Recently, despite my resistance, I’ve been getting on LinkedIn and doing my marketing routine.
It’s not always easy, and while sometimes I *love* being on LI – I know you’ve heard me talk about it – there are certainly days when I don’t like it.
Like right now, I’m trying to get new clients. LI sort of becomes a bit more stressful when my need for work relies on it and I don’t like it, but I keep thinking about my $10k/mo revenue goal and that’s getting me through things.
What could you do with $10k/mo?! I’m planning to use it to pay off my credit card debt by the end of the year.
Which reminds me of this popular piece of advice in the freelance world:
You have to earn $10k/mo and work with your dream clients to be successful – oh and you need to do content marketing and pitching and networking and have the perfect portfolio too.
Which begs the question…is all that really necessary?
To which I say ABSOLUTELY NOT.
Now…don’t get me wrong. When I first started freelancing, I was overwhelmed, stressed, and anxious. And it took simplifying my biz systems (and seeing that *work*) to really get into the swing of things.
But now that I’ve seen the results (getting new clients in as little as 21 days with no experience), I am less overwhelmed by it all.
I want to encourage you to start small. Try the steps below and then build to whatever your next goal is – not some arbitrary idea of *success* (that’s why we work for ourselves – right?).
I spend ~1hr a day on LinkedIn. Here’s what I do. (there are templates for all of these things in the free Get Clients Guidebook)
Step 1: Focus on follow-ups
Spend ~15 minutes sending follow-ups. I go to my ideal clients tracker and send my required follow-ups (check the GCG to know who that is).
Don’t have follow-ups to send? Go to your profile and start scrolling through the connections you already have. Reach out to anyone you haven’t talked to in a while and say something like:
“Hey [name], what are you up to these days?”
and see where that leads! Don’t forget to mention you’re a freelancer now! If you can, get more personalized than this!! But if their profile is sparse, just send something!
Step 2: Cultivate new connections
For the next 15 minutes, send new connection requests. I can usually get 5-10 done in this time. Here’s how.
If you only have 30 mins, stop here! That’s already fantastic momentum!
Step 3: Interact
Head to your feed and interact (with quality!!). If you don’t see anything you’re interested in, go back to your Ideal Clients Tracker and interact with the people that you’ve been sending connection requests to!
Optional: Post
Posting content on LinkedIn can be helpful. But it’s not necessary to get clients.
You need to have a great profile and do a lot of networking. But you don’t have to post.
Posting is beneficial because it can help through…
But don’t ever just post for the sake of posting.
Post because you have something to say that helps with those points above.
Call in your ideal client, show your expertise in a helpful way, and share your work and the results of that work.
OR, and honestly, this is what I did for my first four years, just share your bylines, portfolio updates, and availability!
And don’t forget, you can schedule posts!