How to Find Clients as a Social Media Manager

If you know how to market your skills, getting clients is possible even when you are a beginner social media manager.

All clients need is someone to help them achieve their social media marketing goals. To convince them to hire you, you must prove how you can help them reach those goals.

You will appeal to clients if you

• Offer relevant services
• Provide helpful content
• Know how to pitch

Provided you are dedicated, you can do this and succeed despite your expertise, and that`s what this content will help you learn.

Find a Niche

A niche helps you focus on the appropriate audience. If you are a general social media manager, you can`t know the audience to target, which results in attracting irrelevant people who don`t need your services.

People have different needs and as a marketer, you will attract them and have a high chance to drive conversions if your business satisfies them.

A niche is a specialty, and there are various ways to choose one.

You can niche down according to your profession. For instance, if you are a lawyer, you can offer law services. Then create social media content targeted to that and attract interested people.

Another way is thinking about your talents or interests. If you love poetry, for example, you can create social media channels around that and create content targeting poetry lovers. You will attract poets who need social media managers because you are related to their needs.

Besides, you can do market research and identify businesses that need a social media presence in your area. That could be restaurants, wood workshops, maize mill companies, bakeries, etc.

Then create social media accounts and content showing how you can help businesses increase clients.  You will attract people and convince them to purchase your services.

Here is more about how to choose a niche for your online business.

Create Social Media Accounts

People will trust your social media management services if you can prove it, and that`s by creating social media accounts. That`s where you can create content and showcase your skills to potential clients

However, don`t be on any social media platform. Choose the ones that your audience spends most of their time. That will increase your chances of attracting people in need of your services.

That`s because people choose social media platforms that suit their needs or preferences. For example, if someone is looking for a job, LinkedIn is the place they will focus on. And if they love watching and listening to music, YouTube and Instagram are some of the platforms you will find them.

Therefore, put yourself in your audience position and think of the social media platforms you would spend time. Brainstorm various relevant platforms and list them.

Then do competitor research to know where related social media managers promote their services.

You can use tools like Buffer for this exercise. Just type “your niche” plus “social media managers” in the tool and you will find many of them and their social media platforms.

Potential clients spend their time on relevant social media platforms because that enables them to get their products or services closer to their audience and increase sales. And if you market your services on such platforms, you will increase the chances of landing clients.

Publish Helpful Content

Image by Ron Lach: Pexels

Creating content that helps your audience solve their needs helps build authority and trust. This enables you to attract people interested in your services.

People will follow you for the benefits they get, which makes it easy to convince them to buy or opt into an email list. And if people see the following and the engagement you get, they will believe and hire you so you can help them attract clients to their businesses, too.

To create valuable content, research your target audience to know their persona and struggles.

You can do that by checking how they interact on relevant social media groups.

For instance, if you sell social media marketing courses, you can join relevant groups to see interactions. That helps identify their struggles, which can be a difficulty in making sales on social media.

In that case, you can create content showing how to convince people to buy goods on social media. People will follow you to learn the tactics and increase sales.

That`s how you can attract people and persuade them to hire you so you can manage their accounts.

However, ensure your content aligns with the social media platforms you target. Each platform has a different content style. For example, if you promote your business on LinkedIn, you should focus on long-form text content. If your target platform is TikTok, create short-form Video content.

Timing is the other factor that helps increase followers and engagement. That involves posting content when your audience is online.

You can know that using your social media platform's analytics. Each platform has a built-in analytic tool to enable you to see when your content gets the most engagement.

Create a Website

A website helps you appear on the search engine every time someone searches. This enables you to attract people in need of social media management services.

You can connect your social media platforms to the website and make it easy for people to see your content.

You can also use your website as a portfolio to showcase your social media platforms` performance in one place making it easy to show your clients how you can help them achieve their goals.

What`s good is that you don`t need technical experience to create websites. With tools like Namecheap, you can use drag-and-drop features to create a professional website in minutes only for $158 per month billed yearly.

Here is how to create a website with Namecheap.

If you are running out of cash, Blogger is a better tool to help you create a free website. You can even monetize your site with Google Ads for free or do affiliate marketing and increase your income.

After creating your website, create a blog section where you can regularly create helpful content relevant to your niche.

If, for example, you sell clothes, you can create content about the latest fashions or how to choose the best clothes for their events. Then add calls to action within the articles persuading people to purchase your social media management services.

However, blog content is different from social media content.

Blog content is long-form and should engender expertise, experience, authority, and trust in the audience.

To achieve that, create goals, and then research your audience`s intent and create content that satisfies it.

If your goal is increasing brand awareness, create informative content teaching people how to do social media marketing.

You will attract people searching for ways to promote their businesses on social media and increase your chances of being hired.

To make your blog content rank on relevant searches, you must do keyword research to know what people type when searching for relevant content.

Check out this content and learn how to do keyword research.

Then logically incorporate the keywords in your content so the search engines understand your content focus and rank it on relevant queries.

To increase your website rank, ensure to regularly post content and promote it on your social media platforms. This will help showcase it to many people and drive traffic and conversions.

See how I made a simple website that makes money.

Partner with Other Social Media Managers

Partnering with other social media clients helps showcase your services to a large audience and increase the potential of converting.

