From an up-to-date website to regular social media posts, maintaining a consistent online presence is a challenge. I have outsourced and automated as much as I can to remove any barriers.
My website needs to be user-friendly, both for me and my clients. As a freelancer admin is the bane of my life and, as a customer, digging through pages of hard sell to unearth basic information will send me running into the arms of the competition. The talented team at Xpand designed a timeless, low-maintenance one-page website for me. I used the “capstone” technique” to write a brief pitch and had it translated into French by a colleague.
For everything else, I use LinkedIn. Choosing a single theme for regular posts has removed a barrier to decision-making making it easier to get typing. Writing about neurodiversity, a subject that fascinates me, generates positive emotion and reduces reliance on willpower. If inspiration strikes at an inconvenient time, there is a risk that the idea will distract me from my work, or that I’ll dismiss it and forget to post. I email myself any ideas and snooze for later. I use Buffer so I can write to my heart’s content when I’m feeling inspired and schedule my posts for later. This also gives me the breathing space to edit posts and organise them into thematic clusters. I research annual events to use as a hook and write posts about them in advance. You can automatically post your LinkedIn updates to Twitter (dropdown list in draft post) or use IFTTT to post your other social media updates to LinkedIn.
ADHD brains are particularly susceptible to the dopamine hit of likes and comments. I use the Freedom app to restrict my access so I can check all my notifications in one sitting.
Reviewing and updating my profiles doesn’t offer the same dopamine rewards as posting new content. As I discuss in my last post, accountability is essential for important, non-urgent tasks like this. I book onto networking events like March Marketing Madness to create deadlines.
Recommendations save me the trouble of adding testimonials to my website and I share these unsparingly. My email signature is an effective, low-maintenance marketing tool and a useful insurance policy since I may forget to share my credentials or request testimonials when I’m hyperfocussing on a translation. My signature includes:
– A link to CV and certificates
– A link to LinkedIn recommendations (and brief instructions on how to add one)
– A link to ITI/SFT Guide to buying translation in French and English
– My logo and the ITI logo
How do you manage your online presence?