Greater than 2 minutes, my friend!
How to use Facebook to get more translation clients See? I'm still here, so quit freakin' out! XD
Hi, everybody!!!
I have my first little tidbit on how to find new customers for you all today. Specifically, we’re looking at a new feature on Facebook that hasn’t exactly been publicly announced yet. It’s called Facebook Services (www.facebook.com/services) and it’s basically a directory of local businesses in the style of Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Google Business. And the best part of it all is that it’s free! Well, for now at least.
How to set up a Facebook Services page
The process behind creating one of this pages is pretty simple and fast. You can have your business up on Facebook in less than an hour. The first thing that you need to do is create a local business page. You will need to provide an address. I use a P.O. box that has a physical address, but no one ever visits my office anyways. I’m a sketchy looking fellow. You can also use virtual offices or co-working spaces if you are so inclined.
Next, you want to choose your categories. There aren’t a lot of them.
The one you want is marked simply as “Translator”
How to be #1 on Facebook Services
Rankings are based on keywords, likes, and recommendations. The more interactions you have, the higher you will rank. So, start hitting up all your clients and asking for a review. I personally pick the clients that have been happiest with my services and invite them to leave a review on my Facebook page. In return, I’ll give them $10 off their next project, or something like that. You don’t necessarily have to give them anything in return, beyond a quality translation, of course, but it helps. It also brings your client back for another project *wink* We’re not trying to buy positive reviews, we’re giving out clients an incentive to leave a review. I said to choose the ones that are happiest with your work because they’re the ones that will give you 5 out of 5 stars.
Does it work?
Since this feature hasn’t been announced yet, very, very few people know that this exists and even fewer are using it. So, in that sense, I haven’t made any money from it directly. However, once this goes live, you can bet that there will be a lot more traffic going through there. Now, I said that I haven’t made any money from it directly which means that I have made money indirectly. Since I’m ranked #1 for my services, I get to tell people that I’ve been ranked, by Facebook, as the best provider of my service in my area. That sounds really impressive. Honestly, most translation clients have never heard of the ATA or Proz or anything else, so those certifications and accolades really don’t mean much outside of the translation community. For the most part, your client just wants a translation and doesn’t care about your degrees or certifications or anything else. They want what they’re paying for. They do recognize Facebook, though. That gives you instant credibility and an excellent position for negotiation. So, yeah, it works pretty darn well.
Anastasia Giagopoulou 
Mark Hemming 
Maeva Cifuentes 
Triston, thank you for such useful information. I will set up my own page there, too
Happy to help!
Thanks, Triston, I was following the same thread you posted on Proz and waiting for your tips about it. I took a look at the FB service but I find out the greatest limit of it is the local context. I can hardly hope to get jobs by local industry/businesses (maybe it’s not the same when you are based in the source language country – I’m not), so I wonder if it could work for me. What do you all think about?
I’m a little frustrated with Proz right now :/
I personally think that any good publicity, especially if it’s free, is worth going after. If nothing else, you can tell your other clients that you’re ranked #1 by Facebook in your area. It becomes more of a validation of your skills than an actual source of projects.
If nothing else, should any customers contact you, you can outsource or exchange them along to other colleagues. That’s what I’m doing, since I’m not actively translating anything right now.
Agree, good points of view. I definitely believe you are doing a useful job by spreading the word about FB’s new service and trying to explain how to get the most by this. I believe in new ideas, more generally; and even more in people who believe in community :). Maybe I overestimate the “territorial” limit.
Looks interesting, thanks for sharing Triston.
Very interesting, thank you!
Hey, thanks for sharing this tip. And as many I guess I didn’t know this feature of Facebook existed ! I am going straight away to see more of it 😉 thanks again