10 Social Media Productivity Hacks for Freelance Writers

With more than 2 billion people who have social media accounts across the globe, the social media is here to stay and will remain a market with a lot of potential.

While this large number of social media accounts is encouraging, it’s a scary one for freelance writers.

Scary?

Yes, we live in a world where according to the AdWeek, 41% of online time is spent on social media.

This means that most activities of many people are only limited to the social media alone.

Though as a freelance writer, it provides a great opportunity for you, if you can use it well.

That’s it – you need to know the social media productivity hacks for freelance writers.

Not trying to sound too pessimistic.

As a freelance writer, your productivity on the social media is on the line if you can’t ask yourself these questions:

How productive are the long periods of time spent on the social media?

How easy is it to stay productive on the social media as a freelance writer?

Are there any tricks that could aid your productivity even when you share updates on various social media platforms?

Can the social media be a great avenue to attract more clients?

How can you build relationships on social media that can surcharge your earnings?

Well, here are the answers.

10 Social Media Productivity Hacks for Freelance Writers

Believe it or not, the reality is that if you do not plan your social media activities well, you will not only regret it but see that your time is spent doing nothing.

With these productivity hacks, your presence as a freelance writer on the social media will never be the same.

1. Map Out a Strategy

The Social media is a place that needs a lot of plans to succeed.

As a freelance writer, you need to map out a strategy that will fit what you offer. Take, for instance, you are a Tech specialist; you should map out strategies in this line.

Test your Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat. Your strategy should include when you want to post, the platforms you want to use, and the groups you want to follow, etc.

With a good strategy in place, you will able to promote your work, land well-paying clients, and your productivity will soar higher.

2. Figure Out Who You Want to Follow

The greatest mistake you can make as a freelance writer on the social media is not following the right set of people.

You should not follow everybody, but follow only those that matter to your business. Following the right set of people means identifying influencers in your niche, whom could aid your career.

It involves checking out groups on the various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram and so on, where fellow freelance writers hang out and socialize and join them too.

Likewise, you should follow writing blogs/websites that share what you do often and motivate you to become better at it too.

3. Build One-to-One Relationship

Relationship matters. In fact, social media relationships matter to you as a freelance writer. In building a relationship, you should:

> Reveal your identity: As a freelance writer, you should display your profile picture on your platforms. This gives potential clients a sense that you are human, and not a robot.

> Be friendly: In your interactions with fellow users, you should be friendly with them and treat them in a likable manner (like, and share their comments). It goes a long way to making your relationship grow.

As a freelance writer, the relationships you build matters and aid your productivity.

4. Be Smart

Many discussions hold on the social media platforms daily.

As a freelance writer, content matters a lot to you. (You need this to post regularly on your blog if you have one, and also write quality content for your clients always).

So, the social media platforms offer a great avenue to get ideas for your content. This does not mean you are plagiarizing their work or been lazy to research. Rather it saves you a lot of time, and makes your contents reader-friendly, and trending.

Most discussions on the social media platforms are avenues for the freelance writer to tap in. Be smart, and your productivity will soar higher than you have ever imagined.

5. Re-Use Contents

Have you ever come across a content that has Thousands of likes and shares on Facebook and Instagram? If you have, then that’s an untapped goldmine for a freelance writer.

Contents like this can be re-used to fit in what you want you to intend to write for your clients or as a guest post. It’s through these social media platforms that the level of engagement of a particular post can be measured.

After all, you can’t compare a post with a thousand likes, with that with just ten likes. The same way a post that got shared by users multiple number of times can’t be compared with that of fewer shares.

While using the social media as a freelance writer, take a look at some of these popular posts, re-use the contents for your purpose, and see the results you will get.

6. Plan Your Time

It’s said: “He who fails to plan, plans to fail.” The recipe for failure on the social media is not planning your time.

To stay productive, you must plan your time well. Evaluate the various social media platforms, and the time and activities you want to carry out on each. Do not engage yourself in unnecessary chats, comments and hang-outs that will not aid your productivity.

Remember you only have 24 hours in a day to complete your assignments. Make the best use of them.

7. Be Disciplined

Imagine yourself in a situation, whereby you have a guest post to send to a top blog in your niche, the deadline for a client’s work is knocking at the door, and you still want to reach out to more clients.

Then suddenly an old buddy of yours got in touch with you via one of the social media platforms. What do you do?

The truth is that most people will be distracted and would have totally forgotten the barrage of tasks at hand. As a freelance writer, your productivity on the social media is directly proportional to your discipline.

If you are not disciplined, you will not be productive. Always be disciplined, know when to socialize, comment, reach out to more clients, and perform your various tasks. With discipline, you will be productive.

8. Be Selective

Many freelance writers make the mistake of wanting to belong to all social media platforms they can find out there. This is not only unproductive but time-consuming.

There are lots of social media platforms in the world today, and you can’t be everywhere at the same time. So, you should choose and use the right social media platform unique to you and productive for your business.

When you streamline the platforms you sign up to, it will go a long way to aid your productivity.

9. Schedule and Monitor Updates

No matter how you try, it will be difficult to catch up with the discussions on the various platforms and monitor them, combined with your freelance writing activities.

To make things easier, you need to schedule and monitor updates with the necessary tools. Some of these tools such as Hootsuite enable you to share various updates across many platforms at different times.

All you need to do is to schedule the updates, and everything will move on fine. You should monitor the updates, by checking out who is following you, who liked your page, the number of views your profile has garnered and lots more.

This helps to keep you on track as you are sure of the impacts your activities on the social media is having.

10. Be Patient

This cannot be over-emphasized. As a freelance writer, you should never be in haste to achieve results.

Results will come, though it takes time, hard-work and dedication. In fact, sometimes you will carry out some of these activities, and yet you will not get the results at the beginning. If you do, you might be forced to quit, and that will be the end of your freelance writing career.

With patience, you will see how productive these activities will be at the end.

On a Final Note

The social media provides a lot of opportunities for freelance writers. It helps you reach out to more clients, build more relationships, have a feel of what people are discussing and the list is endless.

But if you do not use the social media platforms well, it will not only be distracting but make you unproductive.

As a freelance writer, you have to keep a balance between your social activities on the platform and your business. With these productivity hacks, your activities on the social media will make you surcharge your productivity daily.

Over to you –

Do you think the social media is distracting to freelance writers? Which of these productivity hacks do you think can aid you to stay on track in your business as a freelance writer?

Make your submissions in the comment box.