How to Use LinkedIn to Find a Job as A Freelance Writer

You decided you want to be a freelance writer! Congrats!

Did you know that LinkedIn is an excellent platform for freelancers? Yes!

You can learn how to use LinkedIn to find a job simply by optimizing your LinkedIn profile as a freelance writer.

When I first started out as an online writer, I decided to use Twitter and LinkedIn to promote my freelance writing service. I made sure to talk about my writing service, share my client pieces, or show my credibility as a writer on those platforms.

If you’re brand new to freelance writing and how to market your business, then LinkedIn should be a platform you use for amazing jobs on LinkedIn!

So, let’s dive into this social media business platform and learn how to use LinkedIn to find a job.

And, if you don’t have enough time to go through the post, make sure to check out my YouTube video!

What Is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a social media platform geared for professionals. I look at it as the business side of Facebook.

Professionals who use LinkedIn show their job experience and job history. Brands and businesses use LinkedIn to share their brand and team. Your LinkedIn profile is set up like an online resume.

My LinkedIn Profile

Your LinkedIn profile has places for each job you had, and you can attach your client pieces, guest pieces, or samples on your blog post. On my LinkedIn profile, I also have a link to my course, Write Your Way to Your First $1k and my Innovative Ink writer website.

Your profile also has spots for your:

• Education
• Skills & endorsements – people on LinkedIn endorse your skills, and you can do the same for them
• Recommendations – these are testimonials from connections you’ve made on LinkedIn
• Interests – these are groups you like or business and pages on LinkedIn you like

If you’re brand new, you can easily sign up for a free LinkedIn account. Fill out as much as you can. Over time you can tweak and optimize your profile for freelance writing.

How to Use LinkedIn to Find a Job as Freelance Writers

1. Fill Out Your LinkedIn Profile

When filling out your experience (online resume) on LinkedIn, I wouldn’t fill out your current or past work if you want to be a freelance writer.

Instead, I would make your LinkedIn profile just for your freelance writing business.

However, if your work experience lends itself well to your freelance writing niche, then leave it.

For example, if you are a nurse, and you want to break into medical writing, then your experience as a nurse would benefit your LinkedIn profile.

Note: you can’t have more than one LinkedIn profile (as is the same for a personal Facebook account).

If you have one for your current job, make sure you are comfortable adding some freelance writing features on your profile. If you feel that you don’t want your employer to find out you are moonlighting as a freelancer, then I wouldn’t use LinkedIn right now.

I would wait until you no longer work at that job or when you let your boss know what you are doing.

Instead, you can use Twitter or Facebook to market your freelance writing service.

Okay.

Go ahead and sign up to LinkedIn for your freelance writing, but what do you put for your experience?

You can put your writer website and samples first, and generally you fill your profile with clients you’ve landed.

But, if you’re new, you can’t do that. Instead, fill your LinkedIn profile with guest posting opportunities.

When filling out your Interests and groups, make sure they relate to your niche or service. Just search your niche topic in LinkedIn and choose “groups.”

2. Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

When you learn how to use LinkedIn to find a job you will see that to start attracting freelance writing jobs to you, you need to start using keywords in your profile. LinkedIn uses a search algorithm to help people find relevant terms they type in the LinkedIn search bar.

So, once you put the right keywords in your profile, LinkedIn will start dishing up your profile for when someone searches for those key terms.

Let’s look at where you can place keywords in your profile:

• Title – you can have more than one title. For example, “tech writer | B2B writer | freelance copywriter” can all be your title on LinkedIn.
• Bio – LinkedIn gives you an About section that you can use for your bio. Place keywords about your niche and service. For example, I use keywords like B2B digital marketing, landing page copy, B2B and B2C businesses, etc..

3. Follow Brands & Businesses You Want to Write For

Start following the brands and companies that are in your freelance writing niche. Once you do, their posts will show up in your feed.

You can start engaging with their posts by commenting and sharing them as a way to get on the radar of these companies.

4. Write Articles on LinkedIn

What’s great about LinkedIn is that it’s also a publishing platform, and you can create online writing samples easily on LinkedIn to showcase on your profile.

This can attract LinkedIn jobs, especially if you create industry-specific samples.

For example, I created this post that is related to my digital marketing niche:

When writing articles on LinkedIn, ensure that it is formatted for online reading and uses images or screenshots to help a reader read the content.

Here is an example of proper formatting:

Hacks to Use LinkedIn to Find a Job

There are two ways you can use your articles on LinkedIn to land more LinkedIn jobs.

The first is to publish more frequently. See if you can publish an industry-specific topic every week for a month.

Make sure to share it on your other social media accounts and, if you have a writer website, link to your LinkedIn article.

The second way to land more freelance writing gigs is to add a CTA at the end of your LinkedIn articles. This is a call-to-action and something you want the reader to do.

So, for your post, you can add a blurb about your writing service and link to your writer website or contact page.

Here is what I use on my LinkedIn posts:

5. Connect to Businesses You See On Job Boards

A great way to find freelance writing gigs is to use online job boards. There are many free ones you can use that lists potential writing gigs at good rates.

But, you can ensure those ads are legit but checking out the businesses that posted the ads, on LinkedIn.

You can see who is working at that business and connect with their editor or marketing director.

For example, on the Problogger job board, there is a job ad for a software review writer from the company Cloudwards.

The job ad has a link to their website, but I also want you to see if they have a profile on LinkedIn. This can give you more information about the company and you can connect with them on that platform.

As you can see, they do have a profile on LinkedIn.

How to Use LinkedIn to Find a Job for Freelance Writers

There ya go!

You learned how to use LinkedIn to find a job! While LinkedIn does have a job section, it’s not enough to land gigs. You need to do more to attract business and that extra effort you do vetting clients will help you gain some good clients!

Over to you –

Do you use LinkedIn? Have you found gigs by using LinkedIn? If so, share your success story with us! I want to hear them!

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