#108: How to Get Freelance Clients Using a Clever (Yet Very Simple) Twitter Technique

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Thank you for joining me for episode 108 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. My name is Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or the part time equivalent. As a quick reminder, you can find the detailed show notes for this episode by going to b2b launcher.com forward/episode108. So, as you can imagine, I'm always looking for different and better and proven and clever if possible ideas to land clients, earn more for the work we do, and enjoy more time off as a freelance professional. So when I heard from Moitza Marsh about the Twitter strategy that she had used to build her freelance social media marketing business, I knew I wanted her on the show. So I met Moitza last year at the Double your Freelance conference in Norfolk, Virginia, and I was very impressed with how quickly she, she grew her solo business after getting laid off a few years back. It's a great example of being resourceful in putting in the work, even when you experience occasional setbacks, which are inevitable. So Moise is from Slovenia, and I think that officially makes her the most distant guest I've ever had on the show, at least distant from where I am here in the Atlanta area. So it's, it's just awesome to have her. She speaks excellent English, and in this episode she talks specifically about the Twitter strategy she used to get her business off the ground and into extremely profitable territory. This is something anyone can easily do. Any, anyone here can easily replicate this if you're willing to put in the work and maintain the discipline necessary to develop the momentum. So, as you'll see, nothing's free. You know, nothing is going to be a cakewalk. And this is no exception. You got to put in the work. This does involve some hard work and some discipline and consistency, but I think it's a very clever idea and you can tell that it's a sort of thing that really is timeless. It will work because very few people actually put in the time and effort and sincerity and authenticity necessary to make this work. So let's go right to that interview. I hope you enjoy this talk with Moza Marsh. All right, so I'm sitting here with Moza Marsh, and Moza is actually talking to me from Slovenia, which I think is probably is the furthest away guest that I've ever had in this podcast. So welcome, Moitze. It's great to have you here.

Thank you.

It's so awesome. The fact that it's evening over there.

It is, it's past 7:00pm actually, and.

I'm recording this right now. It's one o', clock, a little over one o' clock in the afternoon, so it's very cool. Moitz and I met last year at the W Freelance Conference in Norfolk, Virginia and I really liked her talk where she was really talking about social media and very specific strategies because, right. We all know social media is something we should be doing. Many, most of us are doing some sort of social media in terms of lead generation, in terms of at least just kind of getting your presence out there and hopefully developing some relationships with prospects and maintaining relationships with clients. But I find that there's a lack of good information for freelance professionals on how to use it very tactically to find client opportunities. And Moitza's got some great ideas there specifically with Twitter. And so that's what we're going to be talking about today. But before we get to that, Moitza, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself. You have a very interesting background. Tell us what you do like, what you did before this, how it came about, that sort of thing.

So I'm a social media expert and I founded my company actually when I got fired from my agency where I worked at before. So I was working at an agency in Slovenia and we didn't kind of get along pretty well because they were more of a traditional advertising agency. So they did TV ads, they did radio ads, they did newspaper ads. And I tried to kind of push them maybe into a more digital phase and more digital marketing sphere, but they didn't like that. So our philosophies kind of drifted apart and they fired me. So that was actually the point where I decided, okay, so I think that I'm pretty good at doing social media. I'm pretty good at doing advertising. I have quite a lot of experience. So you know what? I'm going to fund my own company and just start from scratch. And I did that. So that's kind of where I got started and how I started kind of looking for clients. And this is actually what I'm going to be talking today. Because I never wanted. I started with local clients, but I never wanted to stay local. I always wanted to work with international clients. And Twitter was the social media network that helped big time when I was trying to reach out to international clients.

Very cool. And when Was this, by the way. So when did you start?

I think it was about three years ago.

Okay.

Yeah.

So you were the rebel, basically.

I was definitely the rebel. I still am.

That's awesome. Good. I like your spirit. Let's actually dive right in. So specifically with Twitter, you've had great success using Twitter, and not just when you got started, but ever since then you've continued to practice some of what you preach in terms of finding prospects and eventually turning them into clients with Twitter. So why don't you walk us through the specific tactics that you use.

