How Building a Community Can Help Your Freelancing Business
Posted December 20, 2010 in Accountability, Marketing
Do you have a community?
In this case, I’m not talking about where you live when I mention community. Rather, I’m talking about community in the sense of a closely knit group of people who form around a common interest.
If you’re a member of a community (online or otherwise), the benefits for your freelancing business could be enormous. In this post, I’ll explain why.
Why Being Part of a Community Helps
Being part of a community enables you to get to know others and allows them to get to know you. Knowing others builds trust. And, trust is the basis of most successful business relationships.
Look at it this way. If you had to hire someone who would you rather work with:
- Someone who you’ve talked with many times, who you’re already comfortable with, and who you trust
- Someone you just met and who you’re not really sure about
If you’re totally honest, you probably picked #1. That’s because most people choose to work with people who they trust and get along with.
How to Find Your Community
Finding the right community for your freelancing business can be a daunting task–especially if you are new to freelancing. But, there are a few simple tactics you can use to find a community that can benefit you both professionally and personally. Ask yourself these questions:
- Is there something that most of my clients have in common?
- Am I drawn to certain websites or social media tools?
- Are there certain individuals that I’m in contact with on a regular basis?
- Are there any meetings that I regularly attend?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions you may already be part of a community and not realize it. Your next task is relatively simple. Make sure that any profile information that your community keeps on its members reflects your business information and then start participating. Be vocal. Be friendly. Be memorable.
However, if you don’t have a community yet, don’t despair. It’s not too late. You may have to test a few potential communities out before you find the right one for you.
Should Other Freelancers Be in Your Community?
A lot of bloggers will advise you not to hang out with others in your profession or even with other freelancers. If you’re a freelance writer, don’t hang out with other freelance writers they say. Or, if you’re a freelance designer, don’t hang out with other freelance designers.
While I understand their rationale that freelancers don’t typically hire other freelancers I don’t particularly agree. Although I interact with a wide variety of people, freelancers probably make up the bulk of the community that I network with–and yet, I have no problem finding work.
The stereotype that freelancers don’t hire freelancers isn’t particularly true. Freelancers are often in a position to help other freelancers find work and some even move on to found agencies. In my experience, I’ve gotten leads that turned into work from:
- Freelancers who were too busy to take on a particular project
- Freelancers who were starting an agency
- Freelancers who needed to bring a team member on board for collaboration
Likewise, I’ve passed leads on to other freelancers when I was too busy to take on a project and several times I’ve brought another freelancer in to a project to work alongside me. I’ve even used a virtual assistant on several occasions.
5 Great Tools to Help You Build an Online Community
I want to stress that your community can be any group with a common interest where members interact with each other regularly. It doesn’t have to be an online community. It could be your local garden club, chamber of commerce, or some other local group.
We live in the Internet age, though, and there are some terrific community-building tools online that you should consider using (if you are not already):
- Meetups. Meetup provides an online way for people with common interests to meet offline. All you need to do is type in your interest and where you are located and the tool will find a group located near you.
- Master Mind Groups. Master Mind Groups are designed to specifically to tap into the collective knowledge of community. In such a group, two or more like-minded individuals are committed to help each other learn to grow and succeed.
- Social Media tools. Social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are great ways to find others with common interests who you can interact with regularly.
- Your Blog. If you have a blog, pay attention to who is leaving comments there. Pay particular attention to the regular commenters–answer their comments, visit their sites–in short, get to know them.
- Forums. Forums have been reborn recently as membership only sites centered around individuals or teams with a specific interest. Those who are interested must pay a nominal fee to join in. (Payment also weeds out less than serious members.)
- Tweetups. Tweetups allow groups of people who got to know each other on Twitter to meet in person. There are several sites available to help you organize a Tweetup.
Your Turn
Has community helped your freelancing business? Where have you found your community?
Share your answers in the comments.
Image by fdecomite
Related posts:
- Building a Business Not Monetization
- FreelanceFolder News: New and Improved Community Links!
- The Common Sense Post on Building a Freelance Business
- Freelance Community News – Open!
- The Building Blocks Of A Successful Freelancing Career
About the author: Laura Spencer is a freelance writer from North Central Texas with over 20 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. Laura is also on Google+.
The Unlimited Freelancer is Now Only $19
Unleash the true potential of your business. Get The Unlimited Freelancer and start transforming your freelance business,
now only $19.
