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You’ve chosen your side hustle, set a schedule and goals for your work, and you’re ready to get the word out. As you prepare to launch your project, focus your promotion on the places where your target audience spends their time.
Start by choosing the platforms that can help you reach your ideal potential customer, then create and share high-quality promotional content, boost your website’s search engine rankings, and find ways to start and cultivate an engaged community around your side hustle.
Where and how to share your side hustle
To spread the word about your new project, focus your marketing strategy on where new customers are likely to spend their time. That will look different for every person and side project. Content creators might find most of their business online, whereas someone with physical products could try local business opportunities like trade shows and local events.
Take advantage of any digital marketing channels that you completely own, like your website and blog or newsletter, especially if you already have regular visitors and readers.
If you have a list of email subscribers, plan an email marketing campaign to build anticipation for your announcement and promote it when you’re ready to launch. As you continue to grow or release new content and products, reach out to your email list to keep them in the loop.
Social media
Use social media marketing to start sharing your side hustle with your existing audience and start reaching new followers. If you don’t already have accounts dedicated to your side hustle, create them so you have more places to share from and can keep your content focused. