This is a post from about.me. With about.me, you can grow your client list or audience, market yourself without the stress, and centralize your work with one link. Use your personalized link as the hub for everything you need as a freelancer. Get started now!

Why did you start freelancing?

This was the opening question in our 45 minute webinar with about.me, and “flexibility” came up as one of the most popular answers from those who tuned in.

Flexibility to do what you want, charge what you want, and work with the clients you want.

Check out the full webinar here:

In order to work with your ideal clients you have to market yourself strategically. You need to align what you have to offer with what your ideal client is looking to pay for.

So how do you do that? Here’s a quick recap of the 6 steps we went over:

1. Identify: Identify your skills, both validated and not validated. Validated skills are ones you’ve been hired for or paid for in the past. Not validated skills are those that you developed outside of your core job requirements. Both can be monetized.
2. Communicate: Communicate your services in an effective way. You want to communicate what you do differently or really well, and what kind of results your services produced for past clients. Use this formula when talking about what you do to create alignment between what the client is looking for and what you have to offer: Client goal = service + impact + value add.
3. Package: Package your services for a specific niche. Choose an industry that you’re passionate about and become the big fish within that niche. Figure out which platforms ideal clients within that industry are looking at and create profiles on those platforms to show off your work. For extra help on picking a niche, check out the Marketing Mentor’s, Pick a Niche Kit. Remember, specialists get paid more than generalists.
4. Centralize: Take everything you did in steps 1-3 and put it all in one place. Create a centralized hub that’s focused on YOU as a freelancer to create an emotional connection with your potential client. You need to be seen as a person, not just a business.
5. Promote: Promote yourself. Think of it as “self-pride” instead of “self-promotion.” You do great work, and if you talk about it authentically, it’s not bragging. Create free valuable content, add your centralized hub’s link to your social bios, and add a personalized email signature that links out to your centralized hub. Remember, modesty is not going to win your ideal clients.
6. Hook: Hook your potential clients. Turn your passive visitors into warm leads by creating a hook for them. Set up an email capture to build a list, or use a scheduling tool to schedule that first meeting without back-and-forth emails. Don’t make your clients do any extra work to get in touch with you.

There are a variety of tools out there that do these things individually. But, for a simple solution that takes care of steps 4-6 all from one place, check out about.me.

Are you a busy freelancer looking to attract new clients or build an audience? With about.me, you can create a page to present who you are and what you do in one link. Add a custom domain to your link (e.g. yourname.com) to take control of your online presence and present yourself professionally.