Social media management is a freelance job that attracts many remote professionals. You can see a lot of online training courses that will help you jumpstart your career in social media management. There are so many of them but you have to be extra careful in selecting which one to enroll with.
If you are aiming to become a social media manager, one of the highlights in an SMM training is creating an Instagram Business or Professional Profile. Instagram is one of the best platforms to market a business and most clients are looking for a social media manager who can help them:
- Monitor their Instagram leads
- Create their profile
- Craft and post contents
- Increase followers
- Send direct messages (mostly promotions)
These are just some of the tasks that a social media manager will handle. But why an Instagram profile? Instagram has been proven to be a powerful online tool to increase brand awareness, establish an online presence, and increase sales of a magnitude without spending thousands on traditional advertisements like TVCs, billboards, etc.
Normally, if you are applying as a social media manager, having an Instagram that can appeal visually to the client on your behalf is found helpful in landing job offers and projects. In this article, we will try to tackle the basics of crafting your Instagram professional profile to give you a headstart on your newest career endeavor as a professional Filipino freelancer.
Create A Professional Instagram Username
An Instagram username is very important in branding yourself as a social media manager. It’s not advisable to use your personal Instagram profile when your goal is to impress a client and close a social media management project. It’s always best to separate your personal life with your professional life. That’s why, you have to make sure your Instagram username will immediately be recognized by clients as a professional one. You can insert your name, of course, to establish your identity to the client. An example of a profile below:
This social media manager handles clients in both the Spanish and English markets. This Filipino bilingual freelancer just inserted her nickname “Jax” to socmedsolutions, plus 09, which is a number that may be significant. It’s easy to understand, directly addresses what the account is about, and is catchy and professional at the same time. It establishes the person’s identity and the services the professional offers, which is social media management.
Creating a name can be very tricky but it’s worthwhile to create a good one. Having a professional yet personalized username for your professional Instagram account promotes a good impression to clients that you are creative and smart in handling social media accounts as such.
You can follow jaxsocmedsolutions09 on Instagram by clicking here.
Provide a Professional Logo or Avatar
It’s like on a LinkedIn profile- you have to provide a headshot that other professionals, hiring managers, or businesses can easily recognize. Having a custom logo with your Instagram professional username is very helpful in identifying your online presence as a freelancer.
A good headshot, bust shot, or half-body shot is also a good choice. Make sure you are wearing proper attire on the photo to build credibility and professionalism at a glance. It is engaging for clients to see right away who they are going to work with online. This is also your chance to glam up and produce new photos for your other freelancing platform sites:
Instagram.com/valerie_lisitsyna
Determine Your Niche
[niche – a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service; Google Dictionary]
It is very important to decide what type of businesses you would want to help and cater to. This will help you decide the following attributes you must work on when building your Instagram professional account. This will also help you focus on the knowledge and trends you have to watch out for to stay on par with the client’s business needs. Your niche or target businesses may also be on your profile bio.
Determining your niche will help you identify your strengths as a social media manager. The more you are knowledgeable about a business, the better you’ll do in crafting content, themes, social media templates, and of course, your pitch. If you have enough or exemplary knowledge about the niche or business type you are targeting to attract as a client, it lessens the time needed in conceptualizing your Instagram Business Profile. Plus, you’ll be more appealing to business owners once they see how great you are about what you can do for their enterprise through your IG feed.
Conceptualize Your Instagram Feed and Theme
Instagram is popular for many reasons and one of these is its visual appeal. Beautiful visuals and aesthetics can trigger our minds into thinking something is legitimate, trustworthy, and useful. Many have appealed to the markets successfully with the help of beautiful pictures- even scammers consistently use visuals to fool people online.
As a social media manager, the probability that your client will ask you to handle their Instagram account is high. It is difficult to appeal to Instagram’s audience because the competition is demanding. You have to always produce what they call ‘IG-worthy content.’ In the sample page below, Kora Organics uses a theme in posting their newest announcements, products, and even endorsers in their feed. They curate it in an appealing way to reach their target audience who is anyone interested in skincare and beauty. This also applies to social media managers.
