Whether you consider yourself a Virtual Assistant, a Content Writer, a Graphic Designer or what have you, if you work online from your home office (or a coffee shop) using technology to connect with and conduct your work with your clients, you are a virtual professional business owner. As such, you need clients to earn money, so you need to know how to go about finding and landing clients.
Blogging Toward a Full Client List for Finding and Landing Clients
You have a website, you have some testimonials, you have a list of services that you enjoy doing and know how much you want to charge, but now you need to fill your client list.
One of the best ways for finding and landing clients and to fill your client list is to start blogging.
First, let’s talk about the format of a blog post. Remember to keep it simple, include plenty of white space. You may have to break up paragraphs in places that you don’t feel comfortable doing so, but it’s all about readability and not correct format like in a college or school paper. In addition, include pictures that are relevant to the blog post, and always fill in the “alt” information for the picture.
Use plenty of bullet points, headlines, h1 and h2 headers and disperse keywords within the first 100 words and if possible in each paragraph. But, remember to keep it natural with keywords. Your first concern should be whether or not your blog post is interesting, engaging, targeted and readable to your target audience.
It can also be difficult to figure out what to blog about sometimes. Let’s go over a few things that you any virtual professional business owner can blog about to promote your virtual services business.
Blog About Your Services — Blog about each of the service you provide so that your client base will understand what these services entail. Remember to focus each blog on one service and the benefits it provides potential clients in each blog post. In fact all your blog posts should be short, sweet and to the point focusing on one specific topic at a time.
Blog About Problems — You know your ideal client well and what issues and problems they have, therefore if you blog about these problems and then mention your service as a solution you’ll find your ideal client organically. If you can show how you understand your target audience’s problems, fears and concerns and that you know how to solve them, people will seek you out as the expert. Eventually, you may even receive questions in your email, use those as bogging material. Until then, make up questions that your ideal client might ask you.
Blog About Successes — Did you solve something for a client, and is the client willing to talk about it? Interview them on Google Hangout or Skype and post it as a vlog to your blog. Seeing satisfied clients rave about your work and how you solved their problems can bring you many virtual service business clients. Put the audio and video up, as well as a transcript of the interview for a double whammy.
Blog About How To Work With You — Blogging about how working with a virtual professional business works is a good way to educate those who don’t know how it all works. Some people still have a lot of time envisioning how you can do work for someone, whether it’s coaching, providing a service, or even a product without having a bricks and mortar space. They may be confused about the technology that enables you to work virtually. Remember, not all your clients have to work virtually. There are plenty of bricks and mortar businesses that need you too.
By including these topics in your blog posts you’ll go far in filling your client list. But remember, once you post a blog you’re not done. You need to promote that blog post across all your social media marketing accounts plus send the announcement of a new blog post to your email list. Ask people to share it, and help you get the word out.
Participation is Key to Filling Your Client List
If you want to be known for what you do and your expertise in your niche, one of the best ways for finding and landing clients is to join and participate in online and offline social networks. Notice that the keyword here is “participate”. You cannot just join a group and never participate whether it’s online or offline and expect to get referrals from it.
If you join a local networking group and never go to the meetings or only talk about yourself when you do, you’re missing out on a tremendous opportunity to find and land clients. Clients want to know what you can do for them, not what they can do for you.
If you can find a way to show them what you can do by demonstrating your expertise and problem solving skills freely, you’ll attract clients to you naturally.
Networking for Finding and Landing Clients
Joining a group that offers education and information to you about your profession that also has a job board is another way to find clients. Not only can you become a resource to your group, but you can usually apply for any jobs that come your way via their job board.
Be cautious about joining too many groups that consist of other service providers though unless you’re interested in only subcontracting work. A lot of virtual professional business owners get too tied up in networking with others who do exactly what they do and this can be a mistake. Don’t spend all your time here.
Be Where Your Clients Are
Online there are a myriad of groups that consist of your target audience. Joining business groups on the internet is a great way for finding and landing clients.
For instance, if you want to work with writers, join a writing group. It’s okay that you’re not a writer, but be cautious about soliciting work. Let your signature line speak for itself while you freely and publically offer help to the members. If someone emails you off the list it’s okay to give them your price sheet. But, on the list, be free with your advice and solutions to their problems.
The trick to finding the clients is to be where your clients are. The trick to landing them is to be a resource to them whether or not they will hire you. You never know if they will refer you to someone to you in the future even if they don’t hire you.
Network Online and Offline
A common misconception about finding and landing clients for your virtual professional business is that all your clients necessarily must come from online. Nothing could be further from the truth. Local business owners need you too. In fact they need you a lot. The problem is, they don’t know about you. Find ways to introduce yourself and your work to your local small business population.
It’s natural for a virtual services business professional to seek out other virtual businesses to work with but did you know that you can also find clients locally too? The trick is to strategically attend local network meeting events. There are probably many local business events in your area. Take a look at the possibilities.
Chamber of Commerce — Every community has a local chamber of commerce. The fee for joining can be in the hundreds of dollars but often times you can join with a monthly fee. Even if it’s not advertised ask. If you can get involved in events using your skills to help, people will start recommending you.
Your Strategy: Align yourself with the smallest businesses and if they have a sub group, those who work from home. If they don’t have a work from home or floating office contingent, create one. You’ll become invaluable to the organization.
Women in Business Meetings — Check to see if your community has meetings just for women, or if you’re not a woman, find out if they need people to present at meetings. Many local women’s business meetings like to have an expert speak on various topics and you don’t have to be a female.
Your Strategy: Help others learn how to work from home on the Internet while also filling your client list with those who don’t want to do everything themselves. You might be surprised to learn that even when you tell people how to do everything from A to Z, they don’t really want to do all that work. That’s where you come in.
BNI International Meetings — Business networking groups like this are excellent ways to find clients to work with. The way these groups work is that only one business or person from each profession can join each group. The members agree to recommend each other. It can be pricy to get in and you have to be comfortable giving a presentation to the others before they accept you. It can be very lucrative.
Your Strategy: Showcase your business in the best light during presentations, and become a resource to this group of networkers. Recommend them to others in the rest of your local networks and they will return the favor. The great thing about BNI is that within a group, you’re the only one of your kind in it, so you can offer a lot.
Start Your Own Meetings — Using a social program like http://www.meetup.com to plan and organize local business meetings. You can start it with your own presentation. You’ll need to find a space. A good idea for locating space is asking for free space from an hourly office rental firm. They might light the idea of getting some free advertisement for your weekly meetings being hosted with them.
Your Strategy: Become an expert in your field on a local basis. Get known as the go-to person regarding your niche. By having your own meet ups and conducting your own presentation those who attend will automatically see you as an expert and come to you if they need extra help. If you can align with an office rental agency you’ll be golden.
When you attend any local events go prepared to promote your business. Bring business cards that list your website or perhaps a QR code on them that will take them to a form to get on your email list. Get their cards too and contact them. Invite them to coffee. Give them advice if they ask for it and really connect with these local people and you’ll be surprised to find that you can find plenty of local clients to fill any open billable hours you have.
Learn more about finding and landing clients with these two posts:
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