It's Time to Shout About Your Proofreading Business Online and Start Making Money

Use social media to promote your proofreading business.

Here at The No-Nonsense Proofreading Course, our aim is not only to show you how to become a proofreader, it is to show you precisely how you can make money proofreading. Depending on your goals and commitment, proofreading can become your sole source of income or it can be a lucrative side-hustle.

Let’s have a recap on where we’re up to:
 

• You’re crammed full of knowledge from The No-Nonsense Proofreading Course
• You’ve signed-up with every online freelance marketplace you can find
• You’ve created your own proofreading business website
• You’re now ready to shout about your proofreading business online!

 
In this article, I’ll address Step 3 from our Where to Start list of steps that will give you concrete solutions on your journey to creating your own successful proofreading business.
 
OK. Here we go.

Step 3.

Sign-up with every appropriate social media channel you can find.
 
The way to get this right, is to only sign-up with the most appropriate social media channels for what you’re trying to achieve. So, if you’re trying to promote your online proofreading business, there are clearly going to be social media channels that are more suitable for you to have a presence on than others.

Put another way, don’t think that you’ve got to sign up with every social media site, regardless of the number of people on them!
 
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t have a presence on multiple, or all social media sites if they have an appropriate audience, but do try to be selective. Take for example Tik Tok. It allows its users to create their own short video clips and then share them. Despite having an impressive 1.2 billion users worldwide (and counting), it’s highly unlikely that these same users are going to respond well to your proofreading business, even if you’ve gone to the trouble of making a cool short video!
 
The point is, your target audience is much more likely to have a presence on other social media platforms.
 
The 16 most popular social networks worldwide*
 

• Facebook
• YouTube
• WhatsApp
• Facebook Messenger
• WeChat
• Instagram
• QQ
• QZone
• Tik Tok (Douyin)
• Sina Weibo
• Reddit
• Twitter
• Douban
• Snapchat
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest

 
This list may well represent some of the most popular social media platforms, and the ones to promote your proofreading business are definitely amongst them, but going back to that word ‘appropriate’ many of these platforms will have little impact on your business, as their popular user bases are unlikely to be your target demographic, unless of course you’re looking to promote your proofreading business in China or to Gen Z! (it’s okay, I had to look that up too!)
 
So how do I know where to promote my proofreading business?
 
Like I said, not all social media platforms are going to be appropriate or lend themselves to promoting your proofreading business, but let's take a brief look some that could.
 
Facebook
The biggest and most far-reaching social media platform of them all.

First things first: Create a business page. For a professional Facebook presence, you should have a separate business page from your personal page for your proofreading business.
Use the many settings options to include as much information about your business as possible, especially important is your contact information.
 
With an active user base of over 2.4 billion, you shouldn't have any trouble getting a 'like' or a 'follow' from your posts.
Always try to be engaging and helpful when you post, remember that social media is all about building relationships and not all about selling.
 
LinkedIn:
Maybe not the biggest, but LinkedIn is all about business promotion, recruitment and networking, and having a LinkedIn profile could definitely benefit your proofreading business.

Above all else, LinkedIn is an environment where aspiring business professionals and potential business partners go to build their client base and their peer to peer network.
It's the perfect showcase for your proofreading skills and services.
 
You should consider creating a LinkedIn company page for your proofreading business.
You can set up a business page and as you complete the Résumé section of your personal LinkedIn profile, your company page will be automatically linked to the Résumé in your profile.
 
With your profile set, you can start actively marketing yourself and your business to other LinkedIn members because in all honesty, that’s what they’re expecting (unlike Facebook).
 
Twitter:
According to Twitter ‘It all starts with a Tweet’.

Twitter is a microblogging and social networking platform where users post (Tweet) messages (of up to 280 characters), videos or both, and it has the potential to drive thousands of targeted customers to your proofreading business.

You can also ‘Follow’ people or organisations that you hope to work with and be alerted every time they Tweet. Equally, your own followers are alerted when you Tweet too.
 
Despite having an active user base seven times smaller than Facebook, Twitter punches well above its weight in terms of public exposure, not least because it’s the go-to place for every news service in the world who are all monitoring Twitter for trending and viral tweets that have breaking news potential.
 
As with all of the other social media platforms, getting your settings and profile right will pay huge dividends, and once again as with the other platforms, your posts should be engaging, helpful and worthy of a like, retweet or fingers crossed, five minutes of fame with a viral post.
 
YouTube:
Maybe not the most obvious channel to promote your proofreading business, but a great asset is your own YouTube channel.
 
Once you remind yourself that a big goal of using social media is to be interesting, engaging and helpful, it shouldn’t take much to get you inspired.

It wouldn't be difficult to create a compilation of videos or slideshows of the most common grammatical errors that a proofreader encounters.
 
YouTube is also a valuable source of backlinks to your proofreading website, never post a video without including Google-loving links back to your site!
 
To conclude, choose the social media platforms that have a natural fit with your business and your message, and whichever ones you do sign up with to promote your proofreading business, remember to link them to the social buttons on your own website!
 
As ever, the choice is yours but go ahead and get stuck in, you won’t regret it, and once you do, you’ll be the proud owner of a successful proofreading business much sooner than you think.
 
Coming soon…
 
Step 4. Write, post and blog like crazy! (and the best places to do it!)
 
 Bye for now.
Jeff
 
Full disclosure & disclaimer…
Mike and I are not affiliated in any way to the social media sites listed above, other than to have our own business pages on some of platforms listed.

​This information is presented without condition or for personal profit in the hope that, having bought The No-Nonsense Proofreading Course you can make money proofreading without delay.
 
*The 16 most popular social networks worldwide as of October 2019 as compiled by Statista