This is a definitive guide to social media for freelancers out there who have just started their careers as social media managers or are facing many challenges in their daily work.
Let’s go straight to what you are going to learn today:
- Important statistics for each social media
- Freelancer challenges and how to overcome them
- How can a social media management tool help in your daily tasks
- How to use a social media tool easily (step-by-step)
In this guide, social media for freelancers, we will dive into details for all these points to help you out.
Let’s get started.
Why Is Social Media Important?
To begin with, social networks have gained significant importance for businesses. As a freelancer handling your clients’ online presence, staying updated on the most effective social networks is crucial.
To assist you with that, here are the essential statistics for the top platforms.
Moreover, we are going to cover these statistics in this list:
- General statistics
- Users statistics
- Demographic statistics
- Marketing statistics
Let’s analyze the most used social media platforms:
- Facebook has over 2.96 billion monthly users.
- As of April 16, 2023, Facebook is worth $574.24 billion, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world.
- The platform brings together 2.6 billion active users who spend an average of 33 minutes on the site daily.
- People aged 18–24 and 25-35 comprise Facebook’s biggest age groups, representing 18.4% and 23.8% of total users, respectively.
YouTube
- More than 2 billion people use YouTube monthly.
- Approximately 55% of marketers use YouTube.
- YouTube is used by 51% of U.S. and U.K. consumers to research or find products to buy.
- YouTube is more popular among people aged between 25 and 34 years.
- 2.3 billion monthly active users.
- Women made up 49.3% of Instagram’s audience in January 2022, while men made up 50.7%.
- Men aged between 25 and 34 accounted for 17.1% of all active Instagram users worldwide.
- People aged 34 or younger represent more than half of Instagram users.
- In the US, 75% of people aged 18-24 use Instagram and 57% of people between 25-29.
- The app is used by 59% of Instagram users in the US on a daily basis, 21% on a weekly basis, and 20% less frequently.
TikTok
- 1 Billion monthly active users.
- Entertainment” is the most popular content category.
- Females are the majority of users on TikTok with 57%.
- Most of TikTok’s users are in China.
- About 134.5 million users actively use LinkedIn daily.
- The platform is widely used for B2B as 97% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn.
- The most followed industry on the LinkedIn platform is information technology.
- Statistical data indicates that 60% of LinkedIn users are between 25 and 34 years old
- United States remains the largest market for LinkedIn.
Snapchat
- Snapchat has 750 million daily active users worldwide.
- an average of 5+ billion snaps are created every day.
- India has the largest Snapchat user base, next is US, France and UK.
- Females dominate the Snapchat platform.
- There are 556 million active users per month worldwide.
- 42% of users look at their accounts once a day.
- There are 500 million tweets shared per day.
- Twitter’s demographics are 62% male and 38% female.
- The US has the largest number of users, with 76.9M.
- Platform has 445 Million Monthly Active Users.
- 85% of weekly Pinterest users have made purchases from Pins.
- Women Make up 76.2% of Pinterest users between the ages of 25-34.
- Pinterest has 23 Million Gen Z users.
Mastodon
- Only around 1 million of those accounts are active users.
- About 27.27% of Mastodon users are from Germany.
- Around 32.96% of all Mastodon users are between 25 and 34 years old.
- Male users on Mastodon are nearly twice as many as female users.
Social networks present numerous opportunities for freelancers to expand their business. For instance, LinkedIn and Twitter are excellent platforms to enhance your visibility among potential customers. These networks also host communities of freelancers who can assist you in finding leads and business prospects.
In another scenario, suppose you are tasked with managing the online presence of a client who runs an online business. In this case, Instagram and Facebook are obvious choices due to their popularity.
However, it’s worth noting that Pinterest also provides interesting opportunities. Although its user base may be smaller, the purchase intent of its users is considerably stronger, making it an ideal platform for ecommerce businesses.
But let’s have a look at the main challenges for freelancers when managing social media:
Social media undoubtedly offer numerous opportunities for freelancers, but effective platform management is essential, whether for your own brand or for client work.
While handling one client’s social media may be manageable, the complexity grows rapidly when dealing with multiple clients. Juggling numerous posts simultaneously can become overwhelming if done manually.
Constantly switching between different platforms adds to the challenge.
For instance, if a client requires an online presence on four social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, it quickly becomes time-consuming and unmanageable.
To maintain efficiency in platform management and tackle such situations, using a social media management tool is the best approach. It is the simplest and fastest way to overcome these challenges.
Now let’s get to the point of what is a social media management tool and how it works. Read on to learn more.
What Is a Social Media Management Tool?
Shortly: A social media management tool assists with various tasks such as content scheduling and publishing, social listening, commenting and engagement, customer care, analytics, reporting, and so much more.
Freelancers can save an enormous amount of time by using this type of tool, as it streamlines various tasks.
With the tool, you can connect all your social networks to a single platform and schedule the publication of your content in advance.
It greatly simplifies the process and makes social media management much more efficient.
How Does it Work? A Step-by-Step Guide
Below we are going to share a step-by-step guide with real-life examples and show you how an SMM tool can simplify your social media workflow.
Connect Your Social Media Channels on One Platform
First thing when signing up for a social media management tool, you need to integrate your social media channels.
For example, when you sign up for Publer, on the left, you will find a button “Add Account” and then it will appear this page as in the image below. Select your preferred social media account (until three is for free) and then in a few steps your account will be connected to Publer. Pretty handy, right?
Next, you will have all your social media platforms on the left, so you can choose which one you want to create content for.
Create Your Posts
The next step is to design your posts. To do so, you just need to click on where you want to create content for. Let’s say you want to select Instagram. Then you write your own content or AI Assist will help you generate to target your audience.
Then, add the link in bio. One of the main features of Publer.
Note: The link in bio feature (or so-called landing page) lets you add links to your Instagram feed. Have a look at this article that explains how to transform your Instagram feed into a clickable mini website.
Then, if you want to create content for more than one social media at a time, for example, you want to post the same content on LinkedIn. Then select LinkedIn on the left. You just need to select two or more and tailor the content for each.
Now, you can schedule LinkedIn documents with Publer and upload photos as PDF Carousels
As we mentioned earlier, creating posts is way easier, as it helps you to simplify the whole process. If you have the text ready, that’s great, but also you can use the AI assist to complete your text or generate new. Like so:
Then after the text is ready, you need an image or video for your social media post.
Now here you have some options: You can drag and drop it from your computer. (If your design is ready.)
Or, then, the apps such as Canva and Vista Create can help you create it directly. Just like in the image below:
If you are wondering what Publer AI is, it is a powerful tool that lets you generate copyright-free AI images by writing keywords.
Here is an article that can help you for a better understanding how can AI helps you with your social media content.
Or you can choose images from Unsplash, a copyright-free website, directly from Publer. Look at the example below. We have written “restaurant” and many images appear with that keyword. Easy!
As you can see, you can type anything, filter images by orientation or any color, select one or more and then resize them automatically within Publer.
Schedule Your Posts (When Your Audience is Most Active)
Now that your content is ready on Publer, the next step is to schedule your posts.
If you’ve already scheduled posts on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, note that it works in much the same way on Publer. So it is as easy as that.
But what is missing is the indicator of where your audience is most active.
For example, when using Publer, you can choose the best times to post, which means an indicator shows when your audience is most active on each platform.
Then the tool suggests you to post on these times as you will have a better engagement rate. How cool is that?
You can use Publer’s 14-day free trial for this feature, as it is in the Business plan. It’s worth trying. You can cancel anytime.
Plan and Organize with Calendar View
As a freelancer, you need organizing. A LOT. Now the calendar feature does that. It makes you plan and organize in one place. For example, in Publer, the calendar is so user-friendly, and it looks like this.
Our 210K+ freelancers, entrepreneurs and agencies love it!
We also have a rate of 4.8 out of 5 stars on big review platforms such as G2.
All content is in one place, so you can edit, update and have a look at how your content looks in the upcoming days. Also, it is very easy to create a new post or edit upcoming posts with just one click.
Also, the Calendar feature in Publer is free. So you just have to sign up for a free plan, and immediately you can create, schedule and plan your amazing content!
Collaborate with Clients on One Platform
It might seem easy to plan for your social media, but what if you have to create content for your clients? What about communication? Emails can be hectic.
So that’s why a social media management tool is crucial to consider.
Let’s look at how you will create content, manage clients, and communicate with them on the same platform.
You can build your team within Publer. It is a great fit for employees, clients, collaborators, freelancers, or seasonal guests. You decide who gets in. You decide on their permission levels.
How does it work?
First, you will get internal and external approval for your posts. Here’s how:
You can get approval from internal upper management, your clients, or any other stakeholder that needs a final say.
Next, you collaborate and communicate via the same platform.
Internal or external members can leave notes and comments on specific posts, helping everyone stay on the same page and organized. Here’s how it looks:
Then, no need to send an external presentation of your social media posts. Your team will have access to the calendar view to see the bigger picture of the prepared content plan. For more details, they can preview each post anytime.
Analyze Your Success at One Place
Now you will not send screenshots of each platform anymore to your client and wait for them to reply. As we said, the process is simplified.
Your client can see which social media is performing best from the platform, but also they can check every Workspace member’s results in one dashboard.
Then it’s easier to decide on changing or not the social media strategy. Moreover, you can export insights to a PDF file, analyze the performance, and improve results or keep up with the great work.
For a better explanation of the analytics feature, have a look at this article here.
The analytics feature on Publer is included in the business plan, so you can start a plan anytime at $21/month. Start the 14-day free trial and cancel anytime. Hassle-free.
We have published a video that explains each step of how to use Publer. So if you want to have a look, here you have it!
Now It’s Your Turn!
So that’s how it works to be successful on social media.
Now I want to turn it over to you: Which strategy from today’s guide are you going to try first?
Are you going to try an SMM tool now that will help you grow your social media with less work?
Try Publer for free today and start growing!
Denisa Lamaj
