5 Digital Marketing Skills that Every Freelancer Should Have

Are you a freelancer? Would you like to become a freelancer? No matter your area of expertise, you’ll always need to equip yourself with some great digital marketing and personal branding skills.

You may wonder, “Why do I need to learn about marketing if I’m a designer, or a programmer, or a virtual assistant?” Read on to find out the answer to this question and everything you need to know about digital marketing!

Digital Marketing: The Best Way to Reach Your Target Audience

Any company, brand, or professional looking to sell their product or services must have an online presence because this is where everyone looks for what they need.

Did you know that much of the freelance projects are related to digital marketing? Being an expert in your field and supplementing your skills with SEO, persuasive writing, social media, and similar experience will provide you with a competitive edge when you submit a proposal for a project.

Who is Your Target Audience? How Can Potential Clients Find You?

Your target audience is anyone, including companies, entrepreneurs, and project managers who could benefit from your services. The best way to reach these potential clients is online.

What do you do when you need to find a dentist? You Google it, of course! That’s how clients who need a freelancer search for you too! That’s why having a digital presence is essential to succeeding.

Here are the five pillars of digital marketing for freelancers:

1.- Reputation and Authority

Your professional profile is your digital signature. If you’re looking to get more projects, your best way of doing so is by establishing a rock solid reputation with expertise and a track record of happy clients. How can you achieve this? You can do this by creating an online record of your experience and client testimonials. For example, if you’re a graphic designer, having an online portfolio of your work on the proper platform is essential.

It’s always useful to learn more about how content marketing works. Creating content through a blog article, a podcast, or a video sharing your knowledge, expertise, and answering FAQs about your field will create a digital footprint and attract great clients. This has a lot to do with SEO.

2.- Personal Branding

Not all freelancers are created equal, even if they all work in the same field. Your personal brand is comprised of your style, the types of services you provide, the tools and techniques you use, and above all, the quality of your work.

When you combine all these elements into a professional brand, clients will search for you out of thousands of freelancers, and current clients will work with you on a regular basis.

You don’t need a marketing department to create your personal brand and match you with a client; all you have to do is be clear about what makes you great and make sure all of your profiles showcase your professional brand in the best way possible. If you want to go the extra mile, get a logo designed, write a great slogan, create your own website, and start!

3.- Social Media Presence

Social networking can be your best friend when you’re self-employed. We’re not talking about your personal Facebook or Instagram account here; we’re talking about professional profiles specifically designed to showcase your work. You may have a Facebook page, a great LinkedIn profile, a Twitter account related to your work, or even an Instagram account dedicated to your area of expertise.

There are plenty of communities on social media and online forums where you can increase your visibility and build professional relationships with like-minded professionals in the same áreas. A few examples of this are deviantART and Behance in the design field, and GitHub or Code Project for programmers and software development.

4.- SEO

We’ve already mentioned how vital having your own website and creating personal branding content is for establishing your online presence. In order to create killer content, you’ll need powerful wording and persuasive writing that’s been optimized for search engines.

Search engine optimization, referred to as SEO, means adapting your web content to Google criteria in order to be ranked in the first search results of your target audience’s most frequently asked questions. It sounds simple, but it takes a lot of technical factors and digital performance analysis in order to work well.

If you want to learn more about SEO, check out this article in our Glossary.

5.- Freelance Work Platforms

Finally, one of the best ways to digitally market yourself as a freelancer is by working on a specialized freelance work platform. At Workana, the largest freelance work platform in Latin America, we can help you take your freelance business to the next level.

Build a Professional Profile Available to All Clients: Your target audience is in Workana already. This is the perfect place for you and for your talent to get all the opportunities needed.
Find Hundreds of Projects in Your Area of Expertise: Working relationships are a two way street; clients come to you, but they also post projects where you can send proposals and start working on projects that best fit your skills.
Build a Great Professional Reputation: Every happy client and positive review increases your visibility and raises your ranking at Workana. Our merit system has proven to be a key factor that companies look for when they want to hire freelancers.
Guaranteed Payment: Reliability and transparency are our core values. Before you start working on a project, a client places your payment in escrow, and as soon as you turn in your work, the client releases the payment. If anything goes wrong, our work team assesses the problem and arbitrates as objectively and fairly as possible.

Working at Workana is a great way to get more business and maintain a steady workflow so you can achieve the freelance lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of. Sign up now! If you already have an account, check out our guide to becoming a HERO partner.

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