Ep 73: 4 Tips on How to Convert Social Media Followers to Customers (From Free to Paying Customers!)

How to Convert Social Media Followers to Customers with Marc Quiton

How did you transition from becoming an OFW to a freelancer?
I have worked in the Sultanate of Oman as a Senior CSR for almost three years. The CSR job there is not like here in the Philippines where we answer calls where we just talk to foreigners and assist them with their needs. I was a little bit surprised when I arrived in Oman because the CSR job that they want me to do is to talk directly face-to-face to clients and not in English but in Arabic! I thought, “How can I speak in Arabic? I mean, I don’t even know how to say hello in Arabic! They said, “no, don’t worry you can start speaking in English and after several months you’ll learn the language and then you can start assisting our guests in Arabic.

So I worked at an indoor amusement park. I was catering to kids of rich Arab people of the royal family. I was assisting these kids in the rides that they wanted. I enjoyed working there so after two to three months, with the grace of God, I turned out to be the best Arabic speaker in our branch.

Just curious, how long did it take you to learn the Arabic language?
Three months I think. So I needed to go to each and every store inside the mall because you will be assured that there’s a Filipino inside so every break time, I’ll go there and ask what’s the Arabic word for “thank you”, what’s the Arabic word for “how are you”? So for three months I was doing that. I was asking Filipinos working there for so many years already and then learning from them the different Arabic words. I was assigned to a province actually in Oman meaning their Arabic is not the typical Arabic language that we hear. It’s deeper. They’re using more deep way of Arabic language so it’s and it becomes you know really hard for me to pronounce the words and to speak in Arabic but thank God, I was able to learn the language not fluently but at least I was able to communicate with the clients and was awarded two to three times as best employee in our branch and nominated as employee of the year in the whole Sultanate of Oman. That’s really a big achievement for me.

After three years I decided to go home here in the Philippines and start a new career. I was employed in a digital marketing company based in Malaysia and then the position that I got was the project manager role. During the final interview, I actually asked my employer why they hired me because I don’t have any experience in digital marketing. I don’t even know how to create a website, how to manage a page or an Instagram account. He then told me, “I was just looking for two things: either you are an athlete because I know athletes don’t give up easily or if you worked abroad, I will hire you because I know you deal with different kinds of people coming from different cultures and tradition. I said all right, I’ll do my best to to manage the Philippine operations.

Then pandemic came, the company was affected with the pandemic and I was put into a floating position. I was still employed. I was still earning but i was earning already half of my full salary and then i said, okay I’ll wait for a few more months. Maybe the situation will get better. Maybe I’ll get back to working full-time and getting full-time salary but then we all know the situation gets worse and then the company told me, “Mark, you can now start looking for part-time jobs or side hustles and then I got this feeling already. I know where this is going so i started looking for part-time jobs but i could not get one and I told myself maybe because I still feel guilty that I’m still employed in a company looking for another job.

So I decided to resign and then said, Lord god please help me. I don’t know what to do but I will start working as a freelancer. I don’t know what service I will offer yet. I resigned and then one friend of mine posted about the Freelance Movement Tribe, I didn’t know back then what is that all about, who is John Pagulayan. I took a leap of faith. I joined the community and then started my freelancing journey so pretty much that’s that’s how I started from being an OFW to becoming a project manager and a freelancer.

We love your story… hearing how each experience is kind of linked to the next one, like your employer’s reason for hiring you is because of your OFW experience and then another key point from that story is how your employer got really concerned about you during the pandemic and that they were the ones who suggested that you look for side hustles. It’s not the typical employer so to speak.
Yes I believe that everything that has happened is not against me but for me. I think it also applies for each and one of us.

What do you think is the advantage and disadvantages of freelancing?
I’ll start with the disadvantages. I think most people tend to romanticize freelancing like they think that freelancers have the luxury of time, we can travel anytime, we can work anywhere, we can attend different gatherings, we earn a lot and all of those stuff but actually it’s the exact opposite most especially when you’re just starting your freelancing journey. I had to work during weekends before. I had to work during holidays. I miss a lot of gatherings and family dinners because of my freelancing job. So I think that’s the disadvantage – living with the expectation of people that “oh, you’re a freelancer. You should be able to do this, you should be earning this, you should be speaking like this, should be doing things like this so it’s more of what the society dictates us to be and what we should do and should not be doing, I think that’s the disadvantage.

