IN the past two months, I’ve been writing about how businesses can change to cope with the Covid-19 crisis. But what about freelancers? They have been hard hit by the pandemic too. So, yes, they too have to evolve and upgrade themselves to become more marketable in this very challenging business climate. I have many friends who are freelancers — writers, photographers, designers and so on. Most of them have seen work dry up. The three core principles that I think companies should follow would apply to them as well, which is to be more serious about having an online presence, expand one’s offerings and collaborating with others. Let’s look at how a freelancer can do each of these things. ONLINE PRESENCE A lot of freelancers get their work through word of mouth. A surprising few have their portfolio online. Even fewer would have official websites and Facebook pages. In good times, word of mouth was enough to keep them busy, so they didn’t need these things. But times have changed. Drastically. With most companies seeing a decline in business, the need for services of freelancers have declined too. As such, it’s really important to enhance your branding and marketing to reach a broader range of people. There’s no better and more effective way to do this than through the Internet. For starters, you should have an official website that can act as a central hub, where people can go to and find out more about you, see your portfolio, find links to your social media pages and get your contact details. You can easily build a professional website using DIY platforms like Wix.com, which offers hundreds of templates for you to choose from. Once you find something you like, you can customise and modify the template designs and make it your own. No special programming skills are required, just creativity. Your website can be rather static. You don’t have to continually update your website but you should regularly update your social media pages. You should have an official Facebook page that’s different from your personal Facebook profile. For the official page, keep it open so everybody can see it. You can (and perhaps should) keep your personal profile page private. Another social media platform worth investing time on is LinkedIn. You should regularly post samples of your work there too. Unlike Facebook, which has a low organic reach (you have to use Facebook Ads if you really want to reach a lot of people), LinkedIn allows you to reach a lot of people through organic reach. Don’t just post samples of your work without context though. Type a few words to give context. In doing so, you’ll be engaging in content marketing, which is really the best way to capture someone’s attention these days. EXPAND YOUR OFFERINGS If you’re having difficulty getting enough work, it makes sense to offer more services than just what you normally do. That may mean having to learn new skills that are related […]
