Source: “10 Tips to Supercharge Your Social Media Style”
As a freelancer, what’s your social media style?
Are you fun and carefree? Or are you all-business, with each and every tweet and update carefully crafted to hook prospects and clients? Are you funny? Random? Self-centered?
Whatever your current style, you can probably make a few tweaks to get even more results from your social media presence. Don’t worry. You don’t have to spend any more time on social media than you’re already doing. Neither do you have to don an ill-fitting persona (more on that below).
A “style” is your way of doing things. In this post, we’re looking at our style of using social media.
What Do We Mean by Social Media?
Let’s back up a little to make sure we all mean the same thing when we say “social media.” As I mentioned in this post, social media is composed of web-based platforms that allow users to create their own content and interact with each other.
Therefore, social media is not just about Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. It also includes blogs, YouTube, StumbleUpon and Delicious. But also Tumblr and anything else similar that will emerge after this post is published.
We want to look at our style of “doing” social media, because ultimately, we want social media to pay off. Whether you’re using it simply to have fun and pass the time, or to seriously build your freelancing business, you’ll want a style that helps you accomplish that.
So here are ten ways you can supercharge your social media style:
1. Set Clear Goals
Know what you want out of social media. Maybe you want to blog just to let off some steam and document your daily life as a freelancer. Or maybe you’re out on the Interwebs to attract more clients and finally have financial stability. There’s no right or wrong here. You can use social media to achieve either of these goals.
The key is to match your style with your goals. For example, if your goal is to attract more prospective clients, then every update, every blog post, every tweet and every video you publish should somehow be contributing to that goal.
Warning: If you’re in social media just to have fun, keep in mind that a lot of the content you publish will be indexed in the search engines and can be found by potential clients. Sure, you can set your Facebook account security so that only your friends can see every incriminating picture. But not so with your Twitter updates. Rumor has it, Twitter stores ALL tweets. Keep this in mind when using the different social media platforms.
You could certainly have different goals for each social media site. For example, for me, Facebook is purely for personal fun. I like to have that space to be able to post inane and mundane things about my life. So, unless a client is a personal friend of mine, he or she isn’t likely to be my Facebook friend.
My goals for my blog, Twitter and LinkedIn are different, however, and I use them accordingly.
2. Know Your Audience
With your goals clear in your mind, you’ll also have a good idea who your audiences are. This could be different for each social media platform, again depending on your goals for each. Once you know your audience, you’ll know what types of updates, links and content they like.
Don’t try to please every one. You simply can’t. The cool thing about social media is, you can’t “inflict” yourself on anybody. If they don’t like you, it’s very easy to un-like, un-follow, and un-subscribe from your feeds.
3. Be Real
You’ve heard it before and hopefully, you learned this back in high school: be yourself. That’s just the easiest, simplest, most effective way to get any lasting, positive results from social media. When you’re being authentic, then you’ll attract the right people for you. And you won’t have to exert any effort trying to be somebody else.
I was just talking to someone who told me he chose Business Coach A over another because Coach B “swears like a truck driver.” Would I advise Coach B to stop swearing so much? Heck, no! She has successfully weeded out people who won’t appreciate her personality and style–which is one of the signs of good marketing.
Even though I use Twitter for more professional goals, I’m never afraid of tweeting occasionally about my family life, cooking and baking adventures, and personal opinions on current events. If a prospect thinks talking about my children is boring, or testing gluten-free recipes is a waste of time, then they’re probably not my Ideal Client anyway.
4. Be Consistent
Being consistent in your tone, language, content and overall presence is a natural consequence of being yourself. In other words, you can’t be Mother Teresa on LinkedIn and Kat von D on Twitter.
Consistency also refers to how often you use social media. For example, you can’t publish posts to your blog daily one month and then not publish again for two months. You need to be consistently present to make and sustain relationships online.
Since we don’t have all the time in the world to spend in social media, we have to be selective about which platforms we choose to be active in. The best advice I can give you, to make sure you’ll still have time to actually do client work, is to set a timer before you open your social media accounts. When the timer goes off, shut off your Tweetdeck or Facebook and get back to work!
5. Engage
Don’t be a social media j*rk and make everything all about yourself. Sure, people are interested in you–but only to the extent that you actually care about them. If every single thing you tweet or post is only about you–what you ate, where you went, what you just published on your blog–then people will grow tired of you.
Instead, take the time to respond, comment on other people’s blogs and posts, retweet interesting things, share what your Facebook friend posted on their wall. Social media thrives on interaction, so interact!
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“10 Tips to Supercharge Your Social Media Style”
Tags: Freelance, Freelance Folder, Marketing, Social Media, Tips and Tricks
