How to Use Social Networks to Find Gigs
I can see through you. You read the headline and think “MySpace”. Far from it. It’s true that social networks are all the rage these days. Every day a number of new communities pop up on the scene. Some are for fun, but some can be quite useful, especially for the job-seeking freelancer.
MySpace for some is only a place to hang out, chat, be friends with hundreds of bands, or just have cool-looking personal pages. For others MySpace is a place to get new gigs. I know many people who’ve gotten new jobs through it, and I’m pretty sure that some of you could tell similar stories.
Without passing judgment on any of them, the platforms I’d keep my eye on are LinkedIn, FaceBook, and especially for European freelancers, Xing (formerly known as OpenBC). The latter is my main platform for business networking. Since my focus is on the German market this works out pretty well for me.
FaceBook became an attractive new source when it expanded outside the student world. I can’t say for myself that I’ve gotten a gig through it as I mainly use it to stay in touch with my international friends, but you just never know.
The most widespread of them is probably LinkedIn, especially when it comes to business networking.
All of them are based on a simple idea: you know people, and they know other people who might need your services. You’ve probably already gotten a gig through a friend who knows a friend (and so on) in your career. I know I have. Social networks make this even easier and offers much more than just an introduction.
Let Clients Find You
The good thing about social networks is that clients can actually find you. They can search for skills they need, can limit the search to a specific area, and so on. They can find you through the people you know or through the people they know. They can find you in specialized groups, discussions or while browsing through a random person’s contact. The important thing is: they can find you without any effort on your part.
What can you do to increase the chances of a potential client stumbling across your profile? The first thing is to represent yourself accurately. List your skills, include them in your profile. List your recent projects and what your tasks were. Don’t push it though. Endless list of tools, programming languages or general buzzwords make you look like someone who is desperate to make contact. And frankly, those lists are almost always far from the truth.
Choose the right keywords for your skills. When someone looks for a Ruby on Rails developer you don’t want to be missed because you assumed it would be obvious you wrote Rails. If you try to put yourself in a laypersons shoes it should help you come up with some good keywords. If in doubt, ask your mum or anyone tech-illiterate what they’d type in if they were looking for your services, and work your way up from there.
Most social networks offer groups for almost every topic and industry. Everything from programming (and all the glorious topics related to it) to making cupcakes will be available. They’re a great place to meet people, though in my personal experience there are some that are nothing more than infighting and resumes disguised as discussion. If there is a genuine discussion in which you can learn or share your expertise than certainly participate, otherwise don’t waste your time.
Find Clients
A social network is not only a place to show off, it’s also a place to publish your needs. While you need gigs, your next client needs certain skills. In the same way clients can look for you, you can search for them. You don’t have to do it all the time, but keeping an open eye for people looking for your skills can’t hurt, right?
However, don’t fall into the habit of just collecting people. Having several hundreds (or even more) people in your network doesn’t mean you’re in for an endless supply of new projects. Your network isn’t stale, it’s constantly changing, refocusing and rearranging. People get new jobs, they meet new people, they have changing needs or work on new projects. Social networks can be a great way to stay in the loop with what’s happening, but a huge network requires a great deal of care and attention. The more people you have on your list the bigger the chances of you missing the important information in between all the noise. So you might want to keep it to a level that you can handle.
Networking
And now for the main advantage of social networks: the networking itself. Traditional networkers spend a lot of time caring for the people in their networks. They send emails or call every now and then just to see what’s up. They play golf with the people in their network.
It took me a while to understand why networking is important for freelancers. Your network consists of people. People who have their own networks – who know other people, and who know you. When these people know you, your skills and the way you deal with others and their problems, they know that when they have a problem of their own, be it a job or just a favour, they can count on you.
The same is true the other way around. When you have a job you can’t deal with yourself, when you need a specific skill, you spread this information in your network. You spread the word and contact people who fit the profile. There’s no guarantee that one of your contacts will be available, but here’s the kicker: they know other people who might fit.
That’s the beauty of networking, and that’s also why you as a freelancer need to have both clients and people you’d normally consider as competition in your network. Doing someone a favour might result in a favour in return.
A social network is a valuable tool when used appropriately. Try to focus your networking on one or two and keep it up to date. Care for your network, expand it, keep in touch with the people in it and it might turn up new opportunities for you. I know it did for me, even through something unlikely like Flickr.
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Nooooooooooooooooooo way. Not for me.
I can’t imagine trying to advertise on MySpace — there’s just a lot more ‘professional’ ways to go about finding new clients. I don’t want my name/company ties to any social networking site.
I agree with you mike, I don’t know that I would want to find business on something like myspace. If you’re business is fraternity consulting…then maybe myspace would work.
Maybe MySpace was a stretch, but LinkedIn really is fabulous.
I’ve had a lot of success via Twitter. It happens a few ways. Some people have noticed the link to my design biz in my profile. Others have sent out a message looking for WordPress help and I’ve messaged them back. Still others have acted on the recommendation of people in the first two groups who’ve used my services.
