How to Promote Your Freelance Business (When You’re Short on Time)

You hop from one blog to the other to promote your post only to find familiar faces everywhere. You wonder how they run their freelance business and are never short of time.

Are they following you or is it the other way round?

You wonder how some people are everywhere, they manage to write awesome posts and even have continuous freelancing work.

As a freelancer – either as a writer, designer or developer, marketing is important to be noticed and to ensure that you are visible to your community and your prospective clients. How can you manage to do this?

Here are 8 ways which can help you spread the word about yourself and your work.

1. Reach out to at least 2 people per day in your niche

Working in isolation can make you feel left out from the entire buzz seen in an office, people chatting away at the water cooler, sharing their problems with others and getting solutions from their colleagues.

While you may not have the buzz, you can still engage in meaningful conversation with other people online either on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook or where ever your online community exists.

Start with 1 a day or maybe even 1 every alternate day if that works for you.

2. Chat with a fellow freelancer or someone in your industry who you know even if it is for 5 minutes

At times, you’re going to go through a phase when you really need to know if you’re right on track or need help.

That’s when you can quickly chat with a fellow freelancer, even if it is for 5 minutes.

It will not only help share your issues, but might also get a new gig.

3. Improve one thing on your website

Having a website is a lot of work!

Not only do you have to keep it updated with fresh content but also having the backend up and running all the time.

While you could outsource the backend part the writing has to engage your audience every time.

You could take one step at a time and try something new like learning a thing a two about Google Analytics or even the basics of how WordPress works.                                              

Alicia Rades has explained it in this post on Be A Freelace Blogger on how to create a custom logo for WordPress users that will make their website stand out.

For self hosted sites like mine, there is the option of going to favicon.cc. and uploading your own image (blavatar or also known as favicon) or even creating your image and then uploading it.

It looks complicated, but it’s quite simple

Go to favicon.cc

You could import an image or create your own image on the site

Once it is done download the favicon on your system and then upload it in your webserver directory.

On the left bottom corner of the above page the way to upload favicon on your website is mentioned.

I initially had the default icon which did not lend a unique identity to my site.

But once I uploaded the 16X16 simple Blavatar with a single letter that represents my name (Patricia) it helped my site stand out, especially when a user opens multiple tabs and would be confused where’s your site after 15-20 minutes and would ultimately close the window.

If you don’t have a website then even updating your bio on a social network where you have a profile could work wonders.

John Clark on Social Media Examiner gives a handy reference guide to update you bio with.

Image Source: Social Media Examiner

4. Comment on 5 blogs per day

Comments on at least one blog and then increase the count as you go.

Try to add value in your comments through your own experience or some more points that could act as a value-add for the post.

5. Prepare a guest post

If you want to get the word out on your work, you would need a credible platform to showcase your expertise.

Guest posting is one way to get to share your knowledge, know people in your niche and also network with like minded people

Start by looking at your inbox to see if you subscribe to any sites which are open to guest posting. You can also do a quick search on Google in your niche to know which are the credible sites who could help you guest post.

6. Identify 1 market you know you have an expertise in

When you’re starting out it can be difficult to know which area is most suitable to your kind of writing.

Choose 5 of the subjects your passionate about and narrow it down to the 1 which is easy to do, you have the current knowledge about and could also be a potential area to grow in the future.

Search for the potential market which accepts new comers. It is easier to get accepted from such websites.

7. Share a link that you found useful and would help others

I use Twitter to share whatever interests me – social media, digital marketing and everything on writing.

It helps build credibility and also learn what others are sharing.

At the same time, there are many ways in which sharing can be done on Twitter for maximum visibility.

E.g. Use . before @mention (eg .@mention instead of @mention) helps make your tweet visible to everyone. Without it, only the concerned person and those who follow them can view your tweet

8. Keep pace with new trends.

According to HubSpot “video will have taken 57% of consumer internet traffic in 2015 and this will rise to 69% in 2017.”

A 12% rise in the next 2 years.

To add to the data of visual content being consumed, HubSpot also mentions that “96% of B2B companies are planning to use content marketing in the next year. “

Considering this, these trends have to slowly become a part of your freelance work either for your clients or your own website.

I’ve shared 8 tips, but doing one thing at a time will help you complete it, instead of trying to complete all of them.

Try this out!

And let me know in the comments what tips to promote yourself have helped you grow from 1 action a day to many more and how do you manage them in a short time?

Here’s a handy infographic of this post.