Business life: Three little known tools to help promote your freelance business
Want to promote your freelance business and attract more work? Here are three tools you can use.
In the last few years, the shift toward freedom from the 9-5 daily work grind has become an attractive option. Working professionals are fed up with the time clock, and are looking for ways to create a more ideal schedule. This is especially true for parents with small children, and for college students.
While the COVID-19 pandemic made it known that it is possible to be proficient while working remotely, this has only been a kickstarter to the ever-expanding remote workforce. Meanwhile, freelancers have been working remotely for decades.
Freelancers know very well the level of discipline needed to keep a successful freelance career lucrative in a remote setting, but many still are unaware of all avenues for promoting their services.
Here, we’ll explore a few ways freelancers can promote themselves, including a couple of methods you may not have heard of before.
1) Usenet
So, you’re probably wondering, what exactly is Usenet? Usenet is a method of digital communication that focuses on newsgroups. Actually, Usenet is the forerunner to the Internet as we know it today, and predates the internet by four years.
If you’re educated on a bit of 80s and 90s subculture, you may be familiar with the early chat rooms that started popping up in the 1980s. These chatrooms evolved over a decade and became more popular in the late ’90s and early 2000 era, and Usenet was the platform that started it all.
Usenet is still around today, over 40 years later, and still exists independently from the Internet. Even so, you can access it via the Internet but it is recommended that you do so using a Usenet service provider. This grants you access to billions of video, text, and audio files.
On Usenet, you can enter newsgroups and chat with other users, send files, and download information. As a freelancer, this opens up an entirely new window for marketing your services online. By frequenting chat rooms, you can offer services, chat with others in your industry, and land potential clients.
2) Guest blogging
If you’re a freelancer, you should learn the art of blogging, if only for another avenue to promote your services. But, blogging is actually a valuable tool for any business because it lends itself as a means to not only get your name out into the world but to hone your writing skills as well.
Many popular blogs offer guest spots for other writers and professionals to post. This is something that is fairly easy to take advantage of, as there are literally millions of blogs out there that need more content.
By guest blogging, you’re able to tell your own story, promote your services, and make your name stand out in specific industries.
Before you get started, you’ll want to brush up on your writing skills, and learn a few strategies regarding blog writing. This is because blog writing is an entirely different species of writing when compared to journaling, academic writing, or anything else.
Your focus needs to be conversational, and you need to get to the point rather quickly if you want to acquire any readership at all.
3) Attend conferences
Chances are, you’ve been to a convention or a conference once or twice in your life if you’ve been freelancing for a while. If not, it’s time to get out and mingle.
Conferences and conventions host events for professionals in nearly every industry, so you’ll want to try and research some up-and-coming events in your area or look to larger metropolitan areas to find conferences that you’re able to attend.
When you attend a conference, you’re able to meet and learn from other professionals in your industry. You’ll not only be able to promote your services and pick the brains of others working in your space, but you’ll also be able to learn different methods of promotion and client targeting strategies.
Freelancers have many tools at their disposal to aid in promoting their services, but many simply stick to one method alone without tapping into any others. So, do yourself a favor as a freelancer and use as many tools as you can to tap into the depths of your customer and client pools.
