As a freelancer, you will be marketing yourself and what you can offer to different business clients and customers. You need to be able to demonstrate that your services are exactly what they need. Whether that’s a freelance editor or an office worker to replace someone who is off sick. How can you guarantee that you get the attention from clients that you need to be a success? It can be quite daunting to know that you’re alone on the market, trying to sell your services. Especially when you are always faced with competition from big businesses with major resources. You need to know how to make your services stand out above the rest and win over clients.

Let’s look at some of the ways that you can do this.

Create A Brand

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As a freelancer, you are the product, and you need to know how to sell yourself. The best way to do this is to build yourself up as a brand that people want. When you do this, they’ll know what they are getting as soon as they buy your product or service. This is going to make loyal customers more likely to return and continue to buy from you. Or, to hire you as a freelancer. An example of this can be seen in the work of Shonda Rhimes. Shonda Rhimes mostly started off as a freelance writer for hire. By working up a brand, delivering high-quality content, she gained the trust of ABC. Eventually, they gave her a night of television to broadcast all her shows on. This is just one story of success from a freelancer who became a major business owner. Of course, delivering quality products isn’t the only thing you’ll need to do if you want to build your brand.

You should learn how to use social media effectively. Make sure that you have a profile setup on Linkedin as this will give businesses and clients a way to find you. Again, it can be difficult seeing similar freelancers with more experiencethan you. But it doesn’t matter, and you shouldn’t think of them as your direct competition. If you have an interesting and appealing Linkedin page, you can bet you’ll get the clients regardless.

Set Up A Blog

You may want to expand your social profiles further by setting up a blog. Setting up a blog is a fantastic way to display your skills, especially as a freelance writer. Business owners will be able to look at your blog and see that you are a professional. You know how to post and write fantastic content that could benefit their business.

You can also use your blog as an extended resume. Write about all your experiences with references, so clients can track where you started and what you’re doing.

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Remember, when consumers use freelancers, they might be expecting a more personal service. It’s one of the reasons that they have come to you, rather than using a big company. You have to profit off this possibility by giving them what they want. Communicate and interact through social media.

Share content that they might find useful or interesting, building up their support for you and your business. One more exciting thing is you get to earn through your blog contents. There are a lot of avenue online where you get to paid to write or share something but the best one to date is SteemIt. Yes, you heard it right. Steemit, according to Wikipedia is a blogging and social networking platform based on the Steem Blockchain that rewards it users with tradeable tokens.

Continuously Improve

Are you not finding interest in the services that you’re offering? There are two reasons this might be the case. You may be starting with limited experience, or you might be under qualified. If you are under qualified, consider signing up for extra lessons and training courses. By doing this, you’ll earn more qualifications that you can advertise on your pages. You should find this helps you attract more interest from new clients. They will see that you are expanding your horizons, growing your skills. You can sign up for online classes to boost your prospects.

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Lack of experience can be an issue, and when you start, you should be accepting any offers for work. You might also want to lower your expectations and your advertised price. Remember, customers won’t be expecting to pay a fortune for a new freelancer. Instead, they will pay the bare minimum, but that’s okay. The truth is it doesn’t matter what you are paid at the beginning. As long as you can build up your experience and make a name for yourself, it’s worth it. The only advice we suggest is that you don’t work anonymously. You need to be able to show your work to people. You can’t do this if the recognition of your services isn’t growing.

Handling Reviews

One of the most difficult things to come to terms with as a freelancer is a bad review. Getting a bad review can feel like a kick in the teeth. They knock you down so hard; it’s difficult to get back up. The worst thing you can do when you get a bad review is to say: it’s them. It’s their fault because they can’t appreciate high-quality work when they receive it. Whether or not this is true doesn’t matter because in business the customer is always right. Whatever they want, you have to deliver.

Instead of blaming them, aim to resolve the situation. If you can, offer them a redo of your services free of charge. If they won’t let you, offer a refund but make sure you respond publicly to the review. This shows that you are taking responsibility for a failure. Yes, that negative review might result in some customers refusing to use your services. But it will also earn you the respect of others. Customers want to know that they can expect a personal service.

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As such you should encourage reviews from customers and clients. Use them as a way to learn and further build on what you can offer. They won’t all be glowing appraisals because you can’t please everyone. But you can make sure you take accountability for any services that you offer.

Take this advice, and you won’t just survive in the freelancing industry. You will flourish.

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