LinkedIn has always been one of my most important marketing tools online. While it previously might have been seen as little more than an online resume, it has quickly become the go-to social media tool for business-to-business marketing and prospecting online, especially since the pandemic.

If you haven’t logged into LinkedIn for a while, you’re missing out on key business opportunities. By building up your LinkedIn strategy, you can better market your services and find new clients worldwide. Better yet, the right process can work long-term and generate a steady stream of work throughout your career. 

It’s time to dust off your LinkedIn profile. Let’s go over the two main strategies for mastering LinkedIn, so you can take practical steps toward getting new translation clients today.

LinkedIn Strategy #1: Boosting Your Visibility

Translators today often struggle to stand out from the crowd and find their ideal clients. Visibility is all about showcasing your skills and expertise online. The idea is to create an amazing profile and generate expert content that clients see on their LinkedIn feeds. Ideally, they’ll become interested in your work and contact you about their projects. A win-win!

Boosting your visibility is an excellent LinkedIn strategy because clients come to you. Since they already have a high interest in your profile, the conversion rate is much higher than other methods. This strategy can also save you precious time, as interested clients will get in touch – without you lifting a finger. 

Steps to Boost Your Visibility on LinkedIn

Getting good visibility requires having an active LinkedIn strategy. As a translator, you may not be able to showcase your best work samples due to contract confidentiality. This means your translator profile is even more critical to get right.

Here are some key steps to build up your visibility using LinkedIn’s platform. 

• Update your profile: Your profile might be ok – but is it truly attracting new clients? Apart from the regular profile tips, you can update your custom background in Canva to insert your value statement, a testimonial, or something similar. You can also use the “Featured” section to include links to your website, or any articles you’ve published, or perhaps a website translation that is publicly available online. Finally, you can hop down to recommendations and take 10 minutes to give one or two recommendations to your best clients and ask for one in return.
• Post content that’s valuable for your target clients: By actively posting valuable content on LinkedIn, you will show up more in front of your ideal clients on this platform. Think of what expertise you have to share and create a schedule for posting. This should be regular – for example, 1-2/week. I am constantly working on this myself and know how hard it is. My recommendation is to check out other translators that have an active presence on LinkedIn for ideas and then use your personality and unique experience for your posts and engagements. The LinkedIn algorithm works in favor of those who are regularly posting on LinkedIn. Then, if you reach out to a prospect on LinkedIn, you will not be a total stranger to them.
• Interact daily with others on LinkedIn: Get in the habit of interacting with other industry leaders and clients on LinkedIn. This can be as simple as adding a comment to another’s post or resharing an article. Remember to keep up good “netiquette” by staying friendly and giving credit where it’s due.
• Promote content across channels: Your LinkedIn profile should integrate with all your other channels. Be sure to include cross-channel action so that potential clients who find you elsewhere can easily locate you on LinkedIn.
• Check your LinkedIn profile settings: There are twobasic settings to get seen by potential clients. First, even if you’re not actively seeking work, you should check your Job Seeking Preferences. You can, for example, turn on “Let recruiters know you’re open to opportunities” so that you’ll appear in their searches.

It may take some time to build up a content strategy that gets high engagement. Once you do, you’ll find that clients regularly “find you” on LinkedIn and contact you about work. By being active on LinkedIn, I’ve been able to get in front of prospective translation and localization clients, create recognition and ultimately get them to reach out to me.

I also have several colleagues that have a great presence on LinkedIn. One of them, Martina Russo, is the co-teacher in my Online Marketing Course for Translators and Interpreters because she has great success with attracting clients on LinkedIn. Mastering LinkedIn isn’t impossible – we promise!

LinkedIn Strategy #2: Knocking on (Virtual) Doors

This second strategy turns the tables: this time, you contact a select group of potential clients. It’s the traditional sales outreach: you identify target clients that you think could be interested and approach them about working together.

On LinkedIn, knocking on (virtual) doors can help you reach some new territory. In particular, if you’ve targeted well, you may get some new top-tier clients. Of course, this LinkedIn strategy often has a lower conversion rate because you have to convince clients – instead of them organically being drawn to you. 

Steps to Knock on (Virtual) Doors on LinkedIn

To use this strategy successfully, you should take advantage of LinkedIn’s tools to make contact with the right potential clients. You may be shy about networking directly, but it’s no different than meeting clients in person at conferences or through connections. To do this well on LinkedIn, you can follow the steps below.

• Use LinkedIn’s advanced filters to find clients: LinkedIn has specific filters that let you search for companies or profiles in all sorts of categories. For example, you can search by country, title (for example, vendor manager), or an industry keyword (i.e., video game localization or transcreation). Make the most of these filters to find your ideal clients. 
• Set up job alerts for potential collaboration: This strategy works in some cases and not in others. For me, working in a small language does not give very good results. But I encourage you to try it out. You can define specific alerts for jobs that correspond with your profile (for example, French into English translator). This helps you identify companies who are actively looking for somebody like you.
• Engage with every target client before making direct contact: Before yousend a direct message, interact with your target client first. Check out their blog to specifically mention a post you like or share one of their LinkedIn posts. Engaging beforehand can make your direct message more genuine.
• Don’t forget to personalize your first move: Casting a wide net isn’t necessarily a bad thing but take the time to write a personal message for every connection request. Mention at least one thing that’s specific to the company or profile you’re contacting.
• Track what’s working (and what’s not): Get a sense of what efforts pay off and those that don’t. After building up your LinkedIn presence, you can also check out your LinkedIn Social Selling Index (click on “Get your score free”). This index lets you check the pulse on how well you’re connecting to potential clients and marketing your services on LinkedIn.

I hope you found these tips and steps useful. Let me know which ones you have tried and what worked well for you.

Final Takeaway: Which LinkedIn Strategy is Best?

Both LinkedIn strategies should be used to have the most significant effect. While visibility typically has a higher conversion rate in the long run, since it increases the like-know-trust factor, you can also find clients using direct outreach.

The pandemic has changed how we do business, and an online presence is more important than ever before. You need to be found where the clients are looking. For many, that means LinkedIn. 

Whatever strategic combination you choose, these handy tips to optimize your LinkedIn strategy can help you generate a regular influx of new clients – and expand your horizons as a translator. However, LinkedIn isn’t the only online channel you may need to master as a freelance translator. Check out our Online Marketing 101 for Translators to get the big picture of your complete digital presence to find and attract translation clients.