And of course, in opening bank accounts! That’s one of the disadvantages. When you open a bank account, the staff will ask you about your work so that they’ll know and offer you the best package for you. When I say I work as a freelancer, it’s like there’s one to five seconds hang moments and they were like, “freelancer? What do you do actually?” and I need to explain, I’m doing this and like that and then they will ask for more documents. They will ask for for pay slip. They wouldn’t understand easily the struggle of freelancers to open a bank account. That I think is also one of the disadvantages.

One of the advantages is we hire our client. I want the client that is aligned with my purpose, with my values and with my faith. If that person or company is not aligned with my values, purpose and faith, I can say no. I can fire my client anytime I want but of course with the right process, in a respectful way.

Let me share to you one experience. I received an email from an anonymous client offering me a very good compensation package, a very good deal with a lot of benefits and there’s a temptation to say yes to the offer but you know what’s the twist with the offer? I was going to manage an adult website and an adult social media account. It did not take me two minutes to say no. I responded right away and said I have to say no because it is not aligned with my values. Imagine if I don’t know God, maybe I already said yes with the amount that they’re offering me, with the benefits that they will give me in return of managing those sites with adult content.  I think it it was God’s grace for me to say no to that offer.

I think that that’s one of the advantages – having that freedom to choose. We can earn the money that we want. We can charge a client depending on their capabilities and the assets that they have. We have the power to discern, “oh I can charge this person this amount, oh I can lower it down because i know this business is struggling at the moment”. I think that that’s one of the advantages.

What are the biggest blessings you received since you started freelancing?
One of the biggest blessings to me is the change of mindset because when I started freelancing, I’ll be honest, I doubted myself. I doubted God actually because I told God, “God, why did you lead me to this profession, to this path? In the first place, I don’t have any skills to offer. I consider myself not a dancer, not a singer, I’m not an artistic person. I cannot edit videos. I am not a good writer. What skill can I offer? Then God told me, “perfection is actually not the goal, Mark. Your goal is simply to do everything with great love”.

That’s it! You can start from zero and give your best doing what you love and eventually blessings will come, opportunities will come and the more you focus on the things, on the skills and the talents that you do not have, the more you will feel sad, the more you will feel not worthy.

Start focusing on things that you have and then blessings will start to flow in your life. Opportunities will start to knock on your door. It’s really about mindset. So that’s one of the biggest blessings I got in freelancing, the change of mindset – that I don’t need to become the perfect freelancer or social media manager in the world to get clients. I just need first to have the faith and to trust God that i can do this, that I have the ability to create the network that i need. I have the ability to create the connections that I need and the skills that I can offer. I can learn it. I can watch videos. I can look for mentors. I can read articles and then eventually I will be the best in my field. So yeah I think that that’s one of the biggest blessings in my freelancing journey.

My dad died last 2020 because of COVID 19. I needed to be with my family 24/7. I needed to comfort my mom of course and my siblings since I’m the eldest in the family. I need to think of what to do, how we will arrange the wake, how to contact the relatives and all those stuff and I won’t be able to do that if I’m not in the freelancing business. All of my clients were very considerate. Clients were also sending help. So that’s also one of the biggest blessings I received because of freelancing during those tough times. If I had a regular job, I think will be almost impossible for me to to have that kind of earning mechanism.

Amazing how God works! Imagine if you were still an OFW and this happened. I could just imagine the frustration of you having your dad sick and then you not being there beside him.
Yeah.

Since you already shared about your faith, do you have any favorite bible verses?
One of my favorite bible verse is Isaiah 60:22, “When the time is right, I the Lord will make it happen” because when I look back in my life, I prayed for a lot of things and then i realized that God is giving the blessing that I’ve been praying for in His time, not my time. He knows when is the right time to give it. He knows that I don’t need it yet now, maybe I will be needing it in the future, in this circumstance, in this situation, that’s the time you will get that particular blessing.

If you were to look back to your younger self when you were just learning about this industry what would you say to him?
What would I say to my younger self is to take risk. Life is too short to hold yourself back and to be scared and to fear a lot of things. It may be cliche but I really believe in that. Success and the best version of ourselves is outside of our comfort zone.

So take risks. Of course people will say it’s easy to take risks but you don’t know what will happen so take calculated risks. You have to consider many things – your family, your faith, yourself, your mental health, your physical health. Take calculated risk because when I started freelancing, I wanted to send proposals to everyone! It didn’t matter if that person is a coach, if that person has a beauty product, if that person owns an e-commerce business. I sent them proposals. That’s not the kind of risk I want to take now. I would tell my younger self, take calculated risks in where you will be able to provide value to your client, where you will be able to help your client and at the same time it will not compromise your time and your health.

Before you proceed with your social media tips, I’m just curious… when you finally  embraced the freelancing lifestyle, was it an instant decision to focus on social media management? Did it happen like that or have you tried different things at first?
Actually I did not try many things at first but it took me a while to decide to finally say yes to social media management because I was kind of thinking I’m not really good in Instagram. I don’t know yet Facebook pages. I’m not a LinkedIn person so I was telling myself, “how can I be a social media manager if I don’t know these things?” and then again I reminded myself that I can learn the skills. I just need to have the decision to pursue what I want to pursue which is social media management. That is also somehow aligned to my previous work as a project manager to a digital marketing company. So I think that’s the easiest way for me to do transition. When I started doing social media management, would you believe I even offered it for about ten dollars? How much is ten dollars, that’s 500 pesos a month! I wasn’t really confident with my skill. I was really afraid to charge high. Eventually I learned that it starts with mindset. It started with the right thinking. It started with the confidence and the grace that God gives you. Now I can easily say no to clients that offer 500 below because I already know my value. God led me to that path for me to realize my worth, for me to realize that you can provide this kind of work and it’s okay to charge like this. It’s okay if you charge that kind of amount and then I promised myself that if a project came in and I did not look for it, it just came in, I’ll give 10% automatically as my tithes. That has been my commitment to God and I hope He will give me the grace, the courage that I need to continue that commitment, to stay committed with that promise.

It’s not easy at first right. We’re not requiring everyone to tithe ten percent immediately. You could start with one percent, two percent. Your journey is different from mine. Your process is different from mine. Trust your process. Trust your journey. You’ll get there eventually.

So okay we’re we’re now in the section where Mark will be sharing with us some tips on how to convert social media followers to customers so how do we convert followers into paying customers?
Well, let me summarize it with one word – nurture. We need to nurture people so that they will turn into actual clients or paying customers. Social media was created for people, not for business. It’s created originally for people so we take care of people and people will take care of our business. Nurture people, nurture your audience, nurture your followers and eventually they will be your paying customers.

So how do we nurture them?

Tip #1
First, we post constantly and consistently. Being consistent with posting helps us to create that nurturing space because people will start to see that we are always there for them. That’s what social media is all about – providing value for people and for yourself.

Tip #2
Don’t just post consistently but post with value and high quality content. It’s great to know that people can relate to your posts, that people can relate to your page or to your Instagram account because that’s the start of a good relationship between you and your future clients. If they can relate to your posts or if they find value in it, it will be easier for you to turn them into paying clients.

Tip #3
The third tip that I can give you in converting followers into actual clients is to engage with them regularly. Respond to their comments and don’t be like a robot when you’re responding to comments. Be natural. Be your most authentic self. That’s the key because social media is full of facades already, full of pretensions. Be original. Be the most natural, authentic version of yourself and people will appreciate that.

Tip #4
Lastly, we need to promote in public and close the sale in private. It’s okay to promote our products or services in public. It’s okay to brag about the product, about the benefits that people can get from our products or services but close the sales in private because I believe that each client is unique so we need to approach them also in a unique, special way.

Those are my four tips in converting followers into paying clients. We don’t need to complicate things. We just need to be the most authentic version of ourselves. We just need to provide value for our followers. We just need to constantly and consistently engage with them. We just need to post regularly so that people will see that we, our products and services, are existing.

Thank you, Mark. One last piece of advice to our aspiring freelancers?
Decide first that you really want to be a freelancer because it’s not going to be easy. It’s not going to be all the time fun and fulfilling. It takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of discipline. It takes a lot of blood and sweat. It takes a lot of self-talking. It takes a lot of sleepless nights but if you decide to do freelancing, one thing that I can say – it’s all worth it. All the hard work, all the pain, all the difficulties will be all worth it because in freelancing, you’ll be able to see beauty in every chaos, opportunity in every difficulty and purpose in everything.

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