If you’re like me, you’re probably LinkedIn, Facebooked, Twittered, Pownced, Plurked, and maybe even Rejawed. Flitting back and forth between these sites throughout the day can be more than a little time-consuming and distracting.
Now, before you think that I spend all my freelance days playing social (media) butterfly, I want you to know that there is a reason why I frequent these sites. As a freelancer, I believe marketing yourself is just as important as doing the actual work. In addition to creating quality work for your clients, it’s necessary to let others know the kind of work you’re doing, build a brand for yourself, and let people know that your door is open for new projects and assignments. Far from a waste of time, use of social media sites can really help build your business.
So what better way to do this than through your formal and informal networks? It’s much easier and more efficient, for example, to let a former editor know that I’m currently working on personal finance stories through my LinkedIn or Facebook status updates than it is to pick up the phone and say: “Hey John, next time you hear about someone needing a personal finance writer, could you pass my name along?” And if he’s regularly reading my status updates, maybe he’s occasionally clicking on the links and reading my stories too.
But to make social media work for you instead of the other way around, some streamlining is definitely in order. Who has time to log into six separate social media sites to do status updates every day? Not me!
Fortunately, some very smart Web. 2.0 developers built some time-conserving applications that allow you to update all your status updates in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and any other social media sites you belong to, all at the same time with the click of one single button.
I’m still in the process of test-driving all these, but one Web 2.0 application I’ve tried and will continue to use is called hellotxt. In fact, I used it yesterday to spread the word about the Q&A I did about Susan Johnston across all the social media sites I frequent. I have found the application easy and straightforward to use. Another similar, promising application is Ping.fm, which also does a similar status update blast across all your social media networks. There are others as well, and you can read about few of them in this informative ReadWriteWeb article, “Six Ways To Update Your Status.”
So how do you use social media to promote your work? Have you used any of these status update tools? Drop me a line—I’d love to hear about your experience with these!
Best,
Jenny