OweEng2
November 27th, 2009 at 4:16 amGreat site, I was planning to brand my own freelance team and after reading this article i have some new ideas to add to my existing one. Keep up the good work!
Chris Connor
November 28th, 2009 at 6:31 amYou do have to put your best foot forward while online (unless you’re posting to a completely private facebook thread or something). But we’ve all heard stories about how some Nike exec Tweets something stupid and then BANG, it blows up and goes viral. And while that might not exactly happen to you, if you act inappropriately and a potential client finds that, you might lose the gig.
Stan
November 28th, 2009 at 11:32 amI’ve discovered that getting your “Target” right is the secret sauce for solopreneurs. Specifically, I often define who I won’t work with or Who my brand is NOT trying to serve. This forces me to have a laser focus on delivering the right services to the right clients.
This discipline prevents “brand creep” – a chronic disease where the freelancer wakes up and realizes he/she is now chasing everyone for a gig.
Judy Schramm
December 3rd, 2009 at 1:06 pmThis is really good advice – one of the things that worked best for me when I started consulting was to be very clear about what kind of clients I was looking for.
You turn away a lot of business, but it also makes it easier to close because clients will say (based on what they read on the website) “I am your ideal client.” That’s really nice to hear.
Jeba
January 15th, 2010 at 8:53 amHave a seperate social account for your business.. It works great! and looks more professional and organised.
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