This is a guest post by Jennifer's co-worker Britt Brouse
Would you say no to a free ad for your freelance business on television or in a local magazine or newspaper? Then you better be doing social media marketing!
Social media marketing is a free way to advertise, yet only a handful of freelancers are using sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to market their services and increase web traffic. The only cost to doing social media marketing is the time you invest in creating a profile, crafting messages and engaging with other users.
The more time and creativity you put into social media, the more leads and new business you'll get out of it. Below are four of the most common social media marketing myths, and how to overcome these falsehoods.
Myth No. 1: I don't have enough time
In order to start an active Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn presence you'll need about an hour a day for about two weeks. Once you have connected with enough followers and friends, the time investment drops to 15 minutes every day or 30 minutes three times a week. Hootsuite.com, is a free tool that aggregates all your social media profiles into one dashboard. The software saves time by eliminating the need to login to each site separately, and it allows users to schedule updates in advance. So by checking into Hootsuite for 15 to 20 minutes once each day, you can set updates to go out hours or days later.
Myth No. 2: I don't know where to start
On all of the leading social media sites, there are built-in tools to help you find your friends and colleagues. Facebook and LinkedIn are pretty easy to use in this respect; however, it's a bit more challenging to build a Twitter following. The best way to build a Twitter following is to follow other graphic designers and industry thought-leaders, and they in turn will follow you. Look at graphic designers’ Twitter profiles and click on the list of people they follow. Then go ahead and follow any of the users who look relevant to you. Use Twitter search to find contacts by keywords and even ZIP code. As you get more advanced at using Twitter, you'll find that lists are a great way to sort and manage all the incoming updates.
Myth No. 3: Nobody cares about what I'm doing
OK, it might actually be true that nobody cares what you're doing. Leading social media marketers actually say you should promote other peoples links and content 12 times more than your own content.
One way to develop content to post is to visit Alltop.com where you can find lists of the best blogs in graphic design and other areas. Then create a Google Reader or a profile on a social bookmarking site such as Delicious.com and add those blogs to your list. This way you can check in with what's being posted in the blogosphere and select a handful of sites to link to and share with your followers. On Twitter, the retweet button is a powerful tool, because it gives you content to push out to your followers and it’s a way to compliment and build a relationship with another user.
Myth No. 4: Social Media Wont' Pay my Bills
Business networking is happening online. LinkedIn.com is a powerful search tool where companies can find local experts and make contact with them for projects and jobs. A LinkedIn profile, complete with recommendations from past clients or employers, is becoming a new form of the cover letter. On Twitter and Facebook, you'll need to take a subtler approach to marketing your business. Let's say you are working on design for a nonprofit marketing campaign. If you share an update on Twitter or Facebook about what you are doing, then maybe another nonprofit client out there will notice and contact you. It never hurts to toot or “tweet” your own horn a little bit.
Britt Brouse writes for the PsPrint Design & Printing Blog. She has been writing about marketing, graphic design and online printing for more than five years. You can find PsPrint on Twitter and Facebook.
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