3 Actionable Tips to Build Your Credibility as a Freelancer

Every freelancer must’ve thought of this before: “How can I build a reputation for myself and earn the trust of potential clients?”

In today’s context, where “working from home” has become the new normal, freelancing is a popular choice for both marketing graduates and professionals as it ensures flexibility in schedule through contracted works.

However, not everyone knows how to build credibility as a freelancer. Especially when it’s what comes to the minds of creative agencies or businesses as they are eager to hire someone with an established reputation.

At the end of the day, it’s not just ending your contract and starting a new one. Rather, it’s about gaining trust with your existing clients and from there, attracting new customers without having to feel exhausted. So, how can you establish your credibility and get more clients?

Here are a few tips to jot down in your notebook:

• Tip 1: Position Yourself as a Business
• Tip 2: Social Media = Branding Powerhouse
• Tip 3: Set the Right Rates for your Service

Tip 1: Personal Branding: Position Yourself as a Business

Clients want their investment to be worthy of the results. When thinking of sourcing projects for freelancers, the last thing they’d want is a falsified marketer who guarantees nothing but empty promises. In order to avoid falling into such situations, a difference you can make here when approaching clients is to prepare a strong portfolio followed by a professional work attitude.

Start with a professional website as your portfolio

Your website stands as proof of your ability to reach the goals that your clients want. Not only does it help position your brand as a business, having a website can also help you win clients by gaining their trust with your expertise.

After coming up with a short domain name, it’s important that you catch your clients’ attention with a professional portfolio design as this helps organize your content and ease you out of the editing process. Check out our blog post on the best tips to make a perfect online portfolio for yourself.

Make sure you customize the theme to reflect your personal brand and only choose your best work to keep in your portfolio.

When putting together the content on your website, keep in mind who your clients are. What are the problems that they’re trying to solve and how do you provide value? It’s best to slow down and think of how to market your business properly so that your website is tailored to the right customers.

For example, if your service includes social media management and strategies, within the home page, the content should be tailored to express your services with targeted keywords of “social media strategy”, “social media audit”, “paid social ads”, or “editorial content calendar”. It’s also important that you include testimonials of your past clients to show your consistency in delivering the results.

All in all, your website should be answering these questions:

• What is your expertise?
• Who are your past and current clients and what do they say about you?
• How do you deliver the highest quality of work to your clients?

Maintain work ethics and professionalism

Besides having a strong portfolio, when presenting your brand as a business, setting rules and guidelines for transparency in communication is also important as there’s an impact on everything that you show the clients.

If you want to build your credibility, being consistent with your values and work habits helps create a long-lasting impression. Consistency will allow your clients to understand what they should expect by working with you.

Let’s say you receive an offer to work on a social media management project. By asking the client the right questions related to how you’ll audit the business’s social activities and what the deliverables are on an agreement, you can establish your credibility and show your expertise, which is exactly what the client wants.

Tip 2: Your Social Media = Your Branding Powerhouse

Along with a business website, it’s time you create a social media content marketing strategy for your brand. What has progressed so much since the beginning of the pandemic is the way technology transforms how like-minded creators come together.

Recently, with the introduction of the voice-only network app called Clubhouse, there are more than ever opportunities for freelancers to learn and adapt from this creative community. Clubhouse users can choose to join various clubs based on their communication needs.

Here are some tips for you to start leveling up the social game.

Keeping up with the trends

As the social media landscape keeps evolving, you as a freelancer need to know how to utilize the trends for your benefit. Take a look at what type of content is currently viral and join the conversation.

By staying up-to-date, not only are you making yourself relevant, but you also show the world that you’re comfortable sharing qualified knowledge. Having the chance to voice your opinion, you’re open to expanding your network with fellow freelancers and possibly, future clients.

Most successful freelancers are putting their effort into crafting their content on short-video platforms like Tik Tok or Instagram Reels to drive their followers’ engagement. While many may find posting Reels rather daunting, it’s recommended especially for those who work on the creative side if you want to get featured and connect with potential customers.

Think of your “tribe”

When a person clicks the “follow” button, they have just joined the tribe. From here, it’s your turn to interact and keep in touch with them, your followers.

Put another goal in your list to answer questions from your audience, open a room of discussion for your members right on social media so that you know how they are feeling about problems that you have yet to recognize.

Keep your audience educated

Your content is your pitch. The way that you turn your platform into an educational playground is much more trusted than besides testimonials.

The golden 80/20 rule applies to creating and balancing content for your social media. Keeping 20 percent of your content to promotion, and dedicating the remaining 80 percent to presenting what you value and educating your audience.

Some content that you can save up to build the next time you post:

• How-to guides
• Free consultation and audit
• Features of other professional freelancers
• Online webinars
• In-depth social courses

Tip 3: Show Your Value: Setting The Right Rates For Your Service

For early-career freelancers, especially those who are just starting out, it’s common to feel pressured to charge less than industry average to your clients.

While it may sound ideal in the beginning, but later, in reality, you’ll realize how much you’ll lose if you keep charging a low rate for quality work. Monetary loss aside, this can lower your credibility and limit the opportunities to work with high-profile clients.

Imagine that you receive an important project requiring multiple strategies and writing to be done. A client approaches and asks for your rates (possibly per hour) with high hopes. If you’re quoting a rate lower than how the project should be valued, you’re just sending a message showing your lack of confidence in achieving the results the client wants.

In this case, although it may sound stressful, try to follow these steps on how you can present your ideal rates to your clients:

• Determine your niche and make an assessment of the minimum amount to cover your services.
• Do some research about how much you should charge your clients. You may consult other freelancers in the freelancing community. Just ask!
• Set your goals and come up with a fixed base rate. One way is to include a specific pricing board on your business website based on these common types of pricing:
  • Hourly-based
  • Project-based
  • Value-based

Now… It’s Time for You to Act

By following the tips above, you should be able to build credibility and expand your freelance business network. You should also think of how these suggestions align with your personal branding strategies.

In the meantime, we encourage you to check out our upcoming event Diversity in Digital Career Summit this April 22nd, 2021 at 6 pm EST.

There will be workshops on branding and content strategies for freelancers and entrepreneurs, so make sure you stay tuned—follow our LinkedIn and Instagram for latest updates!