So one of the first tactics that I used was. So actually when I lost my job, I had no idea how to start. I had, I, you know, when you were. I was working at an advertising agency for a year and a half and I was, I had, I was actually working since I was 15 years old. So I always got kind of. They always brought me the work. I never went out to search it, so never went out to search for clients. And I had no idea where to start now that I founded my company and started from scratch. So like I said, I started my business with a few local clients, but never wanted to stay that way. So I didn't know how to approach international clients. I approached local clients via cold emailing, but I didn't know, is that a thing that they do in the US Should I send cold emails? Should I advertise? What should I do? So then I spent a couple of weeks just researching on what I could do and what works on social media. And I took a little bit of different approach. I already had a few hundred followers on Twitter, so I wasn't someone that just starting out. And because I knew Twitter so well, I decided that this is going to be something that I'm going to work on. So what I started to use was actually Twitter search and I approached people with specific problems about social that they have about social media with social media. And I approached them on Twitter. So I used Twitter search to Facebook find those people with just searching for some keywords. For example, I need Facebook help. That was like one search that I did and a couple of other ones as well. So I specifically search for people that are struggling with just problems and other things on social media. And I searched for them and when I found them, I tried to help them personally on their specific problems. And that's how I, I got my. I got international followers. And after. And from those international followers, I actually got my first international clients as well.

So you're, you're essentially trying to figure Out. Okay, what could they be searching for if they have a problem and you're trying all these different key phrases in the search field in Twitter, like, I need Facebook help. How do you do this? And you know, Instagram, whatever, right?

Definitely, definitely. So, and, and as I was researching the keywords that people use, I tried to get more and more specific. So, for example, how to increase my engagement rate. That was one thing that I, that I searched for as well. And like, specific things that people are struggling with. And then I stumbled upon specific problems and I tried to double down on that. And after I got to, for example, one specific problem, then I wrote a blog post about it. But worth noting is that I never ever linked to my blog post because I wanted my help to be very personal. One on one, just me helping one person out, not just sending them to my blog post, but I really wanted to see, for them to see how much effort I put into my answers and in helping them.

Wow, that's brilliant. I mean, it sounds so simple, but how many people do this? Right? Not very many.

I talked to a lot of people and I never understood how they're not getting clients from Twitter because it was so easy for me to do that. But like I said, when I talked to them, I found out that not many people do this. They just automate a bunch of things and they post and actually broadcast links to their blog posts and that's it. That's their strategy. But when you take a different approach, a more personal approach, and really try to help people, that's where the magic happens.

So let's take maybe one example. You know, how do I improve my engagement? Increase my engagement, right? So you would see that I'm sure you have to sift through a few tweets, right? It wasn't like there was a whole screen, all of which were very relevant or. Yeah, but you figured out, okay, which ones can I help here? And what would you do? Because you're limited to 140 characters, right? So many times when you're trying to help somebody give advice, you need a little bit more room. So how would you help?

So I already knew like, what people are doing wrong. For example, if he was, if, if this person was searching for how to increase engagement rate on Facebook, I already knew what might be the number one problem from my past clients that I had. And just I was observing a lot of things back then. I still am, but yeah, anyways. And then I pretty much wrote them one solution. I said, you know what? Based on the experience, I Have you're probably doing this and this wrong. But if you give me a link to your Facebook page, I could offer you specific advice on what you're doing wrong and what you're doing well specifically so you can improve on that. So they actually, a lot of times they reply, I mean, who would reject help, free help, right? So a lot of times they would reply to me back, oh, well that's great. Here's the link to my Facebook page. Looking forward to hear from you. And then I would just sift through their Facebook page, see what they're doing wrong and then just come up with maybe a three tweets explaining to what they're doing wrong and then saying if you want maybe a little bit additional help, you can email me at this and this email and I will help you personally. And through those emails then I would probably sell them, for example, Super Spicy Sessions, a product I service that I have. But I offered free help at first just so they can see my expertise and the value I provide to them for free.

