You could be one of the many people leaving corporate life to set up on their own as a freelancer. We know this journey well, as this is exactly the path we followed.
After many years working in IT, I left the City and created my own business working from home. It puts me in a good position to understand exactly where other consultants and freelancers are coming from.
You might not have an IT background. Your specialism could be anything from finance to customer service, social care or human resources to sustainability and the environment, to oil refinery management, to teaching. Whatever it is, if there is a market for your skills, a website will help you to reach that market.
You can rely on LinkedIn and your own portfolio of contacts. But you can augment and backup that source of work with a website of your own.
A website is ideal for demonstrating your commitment your subject matter and has the potential to broaden your reach beyond the people you know and beyond these shores. It can serve as a permanent centre of excellence that demonstrates or describes your specialist knowledge.
For example I am located in France, but the majority of my clients and customers are in the US and the UK.
This is what differentiates a freelancer, consultant or knowledge worker from a local business. The latter are not normally restricted by geography.
The local business accountant we mentioned earlier ran a bricks and mortar business, and expected to see their clients face to face. But another accountant may prefer to run their entire business online, and communicate with customers solely using internet technology even if they're situated up the road from the accountant.
If an accountant makes that kind of decision, then using our terminology, they become a knowledge worker and his website will have different characteristics to deal with his larger geographical reach.
You'll need a lot of content in order to get noticed in the search results. So be prepared to provide plenty of content on an ongoing basis.
If you’d like to talk to me about getting a website online to represent you and spread the message of your knowledge around the globe, contact us.
