How to Book Social Media Management Clients Step-by-Step

What's up and welcome back to the Freelance Friday podcast. By far the biggest question that I get on the podcast channel is. How do you get clients? And I think the answer to that question really is two different parts. I think there's the finding client part, which we'll talk about. We have talked about many times, but there's also the booking. Like how do you actually book the client? How do you win them over? How do you sell your services to them and really see. I'm going to be talking about

how to seal the deal. And that second part is what I want to talk about today. The actual booking process, step by step for any freelance client, but specifically my social media managers out there, this one is for you. So first things first, you need something that is going to show what you can do. And this can be posted on your website. It can be printed out on paper. It can be sent over in a PDF via email, but it's going to be what we call a portfolio. A portfolio is going to have a collecti

on of different projects that you've worked on, maybe some testimonials, maybe some logos of folks that you've worked with, and almost like a little catalog of your services, what your capabilities are, what your specialties are in your business and how somebody could start wanting to work with you. Now within that portfolio, I also like to include some mini client case studies. So I'll pull out specific clients that I worked with or specific projects that I worked on and give a little, you know

, rundown of what my role was in that project and how I was involved and what some of the results that we saw together were. But I also like to have a case study document or a couple of different case study documents on hand as well, kind of behind the scenes. I don't usually post these on my website or just, you know, send these out to cold emails or anything like that. But I do have them on hand so that if maybe I get a referral from somebody, let's say. And they say, Hey, Latasha, this client

wants to work with you. They're in the SAS space, software as a service space. Have you ever worked with any SAS brands before? Well, I can send them over a case study that shows a SAS project that I've worked on in detail or an influencer marketing project that I've worked on in detail or, you know, whatever it is that you specialize in. So I like to have that as a separate document that really just goes into a lot more detail, but the strategies and tactics that I used. To achieve whatever it

is that I achieved. For example, I have a portfolio that showcases a lot of different work that I've done and just kind of my general brand information and what I like to do in my business, and then I have a case study document for a project that I worked on with one of my favorite clients that I've had, Octoly. Just an influencer marketing kind of tech startup. I hosted an event for them. I planned it. I launched their social channels. So I have like all those breakdowns and details of what ex

actly I did. And ultimately what the results were that I had, how many people attended the event, how many total user signups I was able to help facilitate and so on and so forth. Like I said, either of these documents could be a page on your website. They could be a Google doc. They could be a lot of different things, or they could even be in Notion. And I have Notion templates for all of the stuff that I'm going to talk about today, actually, as a part of my social media management toolbox for

Notion, which is brand new. I'm super excited to share it. I'll have a link down below with also some fun bonus information, and I'll share some more. At the end of this episode as well, if you want to check that out, but really plug and play, you just open it up, copy the notion template to your own notion account, and you can start using this and either just having it to help you structure something that maybe you design for yourself in your brand look, feel colors, fonts, all of that. Or you

can just share your notion page with a potential client and send them your case study or portfolio that way. Okay. Now, once you have your portfolio, you have a couple of case studies on hand. You're also going to want to figure out what your offer is going to be and what your packages are going to be that you're going to be offering. Offering people when you get on calls with them and you start really pitching to them. This can be a little bit overwhelming when you're first starting out, becau

se there really are so many different factors that go into it, but I'll leave a couple of resources that I've already shot on my YouTube channel that should help you with that. And also within this notion toolbox as a part of the early bird bonus during launch month, I'm actually throwing in a free. Freelance rate calculator. That's editable in Excel. I worked with an amazing instructional designer to put this together. So it's really plug and play. So you can just type in how many hours you wan

t to work per week, how much money you want to make per year. And it'll kind of give you a starting point for what you should be charging for your packages. And then you can kind of reverse engineer that and say, okay, if my packages need to be 2, 500 a month, well, what does a 2, 500 a month package look like, what should I be including in there? And so on and so forth. So that's a good one to check out. So those are the big things that we're going to need to really sell your services as far as

documents. Now we've got to go into actually sealing the deal and pitching to our clients or prospects rather. So first thing is figuring out a way to book and host. Discovery calls, discovery calls, or intro calls where you talk to a prospect, you tell them about your services. Most importantly, you listen to what they need so that you can suggest a package or a service that's right for them. And I really like to use Honeybook for this portion. I use their. Lead forms and their scheduling tool

to book those calls. You can put these in your LinkedIn profile and your Instagram bio. You can send these out via email, whatever works best for you. But yeah, I love HoneyBook. It's really intuitive for actually booking those calls. And then when you're on the discovery call, now this, It has been a big learning experience for me over the years. I am actually really shy. Um, I have a lot of social anxiety actually, believe it or not. And so discovery calls were so scary for me when I first st

arted freelancing. And I still do get a little bit nervous my first time talking to somebody. But number one, I've learned to just have fun with it. And I've learned to just see. That person has a human, right? That is another human on the other side of the screen. They're just like you and I sure they might have a big important position. Um, but they're still just a human. And so remembering that just making a little joke, being personable in the beginning of the call can really help. And I als

