For any small business owners and virtual workers such as myself, networking can be the best thing for us. If you are not the sort of person that enjoys the face to face networking events up and down the country at breakfast time, the way forward has to be online networking.

Because competition is so fierce, landing consistent new clients isn’t just about talent. It relies heavily on who you know, and how well connected you are.

Social media can expand your freelance network no end and yield opportunities that you’d never find elsewhere. But just like building up your client list, it takes investment, hard work, and time.

Social networks can be useful in different ways. On one hand, they are a marketing platform where you can share and promote your work. On the other, they serve as rich community resources for freelancers. Once you’ve built and cultivated your network, a simple tweet or update can yield valuable wisdom and connections.

Social media , unlike traditional marketing methods, have benefits that outweigh the risks if you use the services wisely.The most obvious benefits are increased customer loyalty and engagement, your business will gain exposure not just through your own advertisements, but through past clients and friends gained whilst using the services.

Take Twitter for instance. Since joining Twitter 15 months ago we have made invaluable friendship and connections with local people and businesses, we have found out about services and companies we didn’t know existed, we have learnt about news articles before they have reached the tv and we have gained clients that are still with us now.

The most common advice we received from people using social media was to use it to engage your customers in conversation, not just sell your services, offer information and advice to people if asked,  tell people about the services you can offer, but don’t hard sell. The quickest way to lose followers has to be the automated tweets going out once an hour with the same old message. Where’s the personality and involvement in that?

From monitoring our Google Analytics recently, 46% of our traffic actually reaches our website via Social Media. The two biggest referrers are Twitter and Facebook. We think those figures speak for themselves.

If you run a business and want to invest more time in social media, talk to us about how we can help. From the smallest thing such as designing your Twitter background to managing your entire social media accounts on your behalf, there are a number of ways we can help you.