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Six Ways To Promote Your Freelancing Services On Social Media

by Vihar Naik SEO Executive

There are hundreds and hundreds of freelance services on demand. Freelancing opportunities have significantly increased over the past few years before the coronavirus pandemic.

With an endless amount of permanent, full-time jobs eliminated in 2020, many professionals entered the freelance workforce for the first time ever.

Almost 60 million U.S. workers performed freelance work in the last year, with the most popular freelancing work being consulting, programming, copywriting, and marketing.

If you have already chosen which skills you will start freelancing with, have defined your goals and potential clients, the next step is to make sure your freelancing business is legal

Once it's done, it's time to establish your presence on social media platforms.

Social media comes with some great marketing opportunities for freelancers. Whether you’re a consultant, writer, graphic designer or anything in-between, this guide will get the ball rolling.

Why you should promote your freelance services on social media

With social media, you can advertise your services as well as build strong relationships with your customers, expanding your network in the meantime.

Let’s take a closer look at the advantages of using social networks:

Broad reach — without a broad reach, many potential customers will not be able to hear about you and your services
Free or relatively inexpensive — you can open business pages or create a business profile for free on many platforms. Don’t skip this step since you want to spread information about your services and boost connection with potential customers
Ability to target specific groups — social media allows you to target particular groups in specific locations
Personal — social media networks let you communicate on a first hand basis with individual customers and groups
Fast turnaround — quickly distribute information about your business to many people

Top Social Media Platforms

Different types of social media are suitable for various marketing activities.

The top social media services that could be used by freelancers are:

Facebook - an online social media and social networking service and the gold standard for social media ads, including paid promotions
YouTube - an online video-sharing platform where users can watch, like, share, comment, and upload their videos
Instagram - photo and video-sharing social networking service owned by Facebook.
LinkedIn - the world's largest professional network designed for anyone who is looking to advance their career
Twitter - microblogging and social networking service where users post and interact with messages or "tweets"
Blogging (not a social media platform, but still a great way to promote your services) - websites that contain a series of entries about topics of interest to the author and their audience/followers.

The first step of kickstarting your marketing initiatives is to decide which social media network to promote your services on.

Bigger companies with large customer bases establish their presence across multiple platforms, but it requires funding and dedicated resources.

Instead of trying to open an account on each of the major platforms, you may consider one or two that make the most sense based on your industry and desired audience.

1. If You Decide to Go With Facebook

Facebook is a must-have platform for freelancers who have a physical location that customers can visit and obtain what they need.

Still, many brick-and-mortar businesses scaled back their locations to focus on online sales during the coronavirus pandemic.

If you are planning on reselling something or selling products that you are making yourself, you most likely already have or want to open an online store.

Opening a Facebook Business Page is a great first step because then your business is visible to thousands and thousands of people and could bring significant attention to your website or other social media.

The platform makes it possible for anyone to run a successful social media advertising campaign by offering the tools to create ads based on your skill level with the help of a step-by-step wizard.

You can make a Facebook ad within the Ads Manager or start by creating mockups in Facebook Creative Hub.

Creative Hub is a feature inside Facebook Ads that allows you to generate mockups by adopting expert examples from the inspiration gallery and testing various ad formats before setting them live.

Before creating your ad, consider two following steps:

Identify your objective: Your objective is what you are aiming to achieve with your campaign. You can aim to increase traffic, capture potential customers' contacts, generate leads and conversions, and so on.
Select your target audience: Your target audience are the potential users that are the most likely to be interested in your services or products. Facebook allows you to set exact parameters, ensuring that your ads will reach the right people at the right time.

Now you can get creative with Facebook Creative Hub. If you decide to go with carousel ads, it’s a great choice since they are more interactive and engaging than the ads based on a single image or a single video.

When your mockup is ready, it might make sense to ask your friends/acquaintances for some constructive feedback. Just duplicate it, share copies and wait for the suggestions.

After adding the final touches, turn on Show in Ads Manager slider at the top right and click the Create Ad button. By doing so, you will open a pop-up window that automatically starts the ad creation process in Ads Manager.

After choosing your objective and selecting your budget, audience, and placement settings, click Publish and set your ad live.