Try searching "Getting Clients" or "Productivity"
Free Report
Sign up for our product discount list to get a free copy of Why Some Freelancers Thrive and Others Barely Survive. You can unsubscribe anytime.
Forum Discussions
- Comprare Generico ANTI-HERPES Online - Farmacia Online
May 16th, 2012 - 10:15 am - Comprare Generico ANTI-DIABETIC Online Italia
May 16th, 2012 - 10:14 am - Comprare Generico ANTI-DEPRESSANT ANTI-ANXIETY Online - Farm
May 16th, 2012 - 10:13 am
Popular Articles
- SEO Techniques All Top Websites Should Use
- When a Client Can't Afford You: Why It's Still Better to Bid High
- How To Stop Scrambling For Clients And Get A Steady Stream Of Paying Gigs
- A Simple Way To Stop Clients From Rejecting Your Proposals
- 3 Reasons Your Rates Are Still Low (And How To Start Raising Them)
28 Comments
Chris
December 20th, 2010 at 10:04 amLaura, another great post! Earlier in the year I started doing more on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and the results couldn’t have been better. After a while you start to be looked at as an expert within your core group of friends/followers. Once people know that, they will be more apt to ask you questions or even ask for a quote on a project. I’ve gotten a lot of leads from social media and networking online, as well as offline.
If you are looking for a great Twitter chat about managing communities and a lot of other great web based information check out: http://twitter.com/cmgrchat
Laura Spencer
December 20th, 2010 at 11:56 amThanks Chris!
Of course, it sounds like you’re doing a fine job of building community. Of course, it does take time to see results. Glad to hear that you’re getting some already. :)
Florante
December 20th, 2010 at 11:26 pmHi Laura,
Communities are indeed powerful resources if you know where to go, what to join, and certainly why you are joining a community. Sometimes we just get too attracted to a group because we think they are “cool” but eventually die out because we don’t know why we are joining those communities. Not to forget also is for us to ask ourselves, how can we contribute to that community? I may join a community of freelancers because i want to learn from them but it’s also imperative to take part and share your thoughts. The more you start to really become a “part” of the community, the more you will enjoy and benefit from it.
Vivek Parmar
December 21st, 2010 at 3:18 amcommunity play a major role in moving your business from low level to peak level. without any community you can’t survive. thanks for sharing a useful article and concentrate on buildiing a community
angelee
December 21st, 2010 at 5:19 amBuilding a community takes a great effort to take care of it. You’ve got to reply to people who would ask help about anything they can’t seem to figure out or whatever, and you’ve got to listen to others what knowledge and experience they are sharing. Sometimes, it’s really hard to manage, but there are effective ways for continuous and active community circle.
Issa @ Ajeva
December 21st, 2010 at 8:06 amI’m just starting to channel online communities so wish me luck. I’m just so used to doing things alone, typical of being a freelancer. I guess, it’s high time to connect with like minds. Cheers!
Words by Keystroke
January 10th, 2011 at 2:21 pmI find many people do not want to mingle with fellow freelancers because they’re afraid of the competition. I’ve always been confident in my abilities so socializing online with my peers doesn’t bother me. Communities helps everyone learn and if someone can take advantage of my knowledge, yipee for them!
Burl Mentis
May 5th, 2011 at 2:56 pmI happen to be writing to make you be aware of of the cool encounter our princess experienced going through your blog. She discovered so many issues, not to mention what it is like to possess a marvelous helping style to have certain people very easily learn various tortuous topics. You undoubtedly exceeded our own expectations. Many thanks for delivering such productive, safe, explanatory and as well as cool guidance on the topic to Lizeth.
Rodrick Salaza
July 11th, 2011 at 2:49 pmAfter learning this, I hope people do something about it. Information like this is potentially so powerful, it makes me sad when folks do not use it to make a difference.
vincent
August 1st, 2011 at 6:03 amSure, I’ve been keeping my blog and get several translator friends via my blog. The translation community is of great importance. They bring me not only friendship but also some translation business.
Mary Murley
February 2nd, 2012 at 10:25 pmA lot of thanks for all of the labor on this blog. My daughter really loves carrying out internet research and it is easy to see why. Almost all notice all regarding the lively mode you give reliable tips on your web blog and in addition strongly encourage participation from some others on this topic and our own simple princess is without a doubt being taught a whole lot. Have fun with the rest of the new year. You are always doing a tremendous job.
Trackbacks