I would like to welcome George Campbell to NAG today. He will be sharing some thoughts about a blog can help you with selling yourself as a freelancer. I also believe that authors can also learn from these techniques as well. Enjoy!

When working as a freelancer, it is vital you effectively promote your services. A great way to do this is by writing a blog. A blog grants you the liberty of an online interactive platform through which you can network with a wide variety of potential, clients, employers and business partners; promoting your services and consolidating a credible online reputation. Here are a few measures you can implement in order to successfully promote your freelancing services using a blog.

Regularly update your blog with interesting posts

Regularly update your blog with consistent, relevant posts which showcase your unique freelancing services. Be sure to write your posts about topics which are relevant to your line of freelancing work. Moreover, aim to engage your readers by making your posts as interesting as possible. Integrate multimedia images and video links into your blog to sustain reader interest, which will motivate users to seek your freelancing services and share your blog with others. Customize your blog with various themes and designs to make your freelancing services stand out from the vast majority of other blogs which exist upon the internet. If you can engage and incite your readers to want to find out more about you and your services, your freelancing work is sure to flourish!

Associate your blog with larger sites

One way of ensuring clients of your professional credibility is to associate your blog with larger sites which are associated with your relevant field. By affiliating yourself with larger, successful sites which are relevant to your avenue of freelance work, you can boost your online status and generate more traffic to your blog. For example, if you are offering freelance tutoring services, you can align yourself with larger tutoring sites such as  MathsDoctor and TheMathsTutor which connect students with tutors in their area, thereby securing yourself with a viable line of sustainable employment. If you are connected to these larger sites, you can promote your freelancing services to a much larger audience of potential clients. Moreover, these prospective clients will be more inclined to seek your services and recommend your blog to others because of the established reputation of the larger sites.

Use Google Authorship

It is highly advisable you invest in a Google+ profile once you have established your blog. This will permit you access to Google Authorship. Google Authorship enables Google users to establish a verified connection between their Google+ profile and any original online content they may have, in this case your blog posts. This provides an immensely lucrative opportunity for you to promote your blog to a large network of potential followers and generate yet more traffic towards your blog site.

Furthermore, within Google Authorship, you can access Google Author Rank. Author Rank enables Google to generate a score for each online author in each of the topic areas about which they publish content. These scores affect search rankings for content for each of the author’s chosen topics. Therefore, Author Rank enables Google+ profile users to be verified as content producers. Having access to this process can be extremely beneficial for the promotion of your freelancing services. As your Author Rank increases, your blog followers will develop more trust in the authority and credibility of your freelancing capabilities. As a result, a larger number of people will seek and recommend your services!

 

Incorporate social networking sites into your blog

Integrate your blog with all of your existing social networking sites. This will promote your freelancing services to a wide variety of potential clients and employers. Every time you write a post on your blog, it will be promoted by all of your various social networking sites which will significantly increase your online presence. The more online traffic you can generate towards your blog, the more efficiently you can promote your freelancing services to a myriad of clients.

Stay ahead of the competition

You can use your blog to remain informed of the machinations of your relevant industry and thus update your services and credentials accordingly. A blog can provide you with an invaluable professional networking opportunity wherein you can communicate with clients to learn what they want most. You can utilise blogging analytics services to see which of your blog topics or freelancing services are the most popular in order to provide customers with what they want most. This enables you to stay ahead of rival competitors by pre-emptively offering customers the specific services which they most want.