Freelancefolder

Turn Those Tweets, Shares and Links into Paying Projects

Posted August 4, 2011 in Getting Clients, Social Media

Tweet

If you’re spending a lot of time tweeting, sharing, and networking with others–why wouldn’t you want to make it work to your advantage?

If you’re spending a fair amount of time on the computer looking for work, put social media to work for you. After all, you probably already use social media anyway.

Many businesses use social media as a way to advertise their products and services. The goal here is for you to do the same thing. Use your social media accounts as a tool to help you locate a project or improve your standing with a current client.

In this post, I’ll tell you how to use social media to find paying projects.

7 Tips to Help You Find Paying Projects

Some ways to find paying projects through social media include:

1. Make clients take notice–While applying for projects and sending out resumes still works, the social media push of recent years has opened a bunch of new avenues for freelancers. The goal is here to put your business profile up on a number of social media sites so that it gets more attention. In a day and age when paying projects are tough to come by, you need to be your own marketing agency and market, market, market.
2. Know your audience–Before you start your social media push, know the best sites to use. Using MySpace is not exactly a freelancer’s top priority, whereas a site like LinkedIn is a great way to network and build your business profile. Given their increasing number of users, sites such as Twitter and Facebook are also good venues. Many companies in today’s world have fan pages and Twitter sites, so take the time to find those you’re interested in and reach out to them.
3. Proofread your profile or pay the consequences–While the photos from last month’s Happy Hour may have been a hit with your friends, potential clients may think otherwise. How many times in recent years have we seen well-known or even obscure individuals have a Facebook or Twitter photo come back to haunt them? If you don’t separate the business and pleasure aspects of your life, the latter could come back to haunt the former. One good way to go about a “cleaning up” of your site is to have an impartial friend review your pages and recommend what should stay and what should go.
4. Why should someone choose you over the next 100 candidates?–Applying for a project is work. With that in mind, keep one key figure in mind, the national unemployment continues to hover around 9.2 percent. You need to ask yourself why a client should single you out for an interview and possible project rather than the next guy or gal. Make your social media messages stand out and draw attention (positive) to yourself, while also making your relevant work history draw attention.
5. Be a commentator and not a spectator–In today’s competitive world of social media take the initiative to get in the game and off the bench. Not only do you look more attractive to potential clients by participating and showing knowledge in a certain field or subject, but you are able to develop relationships with other individuals who could help you with networking. Whether it is through blogging or your participation on sites like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, don’t wait for someone to start the conversation. Initiate it yourself.
6. Be social media savvy–Even if your desired project has absolutely nothing to do with the field of social media, it is good to have a strong grasp on the social networking world itself. As more and more companies turn to social media sites to promote their brands and services, you can be a great ambassador if hired by the company to promote its products through your Twitter, Facebook and other site links. Knowing your way around the social media maze is a great way to make yourself more valuable to a client.
7. Don’t lose prospective clients–One of the other gaffes that can leave you in a pickle is having pages that are hard to navigate. If you’re using social media to direct viewers back to a blog and/or Web site page highlighting your skills, be sure the site is reader-friendly. Along with inappropriate photos and/or language, another major faux pas is having a site that readers become lost on or that does not keep their attention.

With good projects tough to come by in many instances, it is paramount that freelancers make sure they’re using all avenues to find work.

The world of social media is a great means by which to advertise your talents and give clients a good reason to want to speak to you. Whether you tweet, share, link up or however you do it, make sure you come across as being a very sociable person.

Given that social media usage is only going to increase in the years to come, don’t let it pass you by.

Your Turn

How do you make social media work for you?

Share your tips in the comments.

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1. 2008-04-26 – Links Folder – Sweetest Links From Around The Web
2. 7 Tips for Using Your LinkedIn Profile to Land Great Projects
3. 2007-09-09 Sunday Links Folder
4. 2007-11-24 Saturday Links Folder
5. 2008-03-30 Sunday Links Folder