Okay. Okay, great. So it was a stair stepped approach. You start if you find them on Twitter, you maybe indicate what might be the problem, but you ask them for some more information, either asking a couple of questions or asking for a link to the page that they're having trouble with, the post or what have you. And then based on that, you go ahead and reply with some ideas and then offer your email address. And would you do that, by the way, private message or would you do that directly? And Twitter?

I did that directly on Twitter and I had a very specific reason for doing that. I wanted other people to see that I know a lot about social media. So when I would help, for example, one specific person and from that initial tweet they would probably, they were probably wondering, who's this girl? I don't know who is she? And then they would click to my profile just to see what I'm writing about. And I wanted them to see that I know a lot about social media so that they would kind of get the courage to just reply to me back so we can get the conversation going.

Oh, wow, that's brilliant. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. So at some point you try to take it to email, but even email seems like the first couple of exchanges are you're just still helping them out, right? Because I'm also wondering if I were on the other end, maybe I'm, I wouldn't say desperate, but maybe I'm in. I have a big enough need that I'm not Asking too many questions. I'm just grateful that you've reached out. But at some point I gotta be wondering in the back of my mind, what's the catch? Right.

Yeah.

So, right. So you can't come to them with an offer too early because they're still a little skeptical, but you wait until you've given enough value, I'm assuming, to maybe talk about working together in some way.

Exactly. And still, you know, I did offer free help, but it was still a win, win situation because I got a lot of information about social media and what mistakes people are doing. And I could easily write a blog post from one email exchange about, you know, what I experienced and how to solve a specific problem. So it was still a win, win situation. But I didn't try to close the deal too early. I just wanted them to see that I am an expert on this topic. They can trust me. And when I could get the feeling that they actually do trust me now, then I would kind of move over to. It wasn't a hard sell, but I was trying to be very honest with them, saying, you know what, I do have a client spot open if you want some additional help, if you want me to really, really get specific, if you want me to write a strategy for. For you. I presented them with my packages that I currently have and that's how we started to cooperate.

Gotcha. So it was in a very tasteful way where you didn't say exactly, oh, sorry, I can't help you with that. You're going to have to buy this thing.

Yeah, I was always trying to be very personal and very honest and very friendly, actually, because I know that a lot of marketers have a very bad reputation because all they are trying to do is sell without establishing trust and value and giving some value first. So I tried to do the opposite of that. So they can see, okay, she's not a typical marketer. She's a little bit different. I like that about her. You know what, I'm going to cooperate with her.

That makes sense. Okay, so how did people take it at that point when you said, you know, I can help you further in, and I want to talk about your productized service too in a minute. But you showed them how you could do it. Maybe a link to some more information, what that included. What's the typical response or reaction?

So the conversion rate wasn't 100%? Far from it. But like I said, even though a lot of people didn't. I mean, many people didn't say yes to the offer. It was still a win situation for me because I could write a blog post about it about a specific problem people are struggling with. And I got, I don't know, a couple of hundred readers on that blog post and I could maybe get a client from that blog post. But a typical response, I mean, I got mixed responses. Some of them were no, but thank you for your help. And other people were like, hell yeah, I can see that you provide a lot of value. You know what you're talking about. So you know what, I'm going to take this offer. Um, and I want to, I want to work with you further.

Okay. Yeah. And that's just very, you've done it so professionally that, you know, it's, you've added enough value in advance to that. It didn't sound like the kind of thing where people would take offense. And I love your idea. I think it's such a great point. I'm glad you've mentioned it a few times. Is in a way, you're getting such amazing market intelligence because you're getting to see what the most common problems are, what the context is behind those problems, how to solve them. And you get it really getting tuned with your target market. Right. Because you're kind of far removed from it many times. And this really gets you in there.

With the people and you can, I mean, when, when you talk to, when you talk to them, you get like, you got a totally different perspective because as you said yourself, you, you are so far away from the market, usually you don't even know what people are struggling with. But when you kind of go down and actually talk to people with specific problems, that's where the magic happens. That's when you can get the material for your blog posts, for your emails. And I wrote a lot of blog posts just from those emails when I helped people and got to know them and got to know their problems and their struggles, et cetera, et cetera.