Instagram/KoraOrganics
Once you have chosen the niche you’re interested in targeting, you can start deciding the best palette, hue, template, and content to use on your professional Instagram. As shown below, even other professionals like lawyers ensure they have a competitive Instagram profile complete with the palette, themes, and preferred language to appeal to their target audience who are also on Instagram:
Instagram.com/qazilawyer
This shows that potential clients like law firms, real estate owners or agents, doctors, or even small to medium scale enterprises are on Instagram. Your profile and presence on the platform will automatically give them an impression that you can handle theirs and even grow them.
This Filipino freelancer’s Instagram business profile has helped her utilize her acquired administrative skills as a social media manager. This same Instagram business profile has also helped this freelancer land, three SMM clients, a few weeks after finishing the training needed to begin the journey.
Instagram.com/jaxsocmedsolutions09
Having a theme for your professional account on Instagram can also help you keep the pretty aesthetic even though you are trying to post about awareness, holidays, personal business announcements, and even client reviews:
Instagram.com/jaxsocmedsolutions09
Be Mindful about the Frequency of Changing Theme
Having a theme is important but changing your Instagram profile’s theme can be very challenging and time-consuming. You might have to change everything on your feed to avoid sending a message to potential clients that you do not know how Instagram marketing works.
Changing themes may take up too much of your time that should have been spent in finding clients. So before changing your feed and theme, think about twice or even thrice. And, always consider digesting the above tips about conceptualizing your Instagram Feed Theme.
Decide on the Language
The language of your Instagram is vital. If you are a bilingual or multilingual freelancer, make sure you incorporate other languages you know in posting captions or creating images or videos. This may attract clients that cater to more than one language market and build more credibility. The language is not all about ‘what language you speak’. This is also about your approach in your captions, what message are you trying to convey, and how you can impress your clients just by having them see through your Instagram feed.
It’s highly advisable to post content about the services you can offer. It doesn’t have to be limited to what a social media manager does. You can add your other skills such as:
- Transcription
- Translation
- Content writing
- Research
- Data Entry
Posting your skills on your Instagram will serve as your curriculum vitae. You’ll never know if your potential client might need those same services additional to what they are originally hiring you for.
Build an Online Presence
Posting on your professional account is helpful. If you consistently post on your personal account, why not on your business profile, too? Posting consistently or at least when relevant will show how engaged you are as an aspiring or new social media manager. Since you’re still starting and may not have a client yet, building an online presence will help you land one soon.
The clients will also see through your personality, skillset, creativity, and behavior when your business profile is active in posting relevant content for your niche. You can also use your profile to approach clients or businesses online. With a professional social media account, they will never assume that you’re a spam account.
Benefits of an Instagram Professional Profile as an aspiring Social Media Manager
The benefits of building an Instagram profile specifically for your professional career are too many to mention in a single article. Some of them are already mentioned in each tip provided above. To summarize, here are what you’ll get by following these basic tips as an aspiring SMM:
- Being on Instagram means you know how big this social media platform’s potential is in the market.
- Added to this, business owners are extremely busy to read a wordy curriculum vitae. It’s known that people spend some of their freetime in browsing social media. It saves time on the client’s side for they can easily assess or scan the kind of social media manager they may soon work with.
- Since you’re only starting to be a social media manager with zero clients to serve as part of your portfolio, your creative side will then be easily reflected on your Instagram professional profile.
- Building your professional profile on Instagram serves as good practice in developing your content writing skills, customer engagement, creativity, and research.
Working on social media management is an enjoyable thing to do but it is extremely challenging and demanding, too. Knowing the basics of how you can market yourself as a social media manager using Instagram may be a small step but it has been proven to establish credibility, showcase your true potential, and attract clients.
By passion and profession, Eunice is a content writer, ESL teacher, and social media manager.
Eunice worked in Accenture and Nestlé Business Services where she gained experience in content moderation, process training, customer service, and eContent asset management. Her passion for English and marketing landed her part-time writing jobs while working in a corporate office.
She discovered ESL Teaching that same year she started content writing and soon realized that it’s also something she wanted to pursue. She left her corporate job to become a freelance writer and ESL teacher.
Eunice has grown a network of clients in her content writing and ESL teaching career. Eunice consistently widens her expertise in marketing by learning new skills. She just started her career as a social media manager for clients abroad and in the Philippines.
You may check some of Eunice’s works on howpo.info.