The digital market is growing. More and more people are taking their businesses online, or starting up new businesses. In fact, in order for a business to be successful, you have to have an online presence. This is great news for writers, graphic designers and any other creative person who can add something to a website – if you can market yourself correctly there’s a huge amount of paying work to be had.
However, there’s also a huge number of creatives out there and the competition is fierce. If you want to get yourself a steady stream of work, you need to think about what it is that business owners are actually looking for.
Client Offering
When a business owner engages with a creative person to do some work on their site, their end goal isn’t actually to have a site populated with gorgeous words and imagery. Of course, this is a great bonus! The actual end goal of a business owner is to drive more traffic to their site, and to convert that traffic into sales once they are there. This is what you need to bear in mind when you are looking for clients.
The best way to ensure that as many people as possible are finding your clients’ sites, is to ensure that they are optimized for SEO. This means ensuring that when someone keys in a relevant search term, the search engines algorithm returns your clients’ sites at the top of the results.
This can be a little tricky. Google, which is the leader in search engine algorithms, is constantly refining how its algorithm works and what it is looking for in its top ranking results. It can be complex and time consuming to keep on top of, which is frustrating because as a creative you want to be spending your time on what you’re good at, not worrying about algorithms!
It’s a good idea to have a working knowledge of SEO practices, but it is also possible to outsource the ‘heavy lifting’ through a process called white labelling. This essentially means that you can offer SEO optimization as part of your package, but a third party is doing the SEO work on your behalf. For more information on white labelling, take a look at www.clickintelligence.co.uk.
Marketing Yourself
Knowledge of Google’s algorithms also applies to your own company’s site. If a potential lead is looking for someone within your field of expertise, you’ll want your page to come up first in the results. Try adding a blog to your site, and ensure that each of your posts is relevant to your area, and uses keywords that your target audience might use.
A lot of creatives also find that they get a great deal of business through platforms like Upwork and Fiverr. These sites are hubs for skilled professionals, and savvy business owners know that they can find everything they need on these sites and at a great price too. If you can build yourself a profile that gets you views, you’ll have a great stream of income.
