FreelanceFolder: Social media can be a great networking tool. Used properly, you can meet both prospective clients and colleagues on social media. You can also use it to communicate with family and friends. Sadly, however, too many freelancers are not taking full advantage the social media tools that they have available to them. Yet, they wonder why they aren’t benefiting from their social media participation.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
5 Elements All Effective Freelancing Social Media Profiles Must Have
FreelanceFolder: Social media can be a great networking tool. Used properly, you can meet both prospective clients and colleagues on social media. You can also use it to communicate with family and friends. Sadly, however, too many freelancers are not taking full advantage the social media tools that they have available to them. Yet, they wonder why they aren’t benefiting from their social media participation.
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8 comments:
These types of articles are getting to be so repetitive and the opposite of useful I don't know why every blogger feels the need to make a list of you to make your social media profile stand out by giving you COMMON SENSE pointers with a little blurb or philosophical wisdom behind them. Also, what is this obsession with lists? While some are cool and useful the majority of them are just boring, repetitive, boring and useless. Or perhaps I just need to stop reading these blogs.
I disagree with this article's main point. When I am on social media cites I become very aggravated by businesses or professional companies that advertise in attempt to get publicity. Yes, it is true that although I remember them in anger, I do still remember them, which is the point of the strategy. I wish the social media cites's would remain specifically for socializing and leave the work end of the deal where it belongs; at work.
One of the biggest problems I have with social media is that I don't know that I would be able to keep using it with enough frequency to make it useful. I am also not sure that people (especially people who are not my friends, but are in the industry) really care what I have to say. What do I know? I am not an expert in anything yet, so I am not really sure why people would want to hear from me. I do think that, used properly social media can be great for a freelancer or business, but I don't know that many companies have the staff or the resources to devote the time it takes to do social media properly (Also, I guess it is still unclear about what proper corporate social media use looks like). I would also imagine that it is important to incorporate your company's twitter feed or facebook posts on your website so that others can see them as well. Not everyone has facebook, particularly many theater's core audience, older patrons.
It seems like every list of how to maximize social media to get more work does not go past actually using it and actually making it about you. While I still have a hard time believing that sites like FaceBook can really get your more business/exposure, I do think that sites like Twitter work since if used correctly that can be akin to a permanently up to date catalog and self promotion aid since people can actually know what you are working on.
I agree with the other students here that this article doesn't really go beyond the statement that social media can be good. I recently launched a personal web site this year and while sitting in on a web site session with other grad students last week, the presenters talked about how your web footprint, especially in social media, is a highly effective way to show your personality in otherwise static web sites. I've added my twitter feed to my web site, and only use my twitter account for theatre/work related things. This allows future employers to get a sense of my personality, as well as see what I'm up to without me having to go in and update my web site daily.
A lot of what this article discusses does not merely apply to a business' use of social media, but their marketing campaign as a whole. The five components of a social media profile, directly translate to what a company needs to successfully market themselves. A image? Logo. A description of your freelancing business? A motto/mission. A link to your site? Direction to more information/location/etc. A way to contact you? C'mon. Self explanatory. Some activity? You need to keep fresh and active to draw people in. I'm glad that we are having people acknowledge that social media is an active part and plays an active role in the advancement of small businesses, but it is not the end-all, be-all, in fact, it draws its main roots from basic marketing principles and tactics. Same tools, different application.
I think this article falls short in a pretty significant way. Recently I've noticed that businesses hold a pretty active foothold in most social media networks and take extra effort to be involved in those areas. I think this can be a great way to use your social media persona as a tool to make yourself known to the professional community in your field. For example, companies like @backstagejobs and @stagedirections that are known in the industry have pretty active Twitter accounts, and those accounts will respond to people they are following that work in the field that are posting relevant news. Now if a potential employer were to find your twitter account and see that you have been interacting with these large industry names in useful and smart ways, it can reflect very positive on you as someone who is up to date on the industry, rather than someone who just converses with their friends.
I agree with the tip about being active on your own website. It's really disappointing to find the website of somebody with really great work, but to see that their last activity was over a year ago.
People are busy and it completely makes sense that they wouldn't actively update their social media. However, the only problem is that inactivity may look like the person who maintains the website that you are interested in might not be doing the work anymore that you were interested in because it seems like they've vanished off the face of the earth.
At the same time, it's hard to keep track of social media and to update it actively. So while it may look like there's no point in trying to contact someone who doesn't update their social media, it may still be worth a try. But being active solves the "Should I try contacting them or not" problem.
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