So that's, that's great, that's great. So let's talk a little bit about, and we'll come back to maybe some other ideas. But I don't want to forget about the productized service. So I think it's a brilliant strategy in a situation like this because it's still kind of early in the relationship. You've added enough value to establish a certain degree of trust. But I would think that leaving it kind of open ended, it would hurt conversions. In other words. Oh, well, listen, I'd love to work with you further. You know, here are some of my services and Some of the fee ranges. Right. And people don't really know where to go from there. But when you offer a productized service in a situation like this, it's something very concrete, very tangible. So tell me how you came up with this idea of developing those services and what. Maybe give us a couple of examples of what they look like.

Yeah. My product and service is called Super Spicy Sessions. And the idea for it actually came from this Twitter search thing that I was doing. Because when I tried to help people when they were struggling with specific problems on their Facebook page, I did a lot of social media audits. So I audited their Facebook page and like I mentioned before, actually I observed what they're doing wrong, what they're doing well, what they should fix and what's the strategy they should implement and they should go for. And that's where the idea for Super Spicy Sessions actually came, because Super Spicy Sessions are a social media audit, essentially. And what I do is I ask for links to your social media profile. So Facebook page, Twitter profile, Pinterest profile, Instagram profile, whatever you have, and you send me the links and then I do an audit and I see what you're doing wrong. I see what you need to improve right away. I see the things, the practices that you have that are actually doing damage to your brand and how you should fix that, the steps you should take. And then we talk about a strategy, what a good strategy looks like, how you should do it. I tell them specifically specific examples, specific post examples. So I don't know if you are a company that sells CrossFit clothes, for example. CrossFit community is very motivational oriented. They're very motivational. They like motivational quotes. So I tell them, you know what, share more motivational quotes with your followers. That will get your engagement rate up, and then you can go into this and that. So we talk a lot about strategy and their specific, like, specific posts they should publish. And like I said, the idea for Super Spicy Sessions was actually born from this social media audits that I did when helping people that I found through Twitter search.

That's great. Yeah. So you basically took what you were doing with people and you kind of created a framework from that.

Exactly, yeah. And when I started offering these Super Spicy Sessions, they were sold out the first month because it was so interesting for two people just to see what they're doing wrong with social media. So when I found Twitter, when I found people on Twitter, I told them, okay, here are a few things that are doing wrong. But then when we moved over to email. I told them there are a couple of things that need improvement too. So if you want for this and this price, I can give you a detailed social media audit and we will talk about strategy, we will talk about specific posts you need to publish if you want to improve your social media strategy, if you want to increase your engagement rate, if you want to increase conversions. And that was a pretty easy sell for me. Since then, all of my Super Spicy Sessions were sold out.

Actually, I'm curious what the price point was when you were starting out for the this.

When I was starting, when I was starting out, I was doing like the beta testing. So I priced them at $100 because it was, it was a 60 minute, 60 minute Skype call and we did a social media audit and a strategy talk, et cetera, et cetera. But I saw that this is very valuable. So I eventually increased the price. The current price is $349, but I will be increasing this price to 750 in the following weeks. Actually, because I have been getting so many great reviews and my clients were actually saying me, you know what, this is incredibly valuable and you are underestimating your expertise and you're underestimating Super Spicy Sessions. So I will be increasing the price all over again. And I did, actually. Eventually I started offering or including a lot more things into Super Spicy Sessions. For example, my clients now get a personalized ebook that's about 20 to 30 pages long. And that ebook actually talks about the specific problems they are experiencing, the practices that are damaging their brand and how they should fix that and the strategy they should do. Next, as I extended my offering, I will increase the price. So far I've been getting a lot of good reviews on the price increase too because I have been talking to a lot of past clients saying, is this the price that you think would still make sense for you and your business now that you know what I offer and you know how Super Spicy Sessions look like? And they all said yes. So I think that Super Spicy Sessions was pretty successful. Yeah.

Oh wow. That's awesome. That's great. I agree. I think it's a great price point and I think it's smart for you when you're. For anyone who's listening and looking to try this, start small, start low, beta test this thing and build it.

