How to Market Your Services Without Twitter or Facebook

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Everyone’s talking about marketing on Twitter and Facebook but they are not the only game in town when it comes to marketing your freelance services. To get even more from your promotional efforts, freelancers have to look beyond those popular sites and try other options, both online and offline. Here are a few suggestions.

Marketing Online – Beyond Twitter and Facebook

If you want to stick to online methods why not try Quora or LinkedIn? You should be on LinkedIn anyway, because it provides a professional online resume with independent recommendations from people who have used your services. But LinkedIn groups and LinkedIn Answers are also a good way to enhance your presence online. Many people use groups to connect with other freelancers, but it’s more important to join groups where there are people who might want to hire you and participate in the discussions going on there. Both LinkedIn Answers and Quora offer another way to show your skills, by answering questions in your area of expertise. Your Quora answers are indexed quickly, making it easy for people to find out what you know.

Also in the online world you can market your business via your own business website. It’s always a good idea to promote your stuff in your own space, rather than rely solely on social media. Think of your site as a destination for potential clients and make sure that it has all the information they need to make a hiring decision.

Email Marketing – No Newsletter Included

Bridging the gap between the online and offline worlds is the email signature. A lot of people tend to ignore how powerful a marketing tool this can be. But think about it: practically everybody gets email and if you can make your signature interesting or enticing you stand a good chance of attracting attention from someone who can hire you. Using your signature is marketing at its most passive, but it works so you have nothing to lose by doing it.

To get the most from this, pare down your signature to the essentials – if your email signature is too long, most people will just ignore it. You need your name, your website, how to get in touch and then a line relating to whatever you are trying to showcase. This will vary depending on your specialty. You might include a link to your Etsy store, to a new web design you have completed or your latest article (which is the method I personally use). One of the keys to getting people to look at it is to use interesting anchor text. It’s also important to change it regularly so that people you email often don’t slide their eyes right over it.

Marketing Offline

Don’t leave offline marketing out of your promotional efforts. For example, many people love to deal with a local freelancer, but they have to know you are there. Never underestimate the power of local marketing to grow your business. One good way to present your services to other businesses is to check out local meetings of business networking associations. Many of these have times when guests can attend for free, talk briefly about their business and leave business cards (another major offline marketing tool). Visit them all to check them out and you could network with dozens of businesses without paying a dime. To get the most of this prepare an elevator pitch and a very short presentation lasting no more than a couple of minutes which you can use in conversation with the people you meet.

Here’s an example of how this worked for me. As thanks for doing some pro bono work, a local organization invited me to their management consultants’ meeting. I decided to go, prepared a one page summary of my history and business and took my business cards. While I was there, I spoke to as many people as I could and one of them hired me for a huge job on the basis of that conversation.

To add to this strategy, consider talking to groups in your local community to get your name out there. Talk to youth groups about how to get into your area of specialization, talk to local networking organizations about doing business online, or introduce aspects of the web as it relates to your work to older groups. Get this right and those people will mention you to others they know, putting word of mouth and name recognition to work for you.

As you can see, you can put your name in front of a lot of clients without using Twitter or Facebook. But even if you’re already a confirmed social media user, you can use the other sites and offline marketing methods listed above to increase your reach and potential audience and client base.

Summary

To market without using Twitter or Facebook:

  • Use LinkedIn for a professional online presence to backup your website.
  • Showcase your professional expertise via Quora and LinkedIn Groups and Answers.
  • Link to your latest work in your email signature.
  • Visit business networking organizations.
  • Speak to community groups.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lisa Stein owns FreelanceMom.com, is a college business professor and a mom to Gabriela and Elle. Lisa is dedicated to playing a part in helping women and moms run a business they love, help support themselves and their family and create a flexible lifestyle. You can find her online on Facebook and Twitter or at home burning something in the kitchen.