You can also incorporate Facebook Instant Experiences for a smooth mobile experience. It’s intended for mobile users and is easy and fun to create as well.

To create a Facebook Instant Experience ad, choose this option in Creative Hub after clicking on the "create a mockup" button, or within the Ads Manager, after clicking the button "save to draft."

2. If You Decide to Go With Instagram

Instagram plays a vital role as a marketing tool if you want to promote your freelance services.

This platform is considered to be one of the best social media services for engagement and your ability to connect with your existing and potential customers as business.

It's very visual, easy to figure out, and it’s more appealing to the younger generations compared to other social media platforms.

Instagram allows you to create a social media profile that highlights your business mission and goals, displays your products, and seizes leads and sales.

In order to run ads on Instagram, you must have a Facebook Page. Instagram ad creation is integrated right into Facebook Ads Manager.

Once you have the visuals or the video content you want to use in your Instagram ads, go to Ads Manager, select Create and choose an objective that supports Instagram as an ad placement.

Now is the time to define your exact target audience using age, gender, similar accounts, interests, and geolocation.

After adding all the necessary details, you can submit your ad for review, and it will appear on Instagram right after it gets approved.

In Facebook’s “Get Inspired,” Creative Hub’s section, Instagram ads are clustered with Facebook ads, so you can build a mockup using similar ideas from the inspiration gallery and collaborate on it with your creative friends.

Instagram ads look just like regular Instagram posts or Stories, creating a seamless experience for your users. Still, they can be identified by a "sponsored" label and call-to-action buttons.

Don’t forget to update your Instagram feed regularly as well since the growth of your followers partially depends on this.

Post at least a few times a week or schedule your posts in advance. Your followers will be expecting a certain amount of posts from you weekly, so disappearing or posting only once in a while won’t do.

3. If You Decide to Go With YouTube

YouTube is one of the biggest and most popular social networks out there and the world's second-biggest search engine. This makes it exceptionally attractive from a promotional point of view.

On the other hand, using YouTube to advertise your services can be more time-consuming since you have to create video content in order to promote it.

Still, video represents the top-performing type of content across different platforms and you can achieve a lot with YouTube video marketing:

Establish and develop your brand awareness and drive traffic to your website
Increased audience engagement (educational and how-to videos; animated videos)
Generate leads and conversions
Improved sales

YouTube also allows you to monitor and manage all of your comments in one place, including your responses to them.

Additionally, you can pre-moderate comments and decide when and what to publish, which helps you quickly and regularly interact with your followers.

If you’re worried about creating your own video content, don’t be. Today, with an impressive array of comprehensive tools out there, video creation has become easier than ever.

If you consider making promotional videos for YouTube or other social media platforms, there are several excellent options of video-making tools, such as:

Slidely Promo - this software is designed for creation of video ads, product videos, explainer videos, social media videos, and more - all optimized for online results
Wave - software for live-action videos that has a considerable stock image and stock video library
Write-on Video - video editing software that simplifies the video-making process while delivering professional-looking results
Vyond - an excellent tool for creating animated videos

In order to reach a much wider audience, pick your channel keywords representing your business and use relevant keywords in your headline and your video description.

4. If You Decide to Go With LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a marketing tool that helps you promote yourself as a specialist, connect with people in your field or get hired.

Here are a few recommendations for setting up your profile and making sure that you will be noticed:

Create your profile: Signing up and opening an account is the first step to using LinkedIn for promoting your freelancing services. Your profile is what your potential clients or employers will find when they’re searching for someone with your expertise. Include as much experience as you can in your profile.

If you’re a UI designer, for example, mention all your experiences, professional and personal projects, volunteering and basically everything you did. It’s like your digital freelance portfolio - the more relevant items on there, the better.

Build your network: The real power of this platform lies in its networking opportunities. By creating your network, you will stay aware of what is happening in your industry. You can follow people, companies, or even topics you might be interested in.

You can also participate in conversations and different events like seminars or workshops. With LinkedIn, you can reach out to the hiring community and notify your connections that you're open for job opportunities.

On LinkedIn, you promote yourself through your portfolio samples, your best pieces of writing or designs, or links to the projects that showcase your work.

Since LinkedIn also serves as a publishing platform, you can share your blog entries or create a custom article just for your