As a freelance writer, it goes without saying that the vast majority, if not all, of your clients will come from the internet. That is the power of the internet. It has enabled a new breed of workers that can do their work from anywhere, at any time, following their own rules.
Not only that, but the internet also gave birth to social media.
Social media has been a boom in many ways, including allowing us to keep in touch with family and friends no matter where they are in the world. It also gives us a real-time handle on what’s happening in the world at any given time.
But social media is much more powerful than that, especially for freelance writers. Not only can it help you connect with your loved ones, but also potential clients and form large online communities. In fact, it can be one of the most powerful business tools in your arsenal for interfacing with the world.
So what can you do with social media to help push your freelance writing business forward? As it turns out, there’s plenty! Here are the three most important social media platforms to have as a freelance writer:
Facebook has evolved a great deal since it was launched on the world back in 2006. Not only does it offer a great opportunity to freelancers to get ahead in business with its promotion, marketing, and targeting tools, but its encouragement of long form posts is a great opportunity for budding writers to try out micro-blogging as a way to show off their skills to potential clients.
The bright side of Facebook
- Establishing a basic business page is absolutely free.
- Facebook groups are a great place to market and promote yourself, as well as seek professional development.
- If you have some money and want to boost your posts, you can do it without spending an arm and a leg. The basic boost costs you a couple dollars and you can keep increasing it to expand your reach as you grow.
- Facebook has some of the best targeting of any social media. You can target the exact demographic you want.
- Facebook still allows you to expand your reach via engagement. When people like your posts, the posts show up on their friends’ feeds as posts they’ve liked.
The not-so-bright side of Facebook
- Facebook is really effective at draining your productivity. It also takes time to grow a following on it and that can eat into your time.
- It’s time consuming to monitor your progress and do strategy research on Facebook.
- Facebook conversion rates are pretty low. Your overall success depends on the behavior of your followers, such as whether they’re liking your posts or opting into notifications and so on.
LinkedIn has a reputation as the hub of social networking on the internet, making it uniquely suited to networking for your freelance writing business.
The bright side of LinkedIn
- A basic account is free, just like with Facebook. They have premium plans and features that come along with them, but you can get a lot done with the free account.
- LinkedIn has a publishing platform that allows you to publish an article on virtually anything.
LinkedIn is a great place to post original content as it isn’t built to encourage reposting content from elsewhere. This is the place to post your best essays and custom essay service.
- With its reputation as a professional networking platform, LinkedIn is a great place to keep up with industry trends and news.
- LinkedIn is very organic in its approach to networking. This allows you to grow a higher quality network as opposed to other platforms.
- LinkedIn promotes SEO, increased visibility, and personal credibility.
The not-so-bright side of LinkedIn
- There are some on the platform that use it for reasons other than professional ones, which makes it prone to spam (though not to the extent that other platforms are prone to the same).
- People don’t spend as much time on LinkedIn as on other sites.
- If you’re not careful, your LinkedIn site will outrank your personal business site on Google. You therefore need to put some real work into your LinkedIn profile or potential clients might not be impressed.
Twitter is quite the giant in the world of social media. It’s massive user numbers, coupled with its unique reputation as a micro-blogging platform, makes it well-suited for use by freelance writers.
The bright side of Twitter
- It’s easy to track your best-performing tweets and use those insights to tweak your tweeting strategy and improve your engagement.
- Twitter automatically shortens links and adds an image, making it easier to share media-rich content.
- Twitter also allows for a wider reach like Facebook. Likes and retweets will be seen by the followers of those who do the likes and retweets. That way, your message can organically reach many people.
- Twitter is budget friendly as a lot can be done with a basic free account.
The not-so-bright side of Twitter
- It takes time to grow your following.
- There is a lot of noise on Twitter as hundreds of thousands of tweets are published every minute. You need to put in effort to stand out.
- There are lots of spam and bot accounts. These can easily skew your follower numbers.
- Twitter tends to distract just as much as Facebook.
- Some people follow only to unfollow when you follow back, which can be quite frustrating.
- Some people use professional writing services and essay writing uk to write posts on their social media.
In general, while all of the platforms mentioned above have their individual pros and cons, their benefits outweigh their costs if you use them well. Try them out and stay consistent. You will soon find something that works for you and your freelance business will thank you for it.
