A Social Media Profile is Essential for a Freelance Career

If you are just starting out as a freelancer, having an active presence on social media is quickly becoming an essential part of your resume.

Over the last few months, I’ve been seeing more and more writing gigs that require those who apply to include their Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn pages, along with their personal blog and their Klout score. With participation in all those outlets necessary, it’s a wonder a freelancer can ever get around to writing for clients at all.

But if you’ve got a large following on Twitter, and a lot of engaged friends on Facebook, and lots of Klout, you can charge for those things as well as for your excellent writing. A client will be eager to hire a writer who comes with a huge following that will lead to new traffic or readers for their site or magazine.

By including your personal blog, your potential clients will not only be able to gauge your writing style but also how engaged your readers are. The more comments you’ve got on recent posts, and the more posts you’ve got on the blog, the more confidence they will have that you can write well enough and fast enough to meet deadlines.

In many cases, it’s not just you an editor is hiring… it’s your network.

This can be good news or bad news. If you’ve been neglecting your social network, it’s time to start engaging. You can start some activity on your blog by using services like PostLoop to get comments on your new posts. Start following new people on Twitter, and tweeting new articles and commenting on other people’s tweets and blogs. Building up your network is hard work, and will take time.

On the positive side, the scales will be shifting toward those writers who have large, engaged networks. With a great Klout score, and a large following in at least one social network, you can cherry pick the best writing jobs on the most interesting subjects, and as long as you bring your audience along, the editors will keep buying.

 

 

3 Comments

  1. I think that is a very educational prospective.
    This is something that I will like to look into.
    I think that having my own blog would be a lot of fun for me.
    This would be a very new experience for me as a new writer and author. I hope to be someday. I think that this would be a new start for me.

  2. Hello, my name is Lisa and I’ve been looking for a writing job for a long time . I love to write but i haven’t been given a chance to write for anyone. I can write stories and i want to write children’s books . I will need some training but i learn fast. If you need a writer just let me know what your looking for and i will be waiting to hear from you. thank you , Lisa

  3. I have been freelance writing sense I was 15 year’s old I am now 50 years old..so tell me how you can help my work get published I write adult fantasy fiction,write poetry and other things..

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