And I did the same with the when I introduced this ebook, I beta tested the ebook with a couple of clients and when I saw that this was a good idea, I increased the price and said, hey, you know what? I offered this personalized ebook at the end of Super Spicy Sessions now. So. And I think that if I wouldn't start lower, maybe, I'm not sure, but maybe I wouldn't get as many clients. But when I saw that, you know, this was sold out, and when I increased the price and it was still sold out, I think that starting low, but then increasing the price as I go and as I get faster at doing things as well, and as I kind of increase my workflow a little bit, offer a little, you know, just a little bit more things, not a lot. I think that that was a pretty, pretty good idea.

So I'm curious, this seems to be, in a way, kind of your Tripwire product, right? And what do you have on the back end to. Because I'm sure you, you know, you do well with these, but I'm assuming you have some other services on the back end.

Oh, yeah, definitely. So I started. We all of my clients start with usually with Super Spicy Sessions. So we talk, we talk about, like I said, their strategy, what they're doing wrong. But then they usually realize that social media is a lot of work and they can't, they, they can't possibly do each and everything themselves. They have other things they need to be focusing on and they, they need to hire someone that will take care of social media. And one person that comes to mind after Super Spicy Sessions is actually me, because I have already helped them. I know what I'm talking about. And a lot of them implement a first couple of things that we discussed on supersized sessions. They see that they work, they get a little bit more trust, they trust me a little bit more, and then they turn to me saying, you know what? I actually don't have time to do social media. Do you, do you offer any services that, you know that you can do this for us? But I do usually after Super Spicy sessions, I follow up with clients two to three times. You know how they're doing that they implement stuff. And then I try to offer them some, you know, a bigger, bigger packages. For example, so I have consulting services and that's usually, that's actually me monitoring their Facebook analysis, Facebook insights, how are things progressing? And offer them input on what they should implement, what they should do differently. For example, then I have social media management. So when I take over all of their social media profiles and I do social media for them, and then I offer Facebook advertising, for example, for those clients that want to take it a step further and invest into advertising. So I already have a bunch of packages ready that I offer to clients after we end up super spicy sessions, after we wrap that up and after they realize that they do actually need someone that will take care of their social media.

Yeah. Wow. This is overwhelming. I believe everything you're saying, but I don't have time to do all this. Can you help me implement it?

Yeah. And the conversion rate for those bigger engagements was. Bigger engagements is actually around 70%, which is incredible. Yeah. Because a lot of clients, like I said, it's so super spicy sessions, I'm not going to lie. Super spicy sessions are incredibly overwhelming. But I wanted to stay that way a little bit because I want them to see that social media isn't something you will do. I don't know, you will take 5 minutes of your day and you'll do it and you'll increase your conversion rate from social media, for example. That's not going to work. I need them to see that and I need them to realize that so I can maybe help them grow their businesses even more with my help, with me running their social media profile so they can see. See how social media can increase. Can grow their business if they have a professional by their side.

So I'm curious. It's. I'm not surprised, even though it's very high that you're doing so well converting super spicy session clients into more consulting clients or big engagements. I'm curious now, these days, now that you've gotten really good at this and you know how to qualify prospects a little better, do you have a general sense for what your conversion is from getting someone free advice to a session?

To be honest, I don't know that. Because lately, for the past few months, I haven't been doing a lot of Twitter search just because I was booked. My super spicy sessions were booked. I had a lot of client work to do. But to be honest, I haven't really tracked that. I was just trying to be really natural, helping people and then seeing where that will take me.

Yeah. Yeah. And that makes sense. Right? You got busy. It did what you intended it to do. I'm curious if somebody's listening and they're saying, wow, this is really smart. I want to try this. And let's say they come from a place of service and just wanting to help people, but they're also trying to gauge how well this might be working. What would you tell them would be a good conversion rate if you had to guess? Right. From being careful about who you help. Right. Making sure that they, based on what you read about them, that they Might be a good prospect for you to turning them into a tripwire or let's say a buyer of kind of your front end service. What would that look like if you had to guess?

