How to Market Your Digital Freelancing Skills Using Instagram
If you're a freelancer specializing in any work that you can send to a customer digitally(writing, graphic designs, SEO, and so on), you'll know that marketing yourself is one of the most important tasks to do on a regular basis. Now, Instagram is one the largest social media platforms in the world. They have a huge number of monthly active users, and continue to grow each day. It's no surprise that a lot of the accounts on Instagram are meant for businesses, or freelancers. With such a huge number of people using the app, you're bound to land at least one sale if you market yourself properly. And that's exactly what I'll be discussing in this article.
The first thing that you need to do is to create an Instagram account. This account will focus strictly on the work you have to offer. It will act as a portfolio basically. You will also need to have an account with a website that features your freelance ad, such as Fiverr, or Upwork. And lastly you'll need a PayPal account to accept payments from across the globe. Once you've created all the necessary accounts you can start marketing your work.
The first thing to do now is to add your freelance ad link to your Instagram bio. People who view your page will be able to click on the link, which will then take them to your freelance ad. Once they are there they have the option to order your service. Remember to add in your bio that they can order your service through the link, or else they won't know that you offer it. You'll need to create some content for potential customers to look at on your Instagram page. This content will act as samples. You always have the option to watermark your work if you do graphic designs, or you can post small snippets of your writing as a way to lure customers in.
When you post your content on Instagram, remember to add relevant hashtags. Hashtags will help you find the people that will be interested in your work, but be careful not to overdo it on the hashtags. You want to lure in genuine followers that will constantly engage with your posts on a regular basis. The more engagement you have, the more people will see your posts, which means even more potential customers for you. According to a study, 11 is the golden number when it comes to using hashtags.
Another rule to remember is that you shouldn't post to often. Your followers might love your posts, but they also want to see posts from other people they follow. If you post to often, they might decide to unfollow you. In my own personal opinion, and experience, one post per day is more than enough. You might not grow as fast, but once again, the followers you gain will not feel the need to unfollow you. Each post will basically be discoverable for a whole day, since the amount of likes per post will only start to fade after about 24 hours.
The sooner you start, the better. It will take some time for your page to gain some serious followers, but with some patience, and persistence you can definitely get a lot of customers using Instagram.
