Social Media for Freelancers - A Presentation to the Business of Freelancing Conference, Melbourne, 31 March 2012 by Sarah Stokely.

1. Social Media for Freelancers:
Tips & tools for getting work, getting
read & getting ideas
Business of Freelancing Conference
31 March 2012
by Sarah Stokely (@stokely)
Founder, Communications + Community

2. 3 tips for using social media to get work
1. Think about what your goal is (get more freelance
work?) and from there, who you are targetting
(commissioning editors? your readers? your beat/the
sector you report on?) and tweet stuff that would be
useful to those people, not just self promotion.
2. Follow editors on social media - read their blogs,
follow them on Twitter - get an idea of what they're
interested in at the moment. RESPOND QUICKLY when
they put a call out.
3. Ensure your social media presence (Twitter profile,
blog or LinkedIn) makes it clear what your freelance
niche is. eg Sarah Stokely - open technology and
culture advocate. Tech presenter, 3RRRFM.

3. 4 LinkedIn Tips
1. Fill out your work history (your contacts will get an
update when you change jobs, which is a great way to
launch a freelance career). (also a great way to keep
track of employee movements on your beat!)
2. Selectively ask some of your LinkedIn contacts to write
you a recommendation. Eg an editor who can say how
great you were at delivering articles tailored to their
readers, or delivering in tight turnaround times.
3. Proactively writing recommendtions for others is a
great way to get them to write one for you.
4. When applying for jobs you can include a link to your
LinkedIn recommendations - much quicker & easier
than contacting referees.

4. 5 tips for using social media to get read
1. Link your followers to the work you publish, using a
relevant hashtag (eg #auspol or #adelaide)
2. "Share this" buttons on individual articles on your
website or blog to encourage readers to help promote
your writing
3. Draw attention to great comments or conversations
going on in comments on things you've written, or even
if you've contributed a decent comment yourself
4. If you've had something published behind a paywall,
link to it once it becomes free/unlocked content for
your readers who aren't subscribed.
5. VERY selectively tweet your links to people you think
might be interested enough to retweet you.

5. 3 tools to help you work better
● Pinboard - bookmarking/archiving
● Save links, use descriptions and tags to find/categorise
them & share or make them private.
● Pro account $25/year - Keep the web pages you
bookmarked - forever. GREAT archiving tool.
● Sourcebottle - journos can put out RFIs, find people to
interview, find companies who want to offer reader
giveaways, etc
● Read Later (bookmarklet that sits in your browser
toolbar, so you can save things for later
● Read it Later - save content to read on any of your
devices, even offline. I use it with the Read Later
bookmarklet (Mac). I now can save links in 1 click,
instead of having 20 tabs open at once.

6. 4 ways to find interesting people or
topics on Twitter
1. Pick a hashtag that interests you, search for it on
Followblast.com, and follow the people it shows up as
using that hashtag eg: #qanda #missfisher #auspol #auslaw
#npau
2. When you're at a conference, open up your Twitter client
(eg Tweetdeck) and add a column for tweets using the
conference hashtag - this will let you watch the
backchannel of tweets about & from the conf, and you can
follow the interesting people from the conf if you want
3. Research Twitter live chat events relevant to you like
#agchat, #charityweds - participating will help you find
relevant people to chat with and follow.
4. Find a role model, and follow the people THEY follow
Tweepi "Follow by following" tool (Free)

7. Using lists to find interesting people
● People often compile & publish lists of people to
follow in their chosen area of interest
● Google search for "[keyword] Australia twitter list" and
browse the results!
● Lists can be handpicked (curated lists) like Australian
Legal Tweeters by Amicaecuria
● or created using various social media rating tools
● Examples:
○ Australia Top Twitter influencers (uses Peer Index
rating system)
○ Jenius' list of top 100 food Tweeters (uses Klout
rating system)
● You can also create or subscribe to lists in Twitter, eg 7.30
Report journalists or the @aujournos Twitter account
list of Australian journalists.

8. 3 tips for quick Twitter tuneup
1. Turn off email notifications!
● By default, Twitter sends an email notification every time
someone follows you, sends you an @reply or a direct message.
It's an email overload. Go into your Twitter settings and turn off
these email notifications.
● Note: I have left the email notification of DMs on, as I find for me
it's the quickest way to get notified, either when I'm on my
laptop or iPhone.

9. 3 tips for quick Twitter tuneup
2. Simplify/automate everyday management
● Instead of email notifications, use a dedicated column in your
Twitter client to show you @replies and DMs. Or set up a visual or
audio notification if you keep Twitter in the background.
● Use an auto-follow back tool like Tweepi to reciprocate by
adding people automatically when they follow you. Once you set
it up, you don't need to do any manual followbacks again. (You
might not want to autofollow back if you're trying to keep your
Twitter follow list small/selective. But if you're new on Twitter &
trying to grow a list of people to follow, it can be useful.)

10. 3 tips for quick Twitter tuneup
3. Clean up the list of people you follow
● Manual pruning of your follow list on Twitter is time
consuming and annoying.
● Twitcleaner will run an analysis of the people you follow
and let you bulk unfollow them, according to criteria like:
○ Dodgy - spam, duplicate links & tweets, etc
○ Absent - No updates in a month, fewer than 10 tweets,
deleted & suspended accounts.
○ Repetitive - High numbers of duplicate tweets or links
○ Non-Responsive - No interaction, those that follow back
< 10%, streams that are all feeds from other sources.

11. Thanks!
Sarah Stokely
Founder, Communications + Community
Twitter: @stokely
Blog: www.sarahstokely.com/blog
Email: sarah@commspluscommunity.com