I’ve never had a client tell me that my social media presence influenced them to work with me.

In fact, there are really 3 ways clients find out about me (based on what they shared when filling out my prospective client questionnaire:

• Word of mouth: They asked their networks for someone who has my skill sets and expertise
• Internet search: The keywords they entered landed them on a page or blog post on my website
• I was off somewhere being useful: From email listservs, in-person meetings and events, or online forums, they noticed me sharing resources and information or offering advice

But like most people, I use social media. I started off using it as a way to connect with the people I know in real life and to make connections with new folks.

Once I started growing my blog, I needed someplace to promote outside of friends and family.

It’s interesting to see the impact that social media has played in our professional and personal lives. However, like most of us, I got caught up in the vanity of it.

Likes, comments, retweets, shares, clicks, and comments. They all play a role in how people view you. But as we see with social media as a whole, they don’t tell the full story.

I call these “vanity metrics“. While they are important to see how your content resonates with your audience, you don’t really know why they’re engaging with you.

When we get caught up in these vanity metrics, we develop this inflated sense of importance. Outside of comments, vanity metrics don’t really tell you why someone engages with you. Nor do follower counts tell you if the person following you actually supports you, likes your work, or agrees with your viewpoint. It’s weird to think that people will follow someone or comment on something they don’t like, but it happens.

With all this talk of shadow bans, algorithms, paying to have your content seen by the people who chose to follow you, and removing likes, we need to ask ourselves some tough questions about what we’re really doing on social media and why. And if you use it to promote yourself or your organization, we need to ask ourselves is social media the best way to marketing ourselves.

My answer is no. Especially since social media platforms can disappear at any time.

While I do believe that social media is a great way to connect with and network with others, my #1 rule for marketing yourself on social media is to not have social media be the #1 way to market yourself.

Instead of having social media drive your marketing, consider the following ways to market yourself while using social media as a supplemental avenue:

I was speaking with a friend recently, who decided to go back to the corporate world after consulting for over 5 years. Of all his reasons, the main reason was that he no longer cared about what he did and who he did it for.

I know this feeling well, because closer to the end of my time with my old organization, I felt it. I have a specific memory of having a new client sitting across from me, detailing her concerns with her housing and benefits. When I first started working there, I would go above and beyond to do what I could for a client. But listening to her (and taking stock of my place within the organization), I realized that I didn’t care.

I’ve always told myself that when I get to the point where I no longer cared about what I do and who I do it for, I would call it quits. So, I did.

But one day in early 2018, I was preparing to write a blog post, create an email newsletter to send out to my subscribers, and do some work for my consulting clients.

It was a snowy, cloudy day. As I waited for my laptop to boot up, I looked out the window and asked myself, “Why am I doing this?”

Here’s a question from Ashleigh, a social worker based in California interested in taking on part-time consulting work:

Hi Nicole!

I’m interested in learning more about your process of taking on client or partnership work. Specifically, do you have any criteria or lessons learned in determining when to take on a new client or project and when to turn someone down? I’m interested in doing consulting on the side to supplement my income, and while I’m cognizant of my capacity, I’m curious to know if there are other reasons I should consider when turning down an opportunity.

Thanks in advance!

Great question!

I’ve already talked about how I’ve gone about getting client work and my process for reflecting on a project, as well as some of my pet peeves, including the RFP process and clients who “ghost”. So, we’ll focus on turning down opportunities.

My reasons for turning down a client or partnership opportunity varies, so what may be a deal breaker in one situation may not be the case for another. Also, my reasons are personal to me and I don’t have to tell a prospective client or partner why I’m choosing not to work with them unless asked, other than to let them know I’m not the best fit.

