3 Platforms Every Freelancer Should Invest in For a Long Term

If you you ask a full time freelancer the advantages of being one, the most common answer is ‘freedom to work anywhere.’ It is one of powerful selling points of freelancing. What most people fail to share is the solitude that comes in at your initial stages of becoming a freelancer.

This is inevitable if you skills revolve around the ‘creative and design‘ space. You will need your time alone or with people who share the same mindset as yourself. As a result, on several occasions, you will be tempted to quit because of spending most of your time alone with your computer.

Expressing your thoughts and ideas about your journey is the best way to share your feelings with other like minded creatives across the world who are struggling with the same issues as yourself on their journey to becoming a freelancer.

So, is that all? Well, it’s not. It will matter a lot where or the platform you use to share your feelings/advice. Before you start sharing, here are questions you should ask yourself;

1. Is what I am sharing truly helpful to the person reading it?
2. Is social media a good platform to share the information?
3. What do I expect to gain from it? is it fame, appreciation e.t.c

When you ask yourself these questions, it will inspire you to take time in putting some thought on what you are going to share. With this said, here are a few ideas on choosing the platform for sharing helpful thoughts with other fellow freelancers.

Build a Professional Website Blog

I don’t recommend setting up a free blog for many reasons. One of them is this; ‘the level of commitment you will have is close to none.’ Secondly, you will be lazy in coming up with blog ideas. Most people who own free hosted blogs publish shoddy information because they have nothing to lose.

That is why I recommend you buy your own domain and hosting. For as low as $1/yr, you can get a custom domain on hostinger. Hosting one website will cost you around $10/yr if you go with the same host. Of-course you can invest more depending on your ability.

Looking into this, it is very cheap to own a professional blog considering the value you will get by having a domain with your own name. When you share information on social media and point it to your domain, people will be happy to visit your website and learn more.

Pick Two of Your Preferred Social Media Platforms

I don’t recommend posting ‘the thoughts you value‘ on all social media platforms like a spammer. It will loose it’s value as people will perceive you as someone desperate for attention. For example, I am not a fan of Facebook and Instagram so I rarely share any information pertaining to freelancing there. If you want get my weekly blog-post, follow me on twitter here. But if you love Facebook or Instagram, pick one from the two.

I share most of valuable information on twitter.

Let your followers, identify you by what you share.

Pick One Video Hosting Site of your Choice

Based on popularity, you-tube is the most sought after as it comes installed on all android phones. Besides, the service is great and free. This means when people feel like they want to watch videos, the first place they visit is Youtube.

Now, if you prefer other platforms like vimeo or wistia go for it. All content you will share will be based on your blog-post. Once you publish the video, embed it on your blog and share it on social media. Don’t forget to paste a link to your blog in the description area of your video post. This one you back-linking and getting found by search engines.

Important Note

While planning and strategizing on building your online presence, its worth checking if the name you choose for your brand is available anywhere online. You can do this on Namechk.com for free. Namechk tool is capable of checking the availability of the username you choose in over 30 domains and more than 90 social media accounts.

Finally as You Grow Your Blog – Capture Leads

If you don’t know what leads are, I will tell you in a moment. Let’s say someone visits your blog and they enjoy reading what you share and will want more of it, how will they get it?

One way is bookmarking your blog. But often times, we rarely visit the sites we have bookmarked on our browser.
That’s is why having a form on your blog where they can enter their name and e-mail is important.
This way, you can send an e-mail each time you publish a new blog-post.

You will be surprised on speed at which your audience will grow. Keep sharing well crafted thoughts and ideas with the world. You never know, one of the readers maybe your next customer.

It’s ok if no one comments on your posts. Point is, you have done your part. Someone somewhere in need of the same information will find it.

And that is it from me here.

If you need help you create and produce professional screen-cast video tutorials for software’s, mobile apps and web applications, let me know here.
alternatively, you can send me an e-mail to connect@cheptiony.com

Until next time, bye bye and take care.

Follow me on twitter @cheptiony