That's a pretty, pretty hard question because I never measured that. But as far as just qualifying clients goes, when you start out, I didn't know what I was doing actually. I was just helping people. But after maybe a week or two, I got a better feeling on which is this prospect going to buy something? Is this prospect going to go with super spy sessions, or is he just fishing for free advice? And you can get a pretty good feeling about that when you do it for, for a couple of weeks. For a few weeks. And that's when you'll start to double down on the prospects that you see are fit. But I wouldn't know if I can. Any number that I would say would be just from my head.

Yeah, and like you said too. Right. There's other benefits to it as well. So even if, let's say you're thinking somewhere along the lines of 20%, but only 5% are converting, it's not wasted effort because you're getting a lot of street level intelligence. You have all kinds of fodder for blog posts and articles, and you're getting a really good sense of what your market is going through, which helps you connect better with your marketing.

Exactly. And I think that another win in this situation is you're growing your audience on Twitter. So since I started doing that, I have, I have gotten a lot of followers and a lot of friends, actually. They keep sharing my blog posts, for example, because they stumble upon my profile. They. They see that I'm actually helping people with their specific problems. I grew my authority in this space just with helping people with their social media, with including myself in a conversation when, when someone was asking for help and didn't know what to do next with their Facebook page, for example. And I grew my authority, I grew my audience, and now I have a lot of readers of my blog post. Even though maybe I didn't win a lot of, I mean, I didn't win 100% of my clients, 100% of my prospects, actually. I didn't get them to super spicy sessions. I still maybe increased my subscribers subscribers list, for example, because people saw that I know what I'm talking about. They clicked to my webpage and they saw, okay, well she has a newsletter. If I subscribe now, maybe I will get a little bit of more value about social media, for example. So they subscribed and I grew my audience, my Twitter audience, my newsletter audience, and all sorts of things.

Wow. This is. Yeah. Multiple benefits.

Exactly.

It's brilliant. I guess one last question somebody might be asking themselves. Well, you know, this. I love this idea. I mean, I do have a Twitter account, but, you know, I really haven't done much with it. I don't have a lot of followers. I don't follow a lot of people. If somebody's starting really from scratch there and they want to try this, what would you advise them to do? What's a good first step?

A good first step is to go to search.twitter.com and even though they might not not know what they're doing on Twitter, they are probably already an authority in their space. So if they're copywriters, they know a lot about copywriting. If they're writers, they know a lot about writers. They know what problems people are stumbling upon when, for example, they are trying to do copywriting. So just try to search for that problems and see what people are talking about on Twitter if they have specific problems, for example. And just including yourself in that conversation help genuinely helping people. But really just go to search.twitter.com and search for specific keywords that are common in your industry for specific problems people are struggling with. And then next step is just helping people and see where that takes you.

So no need to have hundreds of followers or no need to have that.

No need to have that. Because you are reaching out. You're not waiting for people to find you, but you are doing all the work. You are reaching out to people. So you don't need 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 followers. No need for that.

So just make sure the basics are in place, right? That you have your picture there, that you have a description, that you have some of the basics. But.

And probably. And the good thing would be to have some sort of link. So if you have a blog, link to your blog. If you have your own webpage, link to your webpage. If you have a Facebook page. If you don't, for example, if you don't have a webpage for a reason, but you do have a Facebook page where you share a lot of value, put a link to your Facebook page there. Just give people some additional source so they can click on that and see what you're all about so they can trust you a little bit better.

That makes sense. That makes sense. I love this. This is surprisingly and refreshingly simple and elegant. I can totally see how this would work really well if you go about it the right way. So one last question Moitza so how can people learn more about you? How can they learn more about what you're up to and connect with you?

So I would love if they would just search for me on Twitter. I'm moitzamarz on Twitter Twitter. But if they have any other any other questions or specific questions I can help them with about Twitter, about Facebook page, whatever, they can always email me@moitzauperspicymedia.com and if they want to know more about Facebook ads because I teach freelancers about using Facebook ads to their own advantage, they can always go to super spicemedia.com fbads and apply for my free free email course on Facebook ads and how to utilize them for growing your business.

Fantastic. Moitza thanks so much for coming on. I just love what you shared with us today.

Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed this.

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