Scaling up a business usually means finding more business clients, especially if you’re a freelancer who relies on corporate clients. Increasingly, business clients are aware that you can find and attract good talent on social media. So as a freelancer, it’s best to utilize social media to locate such business clients.
But there is a lot of information out there, and actually putting everything in place to attract business clients can be daunting.
Starting out as a freelancer, read this…
In this article, I’ll demonstrate how you can use social media to attract more business clients to your business. The following measures can help you with that.
Identify the social media platforms
Before you go any further, you must first decide which social media platform your ideal clients prefer. Most corporations have the perfect trifecta of social media accounts, namely: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Those social media accounts are often used to engage their consumers and more often post job opportunities that you can leverage on.
As a freelancer, you can start out by signing up on the platforms and then start reaching out. Platforms like LinkedIn offer premium services called InMails, which basically allows you to contact the company on a more direct basis even if you are not connected. By leveraging such platforms, you can be sure to score several business clients.
Other social media platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and Snapchat, even though they are mainly video and picture based, they are excellent opportunities to get business clients especially if your line of work is in that area. So you shouldn’t overlook them for the more popular ones.
Better yet, You can also have a presence on all platforms and be active across to make your profile stand out. Also reaching out to specific departmental heads can help you score a client more easily. This can be done by following them on the above platforms.
Build a profile for your business
Your profile speaks volumes about your online presence and value proposition to customers. You must create a profile with a convincing persona that gives prospective clients confidence. Getting a professional profile across all platforms can help the businesses that need your help notice you much faster compared to when you don’t.
It’s essential to gain the trust of your business clients, and this entails providing complete and truthful information on your profile. Avoiding spams and non professional messages on your profiles would greatly boost your endeavors.
Identify your niche
The next important step is to determine who your clientele are and which niche they belong to. This increases the likelihood of finding the most suitable business clients. This can be done by using hashtags in your profile postings. You can also use hashtags to search for a particular client in platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter. This makes work much easier.
You can do some research to know which platform is mainly preferred by your business clientele and then focus on it. This would help you focus more business clientele more easily since the focus is greatly narrowed.
Doing such may require some research on your part, but it shouldn’t take too long. Find the accounts or users in your target niche and follow them. This will introduce you to a community of people with the same interests and clients with the needs that you can help solve.
Once the algorithms identify a pattern in your searches and follows, they will suggest to you more clients from that particular niche.
Engage with your audience
As a freelancer, you’ll need to have a strong presence on social media to be seen. This involves participating in talks and discussions by providing relevant information and resources where appropriate. If at all possible, divulge a few trade secrets that would establish your authority and respect in your niche. Most business clients would be able to pick you up easily from a crowd that way.
Avoid misinformation at all cost. You don’t want to be deemed untrustworthy by your potential clients. Stick to facts and don’t comment when you are unsure of something.
Build meaningful relationships
The main point of engaging with your potential clients is to gain their trust and sell them your services. This is easier if you’re able to build meaningful relationships with them. Remember it takes much longer to gain a business client than it takes to lose one. So be patient and careful.
One way of maintaining this positive relationship with your clients is by being truthful to them at all times, and not selling them unrealistic expectations. Also, always act professionally to prevent misunderstandings that could damage your personal reputation. Keep your personal and professional lives separate. Most business clients do regularly refer their best freelancers and this can be beneficial to you.
Have a clear value proposition
Tell your clients exactly what you’re selling and why they should choose to do business with you above anybody else. How unique is your product compared to others in the market, and what makes your business different?
Promise them some kind of result that might pique their interest in your services.
Have an attention-grabbing, succinct, and clear pitch, but keep in mind: don’t lie to impress your client. It’s always preferable to deliver more than what they expect.
Offer quality service
After advertising your services, you now need to make sure your services reflect the proposed quality. You don’t want to let your client down because one negative review could be all it takes to ruin your brand.
Give priority to quality over quantity. It’s preferable to have 10 happy, repeat business clients than 100 disgruntled ones. Focus more of your time on delivering to your existing clients than on acquiring new ones
Always keep in mind that a happy customer makes for the best advertisement, and that word-of-mouth referrals are a terrific way to grow your clientele.
Conclusion
Congratulations! Now that you have all this knowledge, you can successfully grow your trade by attracting business clients through social media. This is a fantastic tool that, if used properly, could help your trade grow to a scale you never imagined possible.
If you still don’t think you know enough, just start already. You’ll learn more from experience along the way.