o have a checklist that I go off of and I review before I even get on a discovery call. That checklist might have a couple of different icebreakers that I can use. This is a little old. Hack that I've used, not just in business, but even just in regular life. Like if I go to a party or a networking event, I can be so awkward. So I have kind of my go to list of questions that I ask as icebreakers. So, Hey, where in the world are you located? Or what's the weather like where you are? Or do you hav

e any fun plans for the weekend? Like, yeah, they're kind of boring, kind of cheesy, very like corporate y kind of questions, but they're super, super helpful. And can really just help take some of the edge off because a lot of times your prospect is a little nervous to believe it or not, they don't really know what to expect and they're expecting you to take the lead on the call. So inside of the social media management toolbox for notion, I also have a discovery call checklist, which should be

super helpful for you as well. And then assuming the discovery call goes well, and they give you some indications that they are looking to work together, which by the way, I just ask, you know, at the end of a discovery call, I say, Hey, so, you know, does this sound like the type of service that you're looking for? When do you think you'll be able to make a decision on this? Uh, and I'll give them a preview of what the next steps are going to be. Hey, I'll send you a proposal over. You know, b

y the end of the week, if you want to take a look at it, and once you sign off on it, we can schedule our onboarding call, just kind of give them a preview. And if they are being kind of weird, if they're like, okay, yeah, I don't know. Let me ask my team. You still send the proposal. Don't get me wrong, but that can sometimes be an indication that they're, they have some hesitation and that they might not really be all that serious. Maybe they're just kind of shopping around, but usually you ca

n really tell like if a client is like, yeah, I'm ready. Let's do it. You know, that gives you an indication that that's a pretty good like handshake. Yes. If I will. So the next thing you need to do is just. Seal the deal. And you do that by sending over a proposal, send them over just a recap of what you talked about with the package or the service that you suggest for them, how much that's going to cost and also give them some next steps. Hey, use this. Booking link to schedule your onboardin

g call, or here's the link to a questionnaire or a welcome kit or anything like that, which we'll talk about in a second, just preview the next steps and also allow them to pay you. And for sending over all of this stuff, once I've built out my proposal and kind of structured it together using my notion template, I just pop those into honey book and send over my proposal, my contract, all of that from there so that my client can just book really easily. Pay and we've got that part taken care of

and the contract is signed. It's super important to make sure you get a contract. And then once they're officially paying clients, once they've signed, they've paid, they're ready to go. It's important to really. Get to know them and their brand and make sure that you are doing all that you can to really deliver on your end of the bargain. And one of the tools that's been really helpful to me over the years is sending over a questionnaire. If you're using HoneyBook, there is an option to create

a questionnaire. You can even create an automation that sends this through as soon as their invoice is paid, which is pretty cool. Or if you want to do things a little bit more DIY, you could use like a Google form or type. Form or something like that inside of the toolbox. There's actually a Google form template that you can just copy and start using yourself. So you don't even have to plug, plug anything in yourself. But this onboarding questionnaire asks like information about their brand inf

ormation, about their ideal client information, about their communication preferences and how they want to work together. And all of this information is super important. To some aspect of the job that you're doing, either performing the job and, you know, creating social media posts that are going to speak to their ideal audience or actually just working with them in the way that they prefer. And then I also send through along with that questionnaire, I send through a welcome kit. This is magic.

It's not, it's just a document, notion document. You can use it in docs, whatever you want to do. It's not that magical, but it really can save you. A lot of headache when it comes to boundary issues, scope, creep issues. Yes. They signed off on a contract that had most of this stuff in it, likely, but giving that reminder and walking through this welcome kit on an onboarding call with them is game changing. So inside of my welcome kit, I have my business hours when I am in the office and on my

computer and doing work, because sometimes you Especially as social media managers, people expect that like social media, people are just always on social media are always on their phones. And so making sure that they know, Hey, unless it's an emergency, this is when I'm going to be getting back to your emails. This is how long you can expect to wait in between emails. Here's who to contact if something goes wrong. If there is, you know, You know, you work on a team, there's different people. H

ere's what constitutes an emergency. And here's how to reach me. If there is an emergency, meaning maybe your ads account gets hacked or, you know, you see something posted that's wildly inappropriate or something like that. So just kind of coming to terms with each other's communication, preferences, boundaries, all of that working styles is really helpful. And you can include all of that in a welcome kit. I'm telling you, it will change the game for you. And of course we've got a template in t

he toolbox. So yeah, that's kind of my booking process, exactly how I do it. And like I said, I do have a template for you or a collection of templates called the social media management toolbox for notion right now. During launch it's on sale 50 percent off. And you're also going to get a couple of fun bonuses with it, including that freelance rate calculator that you can use for Excel or Google sheets. It's amazing. And I'm also going to be hosting a couple of implementation calls, which are t

otally free to join if you book during launch month, and these calls are. Co working calls, and I'll be there to answer your questions about any of these templates or the many others that are included in there. This is just kind of scratching the surface. There's also templates in there, like a social media strategy, a competitor analysis, hashtag library, and so on. So much more. It's an expansion on my original social media management toolbox, which has gotten over 200 five star reviews. Peopl

e absolutely love that thing, but this is editable in notion. So brand new, if you're a toolbox lover, definitely check it out. And let me know if you have any questions about the booking process for social media clients or any freelance client, really hope you enjoyed this episode, hope it was helpful. And I will talk to you in my next one. Bye.