Nevertheless, here are some reasons why I may turn down a prospective client or partnership opportunity:

I’m not interested in the project

The main reason I transitioned into working for myself was the ability to choose who I want to work with, what I want to work on, and why I want to be involved. Some reasons why I may not be interested in a project can include:

• The focus of the project or collaboration doesn’t align with my current interests or learning needs 
• Taking on this project will result in an imbalance of services provided (taking on more evaluation projects when I want to do more research or organizational sustainability projects, for example)
• Project length (I may be interested in short-term projects while the client is looking for someone for longer, or vice versa)
• Reputation of the client/partner (questionable leadership, people I know who have had a bad experience with them, etc.)
• Budget (what the client is willing to pay doesn’t match up with the amount of work they’re requesting)
• The client or partnership’s work doesn’t align with my business’ mission and values (see last reason)

Clients or partners with questionable communication patterns

If we’ve explored the possibility of working together…and you disappear…come back…and disappear again…only to come back and disappear yet again, I’m also going to assume you were either not serious, not ready, or there’s something going on with your organization’s stability.

Also, sometimes projects may not go forward due to factors not under the client or partner’s control, but when you don’t inform me if this, it makes me questions if dropping communication is something that happens often in your organization. If it’s my responsibility to follow-up with you within a given timeframe, I’ll make every effort to do that; but if it’s yours and you don’t, I’ll take it as a sign that you’re not ready to move forward, you’ve decided to work with someone else, or some other factor.

I like to spread out my projects and travel

I like to bring on projects and partnerships that vary in length and responsibilities. For instance, while I may be onboarding two long-term clients, I might have two projects that I’m halfway through, and two additional projects that I’m wrapping up and doing final reporting on. I also like to spread out my client travel as I try my best not to do too much traveling for one given client in case I need to be in person with another client.

Clients or partners who debate me on my process

How I interact with prospective clients and partners is driven by whether they’ve contacted me or if I’m responding to a solicitation. Along with this, it gives me and the client/partner the opportunity to feel each other out and for me to share how I’ve worked on similar projects with similar clients in the past.

Every agency, business, or organization has policies and procedures. As part of my policies and procedures, I ask prospective clients and partners complete my client/partner questionnaire. In the past year, I’ve buckled down on making sure everyone–prospective or previous clients–complete this questionnaire because I’ve observed that I’d been lax about it with people I knew personally. So now, everyone does it.

Also, depending on if the client has hired me for evaluation services, I have them complete an evaluation capacity measure assessment so I can assess what’s doing on within their organization related to evaluative thinking, leadership support for evaluation, and staff capacity, etc. I’ve had 2 prospective clients push back on this, even though they hired me to help them build evaluation capacity.

Similar to what I observed while working in a more direct service/case management setting, what I’ve learned is that, even when a client presents with one request, what really needs to be worked on and addressed doesn’t appear until after I’ve done a thorough analysis, so when a client is against this part of my process, I decline.

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I (typically) don’t like networking.

I thought it was because I’m an introvert or that it seemed easier when I was in college, or that I’d say something stupid that would ruin my chances of making a great connection.

Some of my most memorable (and odd) networking experiences include:

• A women coming up to me during an event, handing me her business card (for a service I didn’t need), and walked away.
• A conference attendee watching me intently as I spoke, and I could tell that they were honing in on catching buzzwords they could use to determine if it would be worth their time to continuing speaking with me.
• I was contacted about a potential collaboration with someone I’d never met before, and the only reason they were interested in working me was due to my location, but they didn’t know much else about me or if we’d be a good fit.

One day I realized why I don’t like networking: The focus is on what you can get from someone, rather than building an authentic relationship. The next time you have an opportunity to network with someone, ask yourself:

Would I care about this person if they didn’t have something I want?

I recently spoke to a researcher and evaluator. She contacted me, sharing how she and I were connected (we’re members of a few activists groups and listservs, and she reads my blog), and asked to have a conversation with me because we have many commonalities (being women of color with a passion for social justice and culturally responsive research and evaluation) and she’d like to be intentional in building relationships with potential consultants.

What I thought would be a 30-minute conversation ended up lasting a little over an hour. It was a great conversation where we learned each other’s work and the communities we worked with. We’ve decided to set up ongoing conversations to stay connected. I’m always excited to connect with another woman of color in the research and evaluation space to share advice and potential opportunities, but I’m actually more excited at the prospect of getting to know another researcher and evaluator in this case.

My #1 rule for effective networking is to focus on relationship building from place of really wanting to get the know the person as an individual, and less about what you think this person can do for you.