The Best Way to Utilise your Twitter Account as a Freelancer.
It didn't take me too long to realise valiant yet failed attempts to go viral aren't how you actually make a living as a freelancer on Social Media.
As people who run our businesses online, social media is an extremely powerful tool for our growth, revenue and general aims for success. It can be too easy to get caught up in one specific aspect of social media, though, and we’ve all been there. I know you have too.
Going viral.
Far too many active business owners can’t look past their desperation to go viral on Twitter, and that is often very compromising for their reputation. Some people do have accounts where they consistently go viral, post memes all the time or generally get really high traffic on every post. Remembering two things when seeing these account is key:
These accounts took a very long time to build up to this size/level of traffic.
You more than likely do not have an account capable of pulling this off… YET.
If you have 1,000 followers on Twitter, and you make 0-10k/month (and you want to be earning more than you are) the answer is not to try to go viral so that you’re account’s traffic increases which, in theory, results in more leads.
Picture this: you reach out to someone you think is perfect for your service, or somebody recommended you as an ideal designer, copywriter, developer or whatever your craft is. The first thing that person’s going to do — before they even reply to your message or reach out if you’ve been recommended — is check your profile.
Ask yourself, what will they see?
Will they see someone who is craving attention, constantly trying to be funny and is obviously not posting regular work & insights? If your profile is just memes, jokes about Inter being overused and you berating your clients… what will potential leads actually see? Someone who’s simply not serious.
When it comes to getting and maintaining business, you’ll succeed way more if you’re coming across as intelligent, talented and active. If you’ve posted 30 memes in the last 3 weeks, but your last WIP shot or client project launch was 3 months ago… you’re not coming across as someone who’s delivering things and working on projects for real clients in real time. It looks like a facade and comes across like you’re just trying to be funny, which isn’t the approach that gets you hired.
This is the way I’ve looked at my socials for a long time now, and what keeps me from too much interaction baiting/farming. I don’t have an account big enough for it to be worth it, which also means my account is entirely my reputation, so I try my best to take care of it.
As well as this, get yourself some friends. Get yourself some friends that are in the same sort of field to you, that are serious guys, but easy to get a long with and that want to grow with you. Friends that will support you and that you can, should and will also support. Being alone on this journey is no fun now and it never will be.
Take it easy & I’ll see you soon. Hope you had an awesome Christmas, Ryan.