Freelance Confidential - Amanda Hackwith [18]
Respond to questions. If a user takes the time to write you a direct question, you can be sure they will appreciate a response.
If another user shares something that interests you, say so! Even if you disagree, it can start a conversation. "Star"ing or "Like"ing something is a poor excuse for actual interaction.
If a user responds with interesting feedback, check them out! If they look like someone you'd like to get to know (as a client, a colleague, or just a contact), add them to your following.
Don't respond, retweet, tumble, or repost everything, of course. As you become active, you'll encounter all the typical ploys for promotion, both from genuine users and from spambots. As you become more active in a particular community, you'll make your own judgments on what conversations are worth your time.
The Bottom Line
Whatever your method is for engaging with a larger audience and promoting your work, you will want to be consistent and provide genuine value for your audience. These are some steps you can take right now:
Review your portfolio. Cull any old or subpar examples from your work.
Update any existing blog or social media service. Make sure anyone who stumbles on your work has the most up-to-date information on your business.
Evaluate your social media needs. Are you reaching your audience? Are you using the right service? Are you providing valuable content?
Whatever venue you choose—share good content, share some of your personality, and be responsive.
Expand Your Business by Diversifying
The previous chapter on marketing dealt with generating clients and projects. Now we'll talk about maintaining a healthy stable of clients and knowing which projects to take for the long-term success of your business. It's not an easy task for any professional, especially if you come to freelancing after years in a large company or long-term employer. We'll take a look at the various ways you can spread the risk in your business and common foibles to watch out for. Finally, we'll provide you the best resources for improving skills and meeting new clients.
Diversify to Succeed
Overwhelmingly, our experts and our survey respondents alike had the same advice for strengthening your business at any stage of the game: diversify, diversify, diversify.
Like a good investment portfolio (and you are investing in retirement, right?), you need to make large number of very different investments (in this case, clients and projects) in order to ensure you'll have the success you need to weather any situation.
Having a variety of smaller sources of income is much more stable than having one, big budget client when that client decides to disappear. But clients aren't the only way to diversify your business. Diversity in your skills, projects, and business can also give you an edge. We'll run down the areas for diversity then give you some tips on how to put it all together for your business.
Your Clients
It's Freelancing 101: the most common way to earn income as a freelancer is to find someone to pay you. And the most common way to do that is your typical freelancer-client relationship, which is the lifeblood of most freelance businesses.
As your business has succeeded and you gain reputation as an expert, you probably have been able to raise your rates and have had more opportunities for bigger challenges (and bigger budgets). It can be tempting to abandon lesser clients and projects as not worth your time.
But they are! While you should rarely (some would say never) lower your rates for any client, it's a good practice to take on smaller projects at your standard rate, especially if it comes from a new client. What's more, you never know when those new clients with smaller projects will lead to big deals.
Your Projects
If you do end up working for one or two large clients, you can still take measures to safeguard your income. Although I take on various projects,