Boosting Your Freelance Profile Through Blogging.
There are many challenges of freelancing that can derail you on the road to success. From client management, to coping with distractions while working from home and even mundane tasks such as invoicing. There are many aspects of freelancing that are all designed to test the skills and patience of a freelancer, and thus only those who are perfect for this lifestyle should embark on a freelancing career. However, one of the most difficult aspects of freelancing is to effectively build your own marketing splash in order to promote your services and acquire clients. In short, you need to hit the ground running when starting out as a freelancer and only you will be raving about your skills and services and the best way to do this is to enter the blogosphere. So how can blogging get your talents out there to be seen by potential clients?
Entering the blogosphere
By entering the blogosphere you can make a name for yourself and more importantly your services by learning from fellow freelancers in your field and sharing your knowledge and experience with others in your position. Entering the world of freelancing can be extremely daunting and the demand of fighting to land projects in order to survive means that any tips and tricks that you can share with other freelancers will be greatly appreciated. Moreover, if you’re a young freelancer that is perhaps just starting out on the path, then of course without the years of experience behind you, the best way to learn from the practical experiences of others is to follow the main blogs from leaders in the field. However, interacting with the blogosphere means more than just reading blogs and writing the odd blog comment. Create your own blog in order to forge your own style/brand, and start connecting with other bloggers in order to collaborate on articles.
Using your blog to find new contacts
By using your blog as a platform to communicate and interact with other freelancers you will find yourself coming onto a first name basis with many of them. By offering guest article spots to fellow freelancers in your field then you are enabling their services and brand to reach your readers. This “you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours” approach to blogging is vital in order to build up a strong list of blogging partners that are happy to recommend your blog to other contacts. These new contacts will bring you more traffic and thus more readers who you can impress with your know-how. However, this sharing of knowledge will not land you with hundreds of contacts right away. Of course, you will need to expand your networking to other platforms such as twitter and LinkedIn in order to keep the flow of the conversation between you and your blogging contacts constant.
Landing new clients and projects
One thing that can’t be underestimated is that really effective blogging can take up a lot of your time. So you need to be realistic about what you want your blog to be. If you want it to be a lexicon style fountain of knowledge, with a constant publication of tutorials then this may leave little precious time for the work that will pay your bills – completing projects. However, using a blog to kill two birds with one stone is the way to go. Any completed work can be showcased on your blog (as long as the details are not private) in order to create a diverse portfolio for yourself. Moreover, investing the time into making a professional blog that is liked and shared around the freelance blogosphere is vital to impressing potential clients and landing new projects. Plus, your blog content does not always need to be heavily researched and in-depth, simply including posts which reflect on your experiences as a freelancer will bring unique content to your readers and show a more human side to potential customers, giving them an indication of you before they decide on contacting you for a project.
