Freelancers face a lot of challenges in their journey and one of the major challenges they have is finding clients. LinkedIn is a great platform for validating your skills and finding new clients. In this article, we’ll share the essentials when it comes to optimizing your profile as a freelancer.
What should a freelancer put on their profile?
For any professional, their LinkedIn profile serves as a window to their competence, reliability, and commitment to work. It is extremely crucial to design what serves as your first impression to be as sophisticated and professional as can be. Here are the elements that a freelancer must ensure in their profile to help it stand out.
Have a Great Photo
The first thing that anybody - including a prospective client - will notice about your LinkedIn profile is the profile picture you have chosen. It is important to remember that your profile is currently acting as a virtual introduction to who you are. Choose a photo that reflects who you are and what you want to bring to the job. This can be a more professional photo or headshot, or one that reflects your individuality and attracts a specific type of client.
Create a Title That Defines Your Skills
There are several different ways you’re able to approach your title on LinkedIn depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. Listing your previous job titles or rolls or general skillset can be valuable to validating the work that you do. Modifiers such as consultant or freelancer can also be helpful.
An additional consideration is including that you’re looking for new clients or have available bandwidth to take on specific types of projects.
Give a Brief Introduction to Yourself
In your introduction, share some of the work that you’ve done. What you’ve been able to accomplish and some of the data to support it, if possible. Have you helped your clients increase revenue or traffic? Did the redesign you’ve launched lead to more conversions? Share your accomplishments more than just your job description.
Share with visitors the type of work you’re doing and where you’re hoping to advance in your career. This can include the types of clients you enjoy freelancing for.
Including additional information such as hobbies or a little more personal information can also make it easier for people to learn more about you and connect in a more human way.
At the end of your summary, you can also invite the reader to come chat with you on a related topic, and mention where they can reach you.
Include Articles You’ve Written
One way to validate your expertise is creating or sharing articles you’ve written. Creating a content strategy for your brand, including topics you’re experience in helps showcase your experience and makes potential clients feel like they’re in good hands. Another good tactic here is to comment on, like, and share other LinkedIn articles of similar nature, and talk about how you agree or disagree with them.
Share Your Education
If you want to create a heavy impact with your profile then your certifications can play a vital role. For example, if you’re a digital marketer and have done a few SEO courses then writing about them will take your profile up a notch. Hence, if you have any relevant certifications then don’t forget to write them down.
Also including any other education such as Universities can help create connections as well. Oftentimes it’s easier to get an intro with someone who has also attended your university, so including that is very beneficial.
Mention Your Skills
LinkedIn makes it really easy to include your different skills. From tools that you have experience in, to both hard and soft skills. Including the different skills can be helpful if people are assessing your abilities to execute on different tasks. LinkedIn also offers the ability to have people in your network endorse your skills.
Others endorsing your skillset is an additional opportunity to have people validate your skills and provide references for your capabilities.
Recommendations From Past Clients or Colleagues
There are many ways that you can be strategic about building up recommendations on your profile. Offering to write recommendations for past coworkers, colleagues, can help with reciprocation. You can also reach out to existing or past clients asking if they wouldn’t mind leaving a recommendation as you’re working to build your clientele. If you're not sure where to get started check out our article on How to Ask for Client Referrals and How to Get Testimonials for your Website or LinkedIn.
