If you are a freelancer or do you want to start working independently in near future? We are here to tell you from now on that, no matter what your area of specialty is, you need to have some bases of digital marketing and personal branding.
You ask yourself, why do I want to know about marketing if I am a designer, programmer or virtual assistant? And that is exactly what we are going to explain to you in this article
Reach Your Target Audience through Digital Marketing
Any company, brand or professional that wants to offer its products or services today, has to turn to the Internet because that is exactly where everyone is looking for products and services.
Also, did you know that a large part of freelance projects in all categories have to do, in one way or another, with digital marketing? Being a professional in your area that also has SEO bases, persuasive writing, social networks or any other related branch will give you a very competitive bonus when it comes to winning projects.
Who is Your Target Audience? How Do Potential Customers Search for You?
Your target audience is any person or institution that may require your services, and that includes businessmen, entrepreneurs and employees responsible for a project that requires your skills. The way to reach this sector of potential customers changed radically, for the better, with the advent of the Internet.
Think about the first thing you would do if you needed an orthodontist near your home: exactly, ask your phone or Google it from your PC. Well, in exactly the same way, clients who need a freelancer in your area are looking for you. That is why you need a digital presence.
The pillars of digital marketing that you should take into account as a freelancer are:
Reputation and Authority
Your professional profile leaves a digital footprint on the Internet. If you want to get more projects, that footprint has to be an unblemished reputation from satisfied clients and authority in your area of expertise. How do you do it? It is important that you leave verifiable evidence online of all your experience and results; For example, if you are a graphic designer, your portfolio of illustrations, logos or images has to be on the appropriate platforms and within the reach of those who need it.
On the other hand, it doesn’t hurt to explore, albeit superficially, how content marketing works. Creating pieces of content, be it blog articles, podcasts or videos in which you share your knowledge, opinions and expertise in your industry will allow you to attract the ideal projects for your profile, since those key terms that relate to your work, they trace a route from the potential customer to you. This has a lot to do with SEO, and we will see it in a little more detail later.
Personal Branding
Not all freelancers, even if they do the same thing, are the same. You have a personal brand in your style, the type of attention you offer, the tools and techniques you use and of course, in the quality of your work.
Personal branding is precisely amalgamation of all those elements in a professional image that makes you unique, it is that which will make a client decide, among hundreds of proposals, for yours, and also that which will make your current clients choose one again and again.
You do not need a marketing office to do personal branding and achieve the perfect match with the client, you simply have to be super clear about what differentiates you from others in your field, that is, your value proposition, and make sure that all your profiles project it to perfection. If you want to go further, you can send to design your own logo, think of a powerful slogan, open your own website, in short, the list is long.
Social Networks
When you are a freelancer, social media can do a lot to your advantage, but we are not referring to your personal Instagram account where you share motivational phrases and photos from your vacation, but to profiles specifically designed for work. You can have a fan page of your brand on Facebook, a profile that breaks it on LinkedIn, a Twitter account focused only on topics related to your specialty, etc.
In addition, there are many communities inside and outside the usual networks and virtual forums that are designed to create links between professionals in the same area and give them visibility. Some examples are ‘DeviantArt’ and ‘Behance’ in the field of design and ‘NotesWeb’ and ‘The programmer’s’ website in software development.
We already talked a bit about the importance of having a website and creating content pieces in terms of personal branding and virtual fingerprint. Now, consider that for either of those two things, you are going to need powerful, persuasive writing, and above all, optimized for search engines.
Search engine optimization, generally called SEO, is nothing more than adapting all your web content to Google’s criteria to put you among the first search results in the most frequent queries of your target audience. It sounds simple, but it actually involves taking into account a lot of technical factors and even constant analysis of digital performance. If you are a freelance the first important thing you require is digital marketing freelance gigs as through your gig you will show your skills and expertise to your client. Your gig should be very clear about your offers and services. The other way round is to attach with other platforms who gives you all the opportunities and fulfill your needs to be a top-level freelancer.
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