To get the best from partnerships, choose relevant social media managers with good followings. That`s how you can expose your business to many people.

To find people to partner with, join relevant social media groups and post helpful content to build trust.

Then find social media managers related to your niche and engage with them.

You can search for social media managers in these groups by engaging with the social media groups` posts.

When someone posts content, comment. But ensure the comments are helpful.

For example, if someone posts a comment like,

“If you want to be a social media manager, post content regularly. That helps people know about your services and persuades them to buy.”

Your comment can be,

“Also ensure your content aligns with your audience persona and intent. That helps resonate with them, making it easy to convince them to hire you”

Such a comment makes people regard you as an expert and builds trust and authority, making it easy to get partnerships.

Do not post something like, “Yes, that`s true”. That doesn`t show expertise and can`t help you convince people to network with you.

Keep posting for like two weeks to build trust, then examine the social media managers with many followers and reach out.

You can send short messages like, 

Hello “the recipient`s name,” I have been following you for a while and I love the content you create. Through your social media management tips both on social media, blogs, and emails, I learned how to create a social media management business and landed my first client within three months.

I, therefore, seek to collaborate with you on a social media post. It would help increase my brand awareness and grow my career.

That will enable the person to consider you because you complimented them and politely told them why you need to partner with them.

Messages like these won`t cut through: “Hello, man, I love your work. Can we partner? I hope it would help grow our audience and career”.

If you get someone to connect with, you can collaborate on a piece of content and post on each one`s account, not forgetting to tag one another. That will showcase your business to prospects and increase the potential to be hired.

See more about how to create collaborative content here.

You can also convince partners to recommend you to clients whenever possible.

Whenever these partners have more work, they can refer clients to you or sign deals to give you a percentage of the jobs` income.

Join Freelance Websites

Need a specific place to easily connect with social media clients? Freelance writing websites are the choice.

On freelance writing websites, you will find social media clients of various niches so you can choose what suits you.

However, since you can easily search for social media management jobs on these websites, there are many job seekers, making them too competitive.

To increase the chances of landing jobs, create an attractive profile and learn how to write compelling applications.

Your job proposals should show your qualifications and experience, and how you can help the clients solve their needs and reach their goals.

Here is content to help you learn how to write job proposals that intrigue clients to hire you.

Advertising your freelance writing profiles is another way to showcase your services and attract people to hire you.

After creating your freelance writing profile, share it on social media so people know about it.

Besides, you can create tutorial blog posts related to your niche and include calls to action convincing people to buy your services. When your content ranks and drives traffic, you will increase the potential of getting clients.

The best thing about freelance writing websites is that you cannot be scammed. The clients cannot get the services until they pay, and the client`s money is stored in escrow where the freelancer is only paid after completing the projects. So, both parties are safe on these websites.

Some of the best freelance writing websites are

• Fiverr
• Upwork
• Guru
• Legiit
• Indeed

Here is more about how to advertise your freelance services on Fiverr and increase clients.

Do Cold Pitching

Photo by geralt: Pixabay

Unlike in freelance writing websites where you compete with many other social media managers, cold pitching involves choosing the businesses you wish to work with.

To use this method to search for clients, you need to analyze businesses that may need your services. They don`t have to show that they need your services.

For example, if you are in the clothing niche, choose clothing websites. Then find the email addresses and the business owners` names to contact.

Sometimes the owners` names and emails are hidden. You can type the business name on LinkedIn and search. If the company is on the platform, you will find the workers` names and job positions.

The other way is using email marketing tools like Email Hunter.

Paste the company name in the tool and click on search for emails. You will get all the email addresses and people related to the company.

You can get a free 25-email search and 50 verification credits per month, but if you purchase a paid plan, you can search for many more emails.

After getting the emails and the right people to contact, create personalized emails introducing your services, and showing how you can help them in their business. That can be helping them increase brand awareness and sales to their TikTok marketing. If all goes well, you will get hired.

See more about creating cold pitches that get high open rates and conversions.

Ask for Referrals

If you get your first client, that`s your chance to find more clients.

The clients might have friends who need social media management services. You can ask them to connect you to people who need social media managers.

However, some might not do so because of fear of competition. To convince them, offer deals. You can offer to create a free-two-week or one-month content if they refer you to a client.

But ensure the offer doesn`t take much of your time and make you less productive in other tasks. You can use tools like GetResponse to generate and auto-post content on various social media platforms.

Fellow social media managers can also help refer you to clients.

You can volunteer to help them create their social media tasks. Then ask for their feedback, and if they like your content, ask them to refer you to clients if they have many that they can`t handle.

Learn How to Find Clients and Be a Successful Social Media Manager

You will attract many clients and thrive as a social media manager only if you know how to market yourself. And that involves learning the platforms your clients use.

To identify your clients and where they spend time, choose a niche and create intriguing social media profiles. Then create targeted content that aligns with their persona and solves their intent.

Also, build a website and create SEO-optimized content to increase your rank and attract people interested in your services.

Besides, join social media websites to apply for jobs, and also do cold pitching.

When you get clients, seek for referrals to increase your client base, and your social media manager career will grow.