8 Do’s and Don’t’s For Freelancers on Social Media – Improve Your Marketing with These Steps

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Freelancer marketing strategies and social media often go hand in hand. Not only does social media have the potential of incredible reach, but it can also be used by anyone and anywhere.

It offers freelancers a ton of different choices to get their message across and their personal brand known. But using it effectively isn’t always as easy as it sounds.

Do you know how to make the most of social media as a freelancer?

  1. Do’s
    1. Add value
    2. Interact with your audience
    3. Stay active
    4. Try multiple channels
  2. Don’ts
    1. Mix business pages and personal pages
    2. Spamming: P1
    3. Spamming: P2
    4. Don’t do Social Media Just Because Everyone Else Does
  3. Do freelancers need Social Media at all?

To help you do that, we’ve made a list of 4 do’s and 4 don’ts of social media for freelancers – implement them if you want to give your social media strategy a real boost!

Do’s

1. Add value

First and foremost, if you want your social media presence to be enticing to a large audience, you should make sure you’re giving them something of value. That can mean sharing useful information, offering insights and expertise for your freelancing field, sharing interesting articles and much more.

The main thing is – don’t think of social media as just a place to post ads for your business – the best way to sell yourself is to offer some value that makes people want to come back.

2. Interact with your audience

To most of you, this advice won’t be new. But to the ones it will be, you really need it – social media is not a one-way street. Interaction is maybe one of the greatest things that it enables, especially for small business owners. It helps people get to know the person behind the logo or the company name. It helps people build connections on a personal level. And those are the ones you want to build – so answer questions, join discussions and actively ask for feedback – that’s where social media really shines.

Don’t miss our guest article “Social Media + Engagement = A Winning Freelance Writing Business

3. Stay active

The next thing that is pretty intuitive but some freelancers tend to neglect, is to stay active in your social media marketing. This is crucial for building up a base of people that pay attention to what you do. Post frequently, but make sure the posts are meaningful and display your motivation and skill. Neglecting frequent updates, because you are doing well for yourself and have a lot of projects lined up is one of the most frequent marketing mistakes freelancers make.

Marketing needs to be done at good times as well as bad, convincing others of your enthusiasm.

4. Try multiple channels

Facebook is not everything. Yes, it can be extremely useful, but there are a lot of social media types that are much better at particular things than the big F. If you’re all about images and visual content, Instagram and Pinterest will beat Facebook every day of the week. Pinpointing the best kinds of social media you want to use would be great, but diversifying it up and using multiple channels is a great idea.

Do's & Don'ts For Freelancers On Social Media
Do’s & Don’ts For Freelancers On Social Media

Don’ts

1. Mix business pages and personal pages

In the short term, it might be more convenient because it seems like less of a hassle. Adding a bit of personal flair is good for social media. But in case you want your business to ever be at least some level professional or serious, keeping your social media separate from your party photos is a smart decision.

2. Spamming: P1

When it comes down to social media, spam on the one hand simply means posting too much. Going overboard and doing five to six posts a day or even more will quickly make everyone regret having them on your timeline. Even if your content is interesting, it still might be too much.

I have personally unsubscribed from many a spammer whose content I did find attractive, but just made my use of social media as a whole worse. You’re not the only person on social media, keep that in mind.

3. Spamming: P2

Another way to annoy everyone is to act like a robot, which is the second aspect of spamming. I hate Twitter accounts that look like they are run by algorithms. Posting the same exact thing over and over in a similar manner (e.g. “subscribe to my newsletter”) will quickly get tedious for everyone on the receiving end.

4. Don’t do Social Media Just Because Everyone Else Does

This is the biggest don’t. Basically, if you don’t have a set goal for your social media presence(s), you are most likely wasting your time. Decide what you want to do – are you just growing an audience for your content, looking to sell a certain product or doing something else entirely?

It’s up to you, but you have to know the answer if you want to get something meaningful for your business out of your social media.

Do freelancers need Social Media at all?

Back in 2014, we run a small survey among our worldwide users at freelancermap.com asking them how they use Social Media as a freelancer for business purposes.

Social Media was “a new tool” for many, but IT experts were on the “navel of the IT world”. Here’s what they said:

Surprisingly it seemed that IT freelancers were not the biggest fans of Social Media, at least for business purposes. The majority (56.4 %) of the survey participants confirmed not to use any Social Networks within their working life, neither for making contacts nor for self-presentation.

43.6 % of freelancers were using Social Media as a Marketing tool.

For what purposes?

  • 14% to acquire projects and find new jobs
  • 13% for networking and keeping in touch with people
  • 9% to get information about new IT trends and news
  • 8% recommended having a detailed profile

We also saw differences by country. Whereas freelancers from the US or India seem to be more open to the idea of using Social Media to acquire jobs and new clients, freelancers in Germany didn’t attach Social Media a significant value in their working life (only 32.5% ever used Social Media for Business).

In 2022, the potential of Social Media is huge worldwide. In fact, we recently asked our LinkedIn community if it was more important to have a good LinkedIn profile or a good website and here’s what they said:

Results linkedin poll importance of linkedin profile
LinkedIn poll – August 2022

For 71% of freelancers, a good LinkedIn profile is more important than a good website.

Did we miss a tip you think is essential for freelancers on social media? Let us know in the comments below this article, we’re also happy to hear from you!

Viktor Marinov

Viktor is the voice behind the freelancermap blog. Every week he comes up with helpful hints, checklists, and guides for freelancers and independent workers. If you would like to know how to find remote jobs online or how to niche yourself as a freelancer, don't miss his freelancer tips!

By Viktor Marinov

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