What would NOT work would be constantly advertising myself via Twitter. I primarily use it socially, only peripherally mentioning what I do. Constantly promoting yourself on Twitter is a sure way to get booted off most people’s friend lists. It takes some investment of time and even emotion, but to be honest I never thought of Twitter as a source for clients until it just started happening. It’s a nice side effect of a service I enjoy using.
I can see how you might consider MySpace to be a waste, but linked in is worthwhile resource. It’s like Monster or HotJobs without all the insurance company crawlers.
I don’t have a profile there for my design work, but I do have a profile for my other business, and it has been great at attracting the attention of parents who pass the info on when a friend or family member who might benefit from our services. I guess it depends on where you’re at in your business, but we’re a startup, and we’ve basically got our dirty little paws into every free networking site there is. Through free marketing that way we doubled our traffic in two months earlier this year…
I’d be curious to hear people’s success stories with LinkedIn. I was excited about the potential when I first joined, but I haven’t really received as much out of it as I thought I would. I’ve been very selective about the people I include in my network, the skills and projects I list, and I’ve written as well as received recommendations.
Long term I could see LinkedIn yielding a couple jobs a year, but does anyone here get more than that? Is anyone using LinkedIn as their primary source for getting gigs?
LinkedIn yes. But I am not sure about other social networks for jobs.
Rajesh Shakya
http://www.rajeshshakya.com
Helping technopreneurs to excel and lead their life!
I know a lot of people who have used LinkedIn to find gigs/work. The site is much more professional than MySpace, Facebook, etc and your profile is in a more resume` style format. Even better, it allows for people to leave you recommendations. It’s a social networking site geared toward professionals.
We have successfully used linkedin. That said we did not sit there and wait for the rain to come. Linkedin is more of a tool that I use to support our sales process. A free salesforce if you will. It keeps track of most of the key people I want to access and reminds me to say hi every so often. That simple reminder to stay in touch has generated signifcant income. That said we have referred work to people through linked in – meaning other people got gig through referrals from us in linked in. So I guess it works.
I’ve got gigs from both Myspace and facebook. I am trying out LinkedIn now.
I’ve gotten at least 5 clients off of MySpace this year alone. The secret is your profile. It only looks unprofessional if you, yes you, make it that way. Anyone with design knowledge can completely overhaul their traditional layout and create a show stopper.
With that in mind, think about how many movies, television shows, bands, independent up and coming artists and yes, even businesses such as doctors are using MySpace. I think you can safely see where there is quite a bit of potential work to be found.
For those of you wanting a more “resume” style profile, you can pull it off on MySpace so easily.
It’s also a good idea to familiarize yourself with designing layouts for others. It could be a new service offered to your clients, something along the lines of “for _______ more I can redesign or set up a MySpace account to blend seamlessly with your website.”
Most freelancers will do anything to get their name and skills in the marketable world. The truth is, you never know where work can and will turn up.
For whatever social network it is you’ve got to remind yourself of the audience on there – are 16 year olds likely to pay you £800 for a website? Also, think by having some sort of profile will you be deemed less professional?
I’m going to give LinkedIn a shot, I just signed up.
http://www.behance.net
It’s invite only at the moment, but it seems to be the be-all-end-all functional social networking tool for creative professionals. It’s clean, to the point, and it’s main purpose is to promote real work.
Networking is a very important key these days. And social networking websites create a very innovative way of connecting with other people that we are interested to get in touch with. But yes, I think MySpace and Friendster (very popular in Asia) is more to find friends or dates. LinkedIn is quite popular these days and I think I’m going to give it a shot.
I have seen a lot of freelance writers who now use myspace as their advertisement page. I love it and have thought about doing this. I will probably give it a try and see how it works. Thanks for the tips.
You may want to try BitWine! I had some luck with it.
For finding professional client business the MySpace way may not be the right thing, but for finding a small freelance gig (like custom MySpace designs) then MySpace and the alikes will come in handy. For reputation management I do suggest creating profile names which differ from your company if the MySpace profile design you create doesn’t fit your business professional appeal.
Hi,
I’m Michele from Italy. I play bass on my Funk/Rock band called “Improponibili” (myspace.com/improponibili).
I found a site with a great idea to find gigs. The site is called SplitGigs (www.splitgigs.com) and I think is a great way to find gigs to play.
Basically they propose the “SplitGig” concept. A SplitGig is an exchange of gigs. I let your band play at my gig, then you return the favor by letting my band play at your gig and the result is an extra gig for both.
With my band we have done what they call “Splitgigs” with other bands and it worked great and I think that a social network dedicated to this concept would be a great thing for Independent bands like us.
Michele
Improponibili (Bass)
p.s. Sorry for my bad english
Yeah!! Splitgigs.com is a great idea!! cool!
I think http://www.splitgigs.com is a great opportunity for all the bands!
Thanks myspace, thanks splitgigs!
Hey, great article. I just posted an article on allfreelance.com – List of Business Networking & Social Networking Sites for Freelancers that might be useful to your readers. Thanks for the great article.
Rachel
LinkeIn is a favourite of mine. Although it can be a hassle – remember to complete your profile as best as you can.
Xing can be quite effective.
i think..