When I decided to become a freelancer, I thought my most of my time would be spent working on projects. I think there is a misconception that once you create a website, traffic will automatically flood to you. In college, I remember we were told as students to just focus on our portfolio. Looking back, I think as design students more attention should have been given to business aspects such as marketing. Outside of project work, what I spend the most time on as a freelancer are:
- Marketing
- Research
- Outreach and Processes
Marketing
To my surprise, I found the bulk of my time was spent developing marketing strategies. As a mentioned above, a common misconception in freelancing is you think traffic will automatically come to you. You must constantly make sure your website is updated in order to promote it. Because of this, I use blog posts as a way of updating my website. One of my goals for 2018 is to write two blog post once a week.Aside from blogging, I have to make sure my website has great SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Having great SEO helps your website become ranked higher in search engines, making your services easier for potential clients to find. I wrote a blog post on how to use YoastSEO to write better blog posts.I also found that for marketing and promotion I needed to embrace Social Media. This meant making sure my website was featured on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. I also need to make sure I embrace other Social Media outlets such as LinkedIn and Medium.Lastly, I have discovered how important Google Analytics is to developing marketing strategies. For instance, Google Analytics measures where your traffic is coming to your website. If the bulk of your traffic comes from Facebook and Instagram but not Twitter, than I need to devote time in the next few weeks to establishing more of a presence on Twitter.
"To my surprise, I found the bulk of my time was spent developing marketing strategies"
Research
Another focus of my time is spent doing research. This can range from researching a hosting platform or testing new technology. I want to make sure that the experience is great when people visit my website. So if my website is slow, or heaven forbid crashes, visitors are not getting the right experience that I want them to have. I found the r/web_design community on Reddit to be a great tool when researching hosting platforms.As a designer/photographer Adobe programs are your typical tools. However in the case of Project Management, I needed to research tools to keep myself organized. I recently began using Trello, a project management tool. Trello has been amazing as it has helped organzine projects and blogging ideas to use in the future.
Outreach and Processes
Lastly I spend most of my time on outreach and having processes in place for my services. In the case of outreach I want to make sure that I don't just focus on client outreach, but also reaching out to fellow freelancers as well. I think it is helpful to have a network of colleagues to run ideas by or to even refer clients to incase my schedule is full.I found that having processes in place help in making projects go smoothly. For instance, if I am designing a website, having a process outlined for the client to send me files makes it easier for the client and myself. Or creating forms that identify questions that highlight what a client is looking for in terms of their project.
Summary
In conclusion, although focusing on these other aspects can appear overwhelming, I find part of the process fun to learn. Going forward, I think the best way to approach this side of the business is to schedule. For instance, I found scheduling one week to focus on writing a months worth a blog posts. That way, it free's my time for other projects to tackle.