Promote Yourself As A Freelance Translator

How to promote yourself as a freelance translator?

Everyone is fully aware of the harsh competition to find a good job. When you are a freelance translator, things tend to get even harder because you must know how to promote yourself. If people don’t know you, the chances that you become successful are really low. So, you must put a lot of effort in marketing yourself as a freelance translator. After reading the article from Tomedes’ blog called “The best freelance marketing tips found online” we decided to write this article to offer you our own tips to promote yourself as a freelance translator.

1. Create yourself

This means, amongst other things, creating an amazing website. There are three important steps that you must follow:

• – First of all, create a simple website, keep the style very simple and elegant. If you don’t know how to create a website for your translation business and you don’t want to spend a fortune with a digital agency, get our free guide about how to create a website step by step.

• – Secondly, offer specific services. The world is full of agencies that offer just “translation services”. Clients are not looking for generic “translation services”. They’re looking for medical translation, or engineering translation, or translation of assembling manuals or marketing material. What is your top expertise? What are you a master in? If you haven’t decided it yet, it’s time. Differentiate yourself from the crowd. You want to become the go-to person, trusted advisor for your language pair in that field. This is how you’ll be able to charge premium prices.
• – Emphasize what really matters for your client; talk more about their problems and how you can solve them rather than the school you studied in and the CAT tool you use.

Another good idea is to attach a blog section to your website because this will let you showcase your expertise and make you more interesting than others.

2. Branding

The most successful translators rely on their brand. There are multiple advantages if you have your own brand. First of all, there is visual recognition, which is vital when you want to promote yourself.

A brand is first of all an identity, which is expresses by a tagline and a logo. If you need a logo and you don’t have any designer among your friends, get one on People Per hour (click here to get a 5% discount on your first service purchase) for a few bucks.

People tend to remember logos and taglines, so do not hesitate to do this from day one and put your logo and tagline on your website and marketing material.

3. Networking

In order to make yourself known, you need to get out there and start communicating with people. Attend conferences and events about translation. You will meet new people that could give you hints about new opportunities in the field. Also, hearing about other people’s experiences is great for you because you will learn how to avoid some mistakes.

Networking on social media is also important. From a simple share, you can learn various things such as career opportunities, news, events. Also, you will make friends that work in the same field as you, with whom you will have so much in common.

4. Telling potential customers about yourself

Once you identified your potential customers you can always approach them by direct mail. Email has become a very popular marketing tool and it actually proved to be effective. In this case, you must make sure you have a good approach letter/email. It must be professional, elegant and must show you are serious and knowledgeable.

Try not to look spammy. Do a little bit of research before emailing them, and understand what they’re currently working on (social media should help in this). If you know what they’re working on you’ll also be able to understand their challenges and how you can help. Emailing them with a solution to a problem they have will get their attention much more easily than a simple “look at my services” message.

5. Social media

If you want to promote yourself through Facebook, make a separate professional account that is focused only on work related things. Connect it with your website too. Twitter is also a great place for networking, so don’t be shy to use it as much as you want. Obviously, LinkedIn is a great tool for promoting your professional development and it is also great for networking and finding potential clients.

In a freelance’s life marketing is very important, so try working on it very early in your career. Nevertheless, do not forget that the most important factor is professionalism, so even if you must invest in marketing, invest even more in becoming an expert in your field.