Last updated on September 30th, 2020
You learned the graphic design skills after practicing for months and creating some fantastic designs. You might have created many masterpieces and worked on some critical projects as well. But that is just the first step. The next big step is to promote your skills so that you can build a solid base of loyal clients. In this day and age, when social media plays a vital role in brand promotion, you shouldn’t let any stone unturned in leveraging the power of social media for reaching out to more clients.
Today, hardly any business is out of the realm of social media. Marketers give priority to using different social channels such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter to target audience in many ways. And this can also work well for you as a graphic designer. Most established designers, who are seldom out of work, are recognized amongst clients. Thanks to their constant use of social media!
The potential of different social channels in bringing your small graphic designer business into the limelight is enormous. In the US, there were 243.6 million social network users in 2018. Facebook alone had 2.3 billion active monthly users as of January 2019. Even if you can explore a tiny portion of this massive base of the users, you can win a significant number of clients all the time for your freelance design business.
However, the designers who are starting new may lack in skills to best explore the power of social media to drive attention, traffic, and, ultimately, clients. This blog attempts to address the issues that graphic designers face at the beginning of their career when using social media to get clients.
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Pay Heed To These Tips To Leverage Social Media As A Designer
01. Project Yourself As An Authority
Remember that clients want only expert designers to handle their design projects. After all, logo design, brochures, business cards, and such other designs are their identities amongst target customers. They cannot risk handing out the project to someone inexperienced and novice.
So, every client wants to check the experience, design skills, and background of a designer before hiring. This should prompt you to take steps for projecting yourself as an expert in your field. Create your social media page on different channels and post content regularly.
To do that, flood different social media with your expert opinion on issues related to graphic designs. The best way to ensure that is to write blog posts to solve the problems that designers or clients face. Write in an authoritative tone to make a lasting impact on the readers. But use a variety of channels.
Facebook and LinkedIn are homes to several groups dedicated to graphic design issues. Join them and give your expert opinion very often regarding the problems, business, and industry. Soon you will make a name for yourself due to your expert advice. Consequently, more people will share your comments and profile on social media. Use Twitter to send small chunks of information regularly to the audience regarding various design topics.
Similarly, use Google+ to finding out online graphic designers’ communities. These communities have thousands of engaged users. You should join some of them to let people have an inkling of what you do. The chances are that some clients will find you on these groups.
02. Use Storytelling As A Tool
Everyone loves to hear stories. You should explore this human weakness for stories to your advantage. In fact, social media is a big platform to tell a story. Consider your design expertise as a brand that has its own ups and downs.
Use your struggles and successes in your career as the basis for creating relatable stories. Marketers and advertisers have been making good use of this strategy for years to catch their audiences’ attention.
But storytelling is not just about sharing your experience. It is also about expressing the struggles and achievements of other designers. You can share people’s or other designers’ snippets of experiences on your blogs or any platform to give a message to the audience.
The value of stories for promoting a brand and your design careers is now well established. Even Instagram calls itself as a storytelling platform. You should explore its Instagram Stories that lets you use the features such as hashtags and locations. You can tell your story using these features.
Use Facebook Stories also to create something special for your audience. You can demonstrate your expertise and convey a message using this storytelling platform. Similarly, you can explore Snapchat Stories to create your story of career and share your experience and create filters using Snapchat filter maker. All these measures will surely help you project you as a brand amid your audience.
03. Give Buying Option To Potential Customers
When leveraging social media to give a boost to your career as a designer, another thing to keep in mind is to provide purchasing options to the audience. You may have several channels opened to promote your brand on social media. When potential clients come to those pages, give them just one button to click for purchasing your graphic design services.
Make sure that your social media is your easy point of sale. Therefore, embed buttons that take clients directly to your design website or a profile. Many social channels have also ensured these buttons recently for users.
When using Instagram, make sure that you use this site’s feature to embed sales information. Give links to your website as well. Similarly, if you use Pinterest, you should create Buyable Pins that take potential clients of your services to your profile or website.
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04. Post Videos To Showcase Your Skills
Video is a powerful tool to send a message across the audience. Everyone loves visuals, especially moving visuals, as they are less stressful to watch. Plenty of video options are available to you today. You can use videos on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, and other platforms to create your message, expertise, and discuss issues on your video channel.
Talking about videos! Do not forget the live streaming as a way to bring clients to your design website. Plenty of studies have shown that people want to watch videos, especially live streaming, as a way to get updated information.
You can enhance your client engagement by posting videos and sharing your views ‘live’. Today, most social channels, such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, offer live streaming. Just tell your audience in advance about the date and time of going live to discuss an issue.
During the live streaming, make sure that there is a dedicated Q&A session, where you can engage your audience directly by answering their queries in real-time. So, take maximum advantage of this visual medium to drive the attention of clients to your new design business.
05. Take Advantage Of Influencers
Influencers are those celebrities who boast of a massive fan following on their social media accounts. Such social media influencers are your opportunity to get social leverage. They also have some authority over a particular field.
Therefore, first, find out who are the influencers who have earned a name in the field of the graphic design industry. They may be present on various channels, try to get in touch with them.
When you somehow catch the influencers’ attention, you can request them to have a look at your expertise and design profile or website. If they oblige and mention your name or link in their posts, you reach to their millions of followers immediately. In that way, you will be taking advantage of their massive following on social media.
But the most important thing is to find out the right influencers who relate to your audience. Go to their websites and find out if they are the right people to promote your services. When approaching the influencers, always send a message from your business account to make the right impression on them.
Reach out to as many influencers as you can to explore this tactic. In this way, the chances are that many clients will look at you when they hire a professional graphic designer for their projects.
06. Do Not Forget To Target Local Clients
Most graphic designers usually target clients to drive them to a website from far away corners of the world. While all such clients are essential for your career growth, do not ignore the local clients. They are equally crucial to your business, especially when you are starting new. Make sure that you pay attention to this location marketing.
So, while writing your posts, make sure that you tag your location as well. You can also do Geotagging your location to give a boost to your SEO rankings. Whenever potential clients search for that location, they can find your services.
They can spot the locality of your graphic design business. Another option when exploring the local clients is ad targeting. You can place ads on social media platforms to help clients trace your location. You can use Facebook Ads to target your location with ads.
So, these tips are the keys to take out your graphic design skills to thousands of potential clients on social media. Also, check for the missing strategic steps if you are already on the path of using social channels.
But how about benefiting from an expert’s advice on how to use social media to promote your design career? Well, Designhill, a leading creative marketplace, conducted a webinar on the topic “How to leverage social media as designers” on November 14, 2019. Blesson Varghese was the guest speaker.
Click here to read his full interview on- The Ultimate Guide: How to Leverage Social Media As A Designer by Blesson Varghese.
Blesson is a brand identity designer and founder of Bless Creatics. He has worked for clients from across the world, getting a majority of them from Instagram. He is passionate about building a community of fellow and budding designers by providing insights into design and business strategies.
Wrapping Up
Social media is undoubtedly a powerful way to give a boost to your career as a designer. A graphic designer can use social channels in many ways to drive clients’ attention and convert them into buyers of your graphic design services. You should project yourself as an expert, use storytelling as a tool to promote your services, use social influencers, and target local clients to bring them to your design website.
