Hello everyone!
This time around, I want to talk about LinkedIn. I’ve been using LinkedIn for a while now, even before I became a freelance translator. I must say I never paid much attention to it until now.
There is excellent potential to find new prospective clients on LinkedIn, but it’s not easy. Even though I post almost every day, so far, that has not translated (no pun intended!) into new clients.
I have connected with a great community of translators and interpreters, but this is not my only goal. I also want to reach new potential direct clients, and that’s where I need help.
So, two weeks ago, I started a 4-week course with Virginia Katsimpiri that teaches you how to improve your LinkedIn profile in order to have a strategy to find new clients.
Before even getting into editing our profile, we needed to identify the following information:
- Set our SMART goals
- Define our target market
- Create our USP definition
- Create our ideal client avatar
These exercises have helped me a lot to understand my main goals and how to attain them. You can’t start working on marketing your brand if you have not defined your target market, your USP, and your ideal client avatar. Who do you want to work with? And why?
As for the profile itself, there are many helpful suggestions:
- Use a professional photo (you can even get your photo analyzed to see how popular it is)
- You can format your LinkedIn text
- Your banner should include your logo.
- There is a new feature called “highlights”; here you can add your website link so that any visitor to your profile can click on it and go directly to your website.
- In your tagline, you should offer your services and use all the available characters.
- The summary should be benefits-oriented. It would be best if you didn’t write your CV here; it should be about what you do and why you are good at it.
- As for the work experience, make sure to include everything. Not just your experience as a freelance translator but also any previous experience working at something else. We learn from all our work experiences, so if you used to work in the administration field, you are going to be familiar with the terms related to the business industry, and that’s a plus.
- It is essential to ask for recommendations! You can choose to show them in your profile, and that’s important because any client that might be interested in working with you will probably check this section very carefully.
- LinkedIn has a really cool new feature! You can now record how your name is pronounced! I think this is a great feature because let’s face it, most of the time we don’t know how some names are pronounced. My name if one of them, so I like that now people who visit my profile can finally understand how to pronounce it!
I think that LinkedIn can be an excellent resource for making your business grow; it is all about having a strategy and reaching the right clients for you.
There are still two weeks left of this great course, so I am yet to learn many more things about LinkedIn. Next week will be all about writing messages to your potential clients. What I also like about this course is that we get a Q&A live session every week, so you can ask Virginia all your doubts from the tasks you had to complete during the week. And you get to hear other participants’ questions, which can provide great insight.
Do you use LinkedIn? Have you found new clients by using it? Did you have a strategy, or did it just happen? I’d love to hear about your experiences with the platform.
And I would also love to know what you think about my profile! And if you have a LinkedIn account, go ahead and connect with me! Let’s help our community grow! Just make sure to mention on your invitation that you read my blog post so I can go ahead and accept it.
Until next time, take care and stay safe!
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Translation Expert 