Karina from Girl About Social shares her top tips and advice for as a freelance social media with us to ensure our strategies are on point for 2023.
What are your 3 top tips for Instagram?
My first tip is you don’t need to post daily – I would recommend 2-3x a week, but even if you manage once, it doesn’t matter. Focus on quality over quantity. Planning out posts in advance and scheduling them allows you to give your audience a reason to come back to your page every day.
My second tip is always to engage with your audience – Social media should never be a one-way conversation, often I see brands forgetting to be social on social media and that’s where the problem lies. Social media is a great way to build up your brand and connect with your audience, however, it can be time-consuming. Take time to engage and inspire your community to convert them into your followers.
Engage: I would advise spending 30 minutes a day engaging with your community by commenting and liking posts
Fit the 30 minutes into your day – Perhaps when you are making a cup of tea, eating your lunch, or if you have 5 minutes in between clients.
Inspire: Often brands try the “spray and pray” tactic, they create content and hope their audience will engage, but this type of tactic doesn’t work.
Creating shareable content will allow you to get more leads and convert those followers into clients.
My third tip is to remove the pressure – It’s so easy to compare yourself to other accounts. Remember social media is only a snapshot of someone’s life. Please don’t worry about your following count… It’s a vanity metric. Seeing you have loads of followers might feel good, but that metric doesn’t measure your success. To build a successful business you should focus on quality over quantity.
What is the most underused social channel and why?
For me personally, it’s “Like To Know It” [LTK] – I feel more content creators should be utilising this app to manage their customer journey when tagging their product purchases. I use this app regularly when my favourite fashion creators share their looks of the day. Nothing frustrates me more when a content creator makes you scroll through their story highlights or feed to find codes or links to their outfits.
What is 1 piece of advice for people considering becoming a freelance social media manager?
Network, network, network: I can’t stress this enough. Join a local business womens network, and Facebook groups and engage on social media. Expand your network. LinkedIn is your best friend: Invest the time in creating a great profile, request testimonials from past clients and employers, connect, network and engage as much as possible with recruiters and hiring managers. This is the first place that they post their open vacancies so it’s wise to keep checking their profiles throughout the week.
As they say, it’s never what you know but whom you know.
How do you plan out your time between projects?
I like to always have projects in the pipeline especially when I know when a project is due to come to an end. I like to have open conversations with clients around 2 months before the contract is due to finish to find out whether there’s potential to expand our time working together or if they need support on upcoming projects.
As a freelance social media manager I am very active on LinkedIn, and I constantly keep my job alerts on and apply for roles all the time, I think a lot of people assume that you’ll get a call back about every job that you apply for but that just isn’t the case. I could apply for 20 freelance positions and may only hear back about one so I find it so important to always keep my finger on the pulse.
What are 3 tools you live by as a freelance social media manager?
Canva – Where would we be without that app for a quick mock-up template
Notes – I use it to mock up captions, jot down ideas in the middle of the night, create to-do lists… No clue what I would do without that app
Instagram – It’s an obvious one but where would be without the oracle of content creation
Are you looking to grow your agency or become a freelance social media manager? Women in Agencies is home to over 150 incredible women within the agency space offering support, advice, community and connections! Find out more about how to get involved here and become a member.