Freelance journalist Tiia Lappalainen is a big user of Facebook. Almost all of her friends are there – as are almost all of her clients which make up about a third of her Facebook friends, she evaluates.

As a freelancer, she says, it’s not always easy to relax when using social media. Posting status updates takes careful consideration, but at the same time you do want to communicate with your friends as you would – not as a marketer.

Managing the brand

“It’s not exactly marketing in the sense of writing advertising copy, but it is brand management of a kind”, Tiia says.

She describes her own brand with words such as “balanced”, “efficient”, “reliable” and “fair”.

The opportunities

“Once you’re created the network you want, social media provides a great opportunity to maintain an image of yourself.”

“Sometimes it’s difficult to strike that balance between what you would say to your friends and what you can say in front of your customers, but in a way that’s no different to real life communications.

“But rather than something that takes a lot of effort and thinking, I definitely see social media mostly as a great opportunity for a freelancer or a small business.”

Tips and advice

Mostly it’s about having common sense, Tiia says. For example, when deadlines are closing in, it might not be a good idea to show massive activity on Facebook or post updates about long coffee catch-ups with friends.

On what to post, she only has one piece of advice.

“You should step back and have a think about what it would look like from an outsider’s point of view. It should be pretty straightforward to then determine whether it looks professional or a bit childish.

“And always remember that the web is very much a public place. Even with different filtering, it’s not a good idea to express negative feelings about someone. They might be future customers or part of their network.”

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