How to Get More Freelancing Visibility
Posted May 25, 2012 in Getting Clients, Marketing
There’s a simple answer to the question of why you don’t have more clients. Your potential clients don’t know that you exist.
While many freelancers don’t think much about how easily they can be found by their prospects, all freelancers should consider visibility. Your freelancing ability affects whether or not you attract new clients.
If your prospective clients can’t find you, then they can’t hire you. That’s a fact.
In this post, I’ll discuss why freelancing visibility is important. I’ll also explain how you can make your freelancing business more visible.
Why Freelancing Visibility Is Important
Are your prospective clients having trouble finding you? Do you rarely get an inquiry from a client?
If you don’t have a very strong online presence and your marketing efforts are weak, your clients may indeed be having trouble finding you.
Your prospective clients are looking for freelancers offline and online. However, most clients will wind up using the freelancers who are most readily found–those who are most visible.
Take a few minutes to imagine that you want to hire a freelancer. Imagine that you know very little about freelancing and that you don’t know any freelancers personally.
Where might you go to try and find a freelancer to hire? Now, go there and look to see if you can find your freelancing business listed there. If you can’t, you may not have enough visibility to attract new clients.
How to Get Visibility
Don’t worry. With some hard work and smart decisions, you can make your freelancing business more visible.
Get more visibility online through the following:
- Your Website. It amazes me how many freelancers still don’t have their own website. When setting up your website, remember to brand it for your specialty (which is what the client will look for) and not your name.
- Your Blog Posts. Blog posts are a great way to increase your visibility. Not only do they demonstrate your expertise on a subject, frequent posting has SEO benefits that will make you easier to find in the search engines.
- Your Guest Articles. If you write guest articles on a variety of popular sites, you can increase your visibility. Make sure that the sites where you submit guest articles are targeted to your prospective client.
- Your Social Media Participation. Participation in social media (and especially LinkedIn) raises your freelancing visibility. Make sure that all profiles are as complete as possible and include your freelancing.
- Member Sites. Joining a professional site can also expose you to prospective clients, provided that you pick the right site to join. Once you join, be sure to take part if you want to be visible.
Offline visibility is also important if you want to attract clients.
Become more visible offline in the following ways:
- Professional Meetings. You can often meet a prospective client by joining a local professional society. Consider joining your local Chamber of Commerce. Like any membership, you benefit most if you are active.
- Advertising. Sometimes local advertising pays off. Local ads are often less expensive than national ads. Check into the cost of an ad in your local phone directory and/or your local newspaper.
- Direct Mail. Do some research and identify some local businesses that fit the profile of your ideal client. Put together an informative mailing that describes your freelancing services.
- Cold Calls. After you’ve done a direct mailing, follow through with cold calls. If you can, do some research to see who would be hiring freelancers with your specialty and ask for that person.
- Your Guest Articles. Local newspapers are often looking for columns or guest articles from business professionals in the area. This can be a great way to raise your local freelancing visibility.
- Your Class. Teaching others can also raise your visibility and position you as an expert in your local area. Check with the library, community centers, or Chamber of Commerce to see if offering a class is an option.
Your Turn
Do you have enough clients? If you don’t, you may not have enough visibility to attract clients. Hopefully, some of the ideas in this post will help you raise your freelancing visibility.
Is your freelancing business visible to prospective clients?
What methods do you use to raise your freelancing visibility?
Share your answers in the comments.
Image by rightee
Related posts:
- 6 Ways to Increase Your Visibility on Twitter
- Freelancing Close to Home
- Three Steps to Set Freelancing Goals You Can Achieve
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+.
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16 Comments
John Cosstick
May 26th, 2012 at 3:13 amHi Laura,
I like your post and notice that you favor LinkedIn for freelancing visibility. I would be interested in reading some freelancers’ tips for using LinkedIn. Have you written an article on this subject?
Regards
John Cosstick
SEO Guidelines
May 26th, 2012 at 8:19 amThanks again Laura, I am a regular reader of your blog-posts. I may combine importance of visibility and authenticity, because both are supplement to convert an inquiry into healthy business. I agree that Local Advertisement plays an important role to make people aware about your regular services.
Laura Spencer
May 26th, 2012 at 9:14 amHi John, We have published a number of posts on LinkedIn including http://freelancefolder.com/how-to-really-use-linkedin-to-market-your-freelance-business/
Caroline Leopold
May 26th, 2012 at 11:15 amMy specialty is more technical – grant and contract writing so my advice may not apply. I paid a small amount of money (<$100) to advertise in a professional association website and I have gotten 2 jobs in 2 months. The return on investment 10+ times what I paid. Don't be afraid to pay money because it's less expensive than putting countless free hours is less fruitful methods. Your mileage may vary.
Laura Spencer
May 26th, 2012 at 4:39 pmCaroline–Good example!
dojo
May 29th, 2012 at 1:49 pmCreating web sites for myself brought me jobs. People see my designs and want me to work for them. teaching people how to run forums, got me forum design jobs etc. Be present as much as you can, promote, have a good image. It’s possible to market yourself properly. Really good hints, keep them coming ;)
Ameet
May 29th, 2012 at 10:42 pmanother good post Laura…I have some strong online prsence but still i get projects through clients and their referrals which is a matter of worry for me.. I really liked Nicole advice but i need to know who are the reliable ones whom i can entrust the marketing responsibility
Giovanni
May 31st, 2012 at 10:31 amHi to all,
We are launching a new portal site, it’s a marketplace for people who works in Information and Telecommunication Technology, you can see it at http://www.devstaff.biz , it’s completelly free and registrations are open now!
We start to fill profiles right now and we will distribute to our customers. It will be reserved only to consultants and companies who works in ICT.
We prefer only specialized profiles and we don’t send money only presenting people one to another, for this reason registration and use of our portal will be completelly free.
The portal site is “skill focused” and it will give to users many tools to complete their daily activities; there are videoconference tools (for meetings and interviews), project management tool and much more… These tools are completelly free!!
Please, say to every people that you know, just remember DevStaff portal is reserved to consultants and companies who works in ICT.
Send us any kind of suggestion or troubleshoot (also language mistakes), you should see in portal site using link positioned in bottom part of every portal page.
Thank You
Giovanni
Minhaj
June 7th, 2012 at 11:16 amLove your post, Its great and very helpful for new comers. And its very important to learn every part of freelance work, thanks for sharing. Take care.
How to Build A Business Using Freelancers
Rafiul Alom
June 18th, 2012 at 11:09 amHi Laura Spencer,
I’m a freelancer and I’m working on oDesk for more than two years as a web developer. I’m a real expert of HTML, xHTML, CSS, WordPress, PSD to HTML/CSS/WP, jQuery, PHP, MySQL etc, but I don’t have my personal portfolio yet. I love your article about the visibility of online. I hope I will open an personal portfolio as well as a blog site.
I also wanna see more articles from you.
Thanks and appreciated,
Rafiul Alom
Justin Grice
October 6th, 2012 at 3:55 pmI’ve said several times that it is critical to have a website and blog. But hitting the sidewalk and approaching business owners can work to. I got a website client from a law office that way, and it only took a few minutes of my time.
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