Freelancing - Client Acquisition

Chapter X: Become Social

Use Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Linkedin and Instagram to your advantage. These are some of the key social networks you need to be on. While you don't have to be on all of them pick and choose the ones you need based on what they are good for.

Pick a focus

There are many social networking platforms out there to choose from and it can be hard to pick which one or two you should be focusing on. If you're a creative Behance and Instagram are your best bet. Twitter is good for sharing short snippets of information or linking to larger blog posts. Facebook is a bit of everything but you can get away with slightly more content than you can with Twitter. Facebook doesn't have much image focus as Behance or instagram but can still be useful. Pinterest is also another idea for creatives which allows you to easily share your work.

Engage with other users content

Interacting with other users is key and and is a great way to start making connections. like, respond to and share their content when you can. Following them can also help.

Most brands don't take time to interact with a lot of their followers so it will mean more when you take the time to listen to people and have a meaningful conversation.

This can also help build social proof over time which is valuable across all social media platforms.

Doing this will not only increase engagement, it will help you to start building a relationship between your brand and users you're interacting with.

Share other users content

You want to do this early and often. Sharing content is what users value the most, not only are you liking their content enough to validate it, but you value it enough to share it.

Reciprocity is an important part of why people choose to follow and engage with you. Sharing others content can be some of the most powerful engagement you get on a post, since it will carry your content to that users' audience. By sharing their content first, you could have much better luck when trying to get them to like or share your own content.

Make sure the content you share is something you would post and is relevant to your topic.

Keep your posts brief

With so many things going on in people's lives attention spans are quite short. You can ensure maximum engagement by keeping anything you post short and to the point. Short paragraphs also make you feel like you're getting through content quicker. Think of Twitter and how many posts you can scroll through in less than a minute.

A trick to this is using the inverted pyramid style where you start each paragraph with the conclusion then use anything that comes after to support it. The inverted pyramid approach is so useful as it means readers can scan from point to point and if something grabs their attention then they can carry on reading to dig deeper.

Share a variety of links

Respond when someone messages you

Both publicly and privately

Keeping on top of your messages will not only show professionalisum but also instil confidence in your potential customers that you wont disapear for days if they try and contact you. Set aside a small amount of time each day to do this so it doesn't intefere with the rest of your work.

Know your peak hours

The constant flow of information hitting people can make your post drown under the sea of everything else. By experiementing with posting at different times of day you can guage what time of day people interact with your posts more. Once you know your peak time continue to post at that time of day/day of the week to increase the chances of interaction.

Use the networks advertisement program

This point isn't for everyone as it's a competitive area, but once you have a steady stream of income from clients you can start taking advantage of advertisement programs. The great thing about these are they allow you to target specific demographics. As long as you have picked out your niche, use this to target people who are interested in your service.

Keep an eye on the content of your advertisements and tweak them as you learn what works best and what doesn't.

Always provide value

People will quickly lose interest if there is no value on what you post.

Use hastags where available

Hashtags are still an effective way to get more followers or increase your engagement.

• Basic hashtag do's and don'ts.
• How to find and select appropriate hashtags for your messages.
• Best practices for each social network.

Share Images

Post videos

Ask for shares

While this can help don't push it too much. The standard for YouTube videos is for people to end their video with 'Don't forget to like, share and subscribe' which gets annoying after a while and may cause visitors not to interact with you again. While the majority probably will like or share your post it has the potential to put people off.

Don't post too often

Space out your posts

Use clear and concise language

If you over complicate what you write you're probably have trouble with long posts. Unfortunately, nobody's going to read that. People are bombarded with content on their feed, they're busy looking at other things. If you want to reach them, you have to cut through the noise and make your message clear and concise. Every time you finish a post, go over it and see what you can say in less words.

Use simple and clear language to convey a message in the shortest and most engaging way.

Ask questions

Constantly having to read or listen to what someone else says becomes tiresome after a while. People really enjoy talking and a great way to get people talking is to ask questions. Ask people to give you their thoughts and oppinons and start a relvant conversation. Not only will you get more engagement but you might also learn something new from a different perspective.

Here are some ideas for types of questions you could ask to get you started:

Ask a personal question related to your brand

Ask your followers to share how, where, or when they would use something you create. This is an opportunity for your followers to combine their goals of self-expression with brand-specific passion, and creates some awesome user generated content that you can repurpose in the future. Make sure to provide a hashtag for people to use, so that the posts are all collected in one place.

Q & A

Ask your followers if they have any questions about your brand, product, or industry. Providing a well-executed Q&A space gives your followers a sense of importance and the opportunity to learn more about your brand; it also allows them to indirectly share ways in which they'd like it to improve, and provides you with insight into what areas you should focus on providing informational content.

Trivia or Games

Sometimes the easiest way to engage with your customers is with a simple trivia question or action-driven quiz to complete for fun. You can post an abstract visual game, or you could ask a trivia question, try to focus this on your product or industry. For example, ask followers to comment with their guess on what year your brand was founded.

Tag a friend

People go on social networks to connect with friends, so why not have them connect over your post? Asking a user to tag a friend over a shared experience, event, or personal preference is an easy way to drive a conversation thread between like-minded users in your following. You can tie a reward to your tag request, or you can caption around an experience that inherently inspires group sharing on social media, such as a picture relating to your industry.

Conversation starter

The best conversation starters are ones that are culturally relevant, or tangentially related to your brand and to complimentary lifestyle activities to your brand. A question that references something of interest to your followers can jumpstart a threaded conversation that reinforces brand affinity and builds a sense of community between your followers.

Quick survey

Ask your followers to show how they engage with or use your brand. In doing this, you are both encouraging user generated content and receiving data on why they love your brand in the first place.

Request tips and input

Asking your followers for help, advice, or feedback reinforces their loyalty to your brand and drives engagement that can span multiple brand channels, depending on what you ask. Give users the option to either create a post or mention an idea in the comment section, incentivizing them with a chance to feel personally involved in your campaign.

Experiential

Take advantage of emphasis on experience, travel, food, or other sensory pursuits. Ask questions that tap into your followers' experiential focus points, the topics that they care about most, and make them excited to share and engage with your brand. You can also ask questions around cultural and holiday practices, sports, entertainment, or other emotionally driven topics. Come up with a strategy to make this relevant to your industry and create focused ideas.

Fill in the blank

Which ____ are you? Fill-in-the-blank is similar to other trivia and survey questions, except the answer is more restricted. Make sure your fill-in-the-blank is brand-related, or you could reference an upcoming holiday. Let your followers do the rest of the work by commenting their answer and tagging their friends to make it a group game. And as always, make sure to include a hashtag for your followers to spread the word for you.

Surprise and delight

Nothing gets people talking faster than a lifestyle hypothetical. Ask your followers something that gets their imagination going. Think dream vacation ideas, alternate career possibilities, or ten year plans.

Recycle your best content

Reposting some of your best content will help expose your articles to new readers. Maybe this time they just happen to be in the right place at the right time and get a second chance to see your post. If you have been building up your following for a while you'll be able to target more readers than you had previously.

Change the way you recycle old content as well. Don't just hit the retweet button or copy and paste it to a new post. Try changing the wording around your link or try different hastags. You might pick up a slightly different audience which could work better for you.

Linking to relevant, archived posts from new posts can drive traffic to those older posts. In addition, those links will improve the SEO of the original post as well. You might want to consider replacing the old images with some fresh new ones. You may also want to remove the date from the post, since readers are less likely to share it if they see your post is too old.

Quotes are short and valuable easy-to-apply tips that can be spread widely in the social community. With proper branding, posting quotes on Twitter would be an effective way to drive visitors to your target page. You can pull a quote out of an old blog post and link to it. Try to pick something short which summarises the blog post and gives the most meaning.

Infographics are the perfect way to turn a data-heavy blog post into a highly shareable piece of visually attractive content. They’re also a great way to attract links and traffic. You can create your own infographics if you have some graphic design experience, but even if you’re not a graphic designer, there are tools available if you search online. Don’t forget to feature the infographic on your blog and, if possible, provide them with an embed code so people can easily share the infographic on their sites.

If you have specific expertise to share, then an eBook is the way to go. You can turn a series of blog posts into an ebook to make it easier for people to get all of the amazing content in the series in a single place. Similarly, you can go through your blog archives and look for articles that could be put together to create a cohesive eBook that teaches or explains a complete topic. eBooks are a great a great asset when it comes to list building. Consider giving them away for free in return for an email newsletter signup.

Adding a 'top post' section to your blog is a technique used by many popular blogs to recycle popular older content on their website. They add their popular posts on the top of the page and link to it from different places. Instead of hoping that visitors scroll back to previous pages, help them out and put your popular posts on the front page, permanently.

If you have an established mailing list then at the end of the week or month, send out out emails to your prospects with a digest of previous posts published in said period. Recycle your content by putting them in a bundle and send them via email to your list of prospects.