Building your personal brand as a freelance translator should be number one goal if you intend to succeed in freelance marketplaces. This is because the market nowadays is saturated with translators.

Translation from one language to another is not an easy task at all. In fact, I’d always take translation as one of the hardest services to be rendered in freelancing. In my own view, it’s almost the same learning with the likes of machine learning and co. 

For you to be a freelance translator you need to understand both the lateral and diabolical meaning about a particular subject, words, phrase or group of words. Hence, you need to  have reached a significant level of proficiency in both languages in order to answer their calls of translation services. 

For a service this difficult to offer, you need to establish a brand for yourself. You shouldn’t just work for clients without a unique identity or value proposition as a freelance translator. 

Similarly, there are over 100 million freelancers in the global workforce like this, with everybody belonging to their sector. Don’t you think you need to segregate your name out? 

For example, look at Neil Patel.  If you search for this name on any search engine on social platforms, the first thing it will show you is that of a bald man that offers SEO services. Have you? I’m right. 

Now search for your own name. Do you now get it? There is still a lot of work to do and it will be in my best interests to take you through establishing your own personal brand as a freelance translator and how to endeavor to build one. Before you continue, you might also want to read our article on Top 5 Freelance side gigs for teachers and How to Get Started.

Who is a Freelance Translator?

A freelance translator is someone is proficient in more than one language and able to translator from one language to another in a document, white paper, recording, probable even in a convo as an interpreter etc

The service of a freelance translator can be easily sold on service based freelance Marketplaces such as Upwork and Fiverr. And to ensure faster connection with clients you must have something to prove your proficiency in both languages such as certificates of exams you have taken in both languages. 

What Does Personal Branding Mean? 

Personal brand is the combination of your skillset, creative efforts, qualities, expertise, and unique values which serves as an identity for your digital profile as a freelancer. 

Your personal brand represents your ideal reputation online. It is what you want people to refer you with and define your service as in the gig market. Now how do you want to be described? 

First reputation lasts long with clients and if they can’t find anything of value as the first reputation, then you lose their sight seeing online and you have a lower chance of attracting quality clients to your wall as a freelancer. 

How to Build Your Personal Brand as a Freelancer

1. Identify your goals

Get a sticky note now and write down your goals for the next 6-months as a freelancer. It doesn’t have to be well detailed just yet, at least, an outline of your plans and goals will do. 

After the outline of your goals, now break those goals down into minute circumstances and ways to achieve them. Wait! Don’t tell me you feel like you have a lot of setbacks? Yes, that’s what happens when you don’t plan your goals properly. 

With proper planning of your goals, you will know you need to intensify your effort in building a brand for yourself, in order to achieve that earning goal in your mind. If possible, in that list of goals you have written out, you expatiate a little bit on them and eventually work on your timing. 

2. Choose Your Target Audience

The next thing that should be on your mind is choosing your target audience. Direct your energy to those groups of people interested in your proficient languages and create contents to appeal to them. 

Similarly, by identifying and sharpening your energy on your target audience, it gives you the chance to build a loyal audience base. You don’t just want just anybody to be following you, when you can just pinpoint the right ones to follow you. 

3. Have a Unique Value Proposition 

In our last post about getting out of the competitive basket in freelancing, we talked about unique value propositions. You should check out the post too if you are interested in improving your client base in freelancing. 

A unique value proposition is a marketing message that explains why your clients should work with you and not your competitor. This is something that is supposed to be peculiar about your offer to your client and only a few people would be able to recreate. 

You have people in your sector offering the same service as you. Of course, the primary reason clients hire you is for the service. If you want to stay ahead of others in the market, then you need to have a key extra benefit you must offer to the client. 

4. Build Your Website 

At some point in your freelancing career, you need to come up with a personal website of yours. This is a powerful tool to represent your service, portfolio and identity on the web. If a client should search for your name, then your website should pop up with your socials. 

Most Translators rarely use websites to represent themselves. Infact, Successful Freelancer Translator, one of the biggest freelance translator websites out there, 41% of translators dont have a website.  This puts you ahead of almost half of the whole freelance translator population around the world. 

5. Build Your Social Media Presence

For a translator, your social media presence is as important as any other thing in your freelancing career. Jobs from these markets don’t come everyday, except if people have the knowledge of your ability to understand and relate with two different languages. 

So, join communities for freelancers in your proficient languages. Communicate with other freelancers in the communities and keep showing off your skills in both languages. Remember, clients only hire those people that can prove their worths. 

Conclusion 

The freelance market is now favoring those people that have a personalized service brand to back up their proof of work. With the recent evolution, proof of work alone can not take you to that top of the industry level you are looking for, even with an expert knowledge in your niche. Hence, you should develop your own brand. Identify yourself and separate your value out of the market.