How to start freelance social media management

How get started with freelance social media management

One of the most enticing attributes of becoming a freelancer is the vast number of career paths you can choose from. Social media management is one of the most popular options for freelance careers.

As with any entrepreneurial career, getting started with freelance social media management can seem complicated. We’ve created a comprehensive guide that outlines everything you need to know about this career option.

Let’s dive in.

Create a portfolio for your work

As you might guess, one of the most important steps you need to take when becoming a freelancer is creating a portfolio for your work. You will use samples of your previous work to convey how you can satisfy the needs of your clients.

To elaborate, you should clearly outline the original concept of your social media management project, the plan you implemented and followed, and the results.

Once again, freelance social media is a bit more complex than pure content creation. Consider taking screenshots of your highest performing posts and including stats that show how your client’s following increased under your leadership.

As time goes on, you should cycle out old work in your portfolio and replace it with new work. Taking advantage of a project management tool can help you archive your past projects and make them easily accessible.

Don’t be afraid to promote yourself

Unfortunately, you won’t have clients kicking your door down at the beginning of your freelance career. Instead, you will need to understand how to promote yourself effectively.

One of the best ways to do so is to reach out to potential clients through email or social media. When doing so, you should keep your message as brief as possible while also illustrating your capabilities.

In practice, this would involve you briefly introducing yourself, highlighting your key attributes, and then providing a way for them to check out the rest of your work.

It may take you a bit in order to secure clients this way. However, it can help you establish the foundation of your client base and make it easier for you to grow your freelance business in the future.

As your freelance career develops, it will become more important to handle the nuances associated with running a business. Our business development tool can help you manage leads, organize your tasks, and get to know your clients quickly. When integrated correctly, it can drastically improve your efficiency as a freelancer.

Have a plan for continuing education

Social media is one of the most rapidly evolving industries in terms of trends. If you fail to keep up with changes that are occurring, you likely won’t be able to provide the best possible level of service.

In fact, you may even encounter a situation where your previous tactics are no longer effective. If you don’t adjust your approach, you may cause damage to your client’s reputation and potentially lose their business.

Fortunately, it’s relatively simple to stay properly educated on evolving changes in the social media space. There are plenty of online resources that you can take advantage of, and many of these are offered for free.

Some of the most important concepts to keep in mind are algorithm changes or comprehensive changes to a social media platform’s terms and conditions.

Having a strong understanding of these is essential when it comes to achieving the greatest results possible from your social media work.

Set your rates

When it comes to social media freelancing for beginners, many people simply neglect the responsibility they have to set rates for their work.

This often stems from a lack of confidence in the results they are able to provide. In some cases, though, they may simply not know what their services are worth.

Regardless, it’s essential that you set appropriate rates in order to streamline your interactions with your clients. Otherwise, each conversation you have will turn into an unnecessary negotiation.

Streamlining your proposals can significantly help you improve your client experience. In general, it’s best to use a tool to help you do so. This will allow you to seamlessly generate documents, which can help you protect yourself and your work.

Consider specializing in a particular niche

Since social media management is such a broad career path, you may find it difficult to compete with the countless other social media freelancers out there. However, you can easily stand out from the competition by specializing in a certain niche.

For instance, you may highly enjoy managing social media for clothing brands. By choosing this avenue, companies in this niche will likely prioritize you over someone who focuses on general social media management.

It’s important that you don’t focus too specifically, though. Otherwise, there may simply not be enough clients for you to choose from.

Keep this in mind so that you can avoid this potential obstacle in the future.

Social media management can be highly lucrative

Of course, it will take a bit of work to get there at first. The above guide will allow you to ensure you stay on the right path during your freelance social media management career.

From here, you can hit numbers like never before and grow your client base to new heights.

Want to learn more about what we have to offer? Feel free to get in touch with us today and see how we can help.