Most freelancers feel like their dream clients live only in dreams. So they continue working for clients who are too demanding, don’t pay enough, and don’t provide a regular workflow. They settle for the current reality, simply because they believe they can’t do better.

It’s time to start believing in this career a bit more. The perfect clients are out there; you just have to work hard to attract them your way. Social media can help with that! According to the State of Inbound report by Hubspot, 74% of people say they use Facebook for professional purposes, and 69% of businesses have “converting contacts/leads into customer” as a top marketing priority.

The role of social media for businesses is clear. It’s the best source of leads. Since freelancing is your business and you consider yourself to be a solopreneur, you should start perceiving social media as a source of leads, too.

So how do you generate leads for your freelancing business through social media? We’ll suggest 5 ways to do that.

5 Tips on How to Use Social Media to Generate Leads for Your Freelancing Business

1. Master the Art of Creating a Good Bio

It really matters how active you get on social media. It matters how many groups you join, how many posts you share, and how many people you reach out to. If you do all this and you fail to pay attention to the bio sections of your profiles, all efforts will be useless.

When you joined a freelancing platform, the bio took a lot of time. You were trying to make it awesome, different and attractive. When you compete for a job, you’re aware of the fact that the client will visit your profile to see what you wrote about yourself. This is the perfect opportunity to sell yourself, and you know it. The bio is a personal branding essential that gives you a professional appeal.

The same thing goes for social media. Before someone decides to work with you, they will most likely check you out on social media. Is your bio consistent across all platforms? Does it show you as a great professional at what you do? If not, then re-work the bio!

You have to make it short and sweet so potential clients and referrers will immediately see you as a great catch. If you have trouble writing about yourself, you may hire essay writing services to do that for you.

2. Don’t Forget: LinkedIn Is Social Media, Too

When freelancers think of social media, they usually forget about LinkedIn. If they think about it, they limit their use to creating a profile and connecting with potential clients and other freelancers. That’s not where you should stop.

LinkedIn offers impressive opportunities for generating leads. You can publish articles, and that’s a great way to promote your work in front of a targeted audience. You can publish any kind of content if you’re a freelance writer, or you can publish industry-focused content if you’re a graphic designer, photographer, programmer, or any other kind of freelancer.

Yes; you definitely need the perfect profile and you must keep making connections. If you want those connects to mean something, however, you should attract your leads with great content directly on the platform.

3. Use Pinterest, Too

You tend to use Pinterest for pinning recipes, watches, and travel photos? Well, you’re not using its full potential! This is a great platform for showcasing your portfolio.

If you’re a website developer, designer, or a freelancer in an artistic niche, then the visually-driven Pinterest is the perfect place to showcase your work. Just start pinning, and the community will spread the word. As people pin your content, it will eventually reach clients.

You can use Pinterest for professional purposes even if you’re a content writer. Enrich your content with great visuals and pin them! Accompany the pin with a great description. That boosts your chances to get your content seen by potential clients. Don’t forget to include your contact information on the profile and at the websites where the pins lead. That’s important, so your leads can get in touch with you.

4. Make Twitter Less Hectic and More Focused

If you started using Twitter and quickly gave up on it, it’s probably because it looked rather chaotic. That’s because you didn’t know where to start. It’s not easy to find potential clients there, but you can make it happen.

Start by connecting with the people who follow you on other platforms. That’s a good number to start with, right? Then, start following hashtags that are relevant to your work as a freelancer. Post awesome tweets using the same hashtags, and you’ll get yourself noticed. This requires a lot of work, and we don’t necessarily mean quantity. Don’t be a Twitter spammer! Use Twitter to market your business in a smart way, so you’ll look to be a true professional when someone checks out your profile.

5. Use Medium

Remember this once and for all: it’s up to you to promote yourself, and you have to use every platform that lets you do that. Medium, in particular, may be even better than blogging. You can publish your content on a platform that already brings the audience to you.

Treat this as you would treat your own blog. Publish content on a regular basis and make it absolutely great! If you offer high-quality content, Medium will get you noticed. That’s a great starting point for generating leads.

But you should not hope that you can simply write some content and let Medium do the work for you. You still have to promote yourself. Ask your friends to recommend your posts on social media, and hit the share button yourself!

Social Media Is a Gold Mine… But You Have to Know How to Dig

If you’re a great freelancer, you expect to land great gigs. That’s natural. You want your work to be valued. However, you have to stop wishing for life to be fair, and you have to start fighting for your chance. It takes a lot of effort for a freelancer to get noticed among the crazy competition out there.

Everyone uses social media. Your potential clients are out there, too. So start using these platforms with a bit more intelligence, and you’ll generate leads from them. Hopefully, the above-listed tips will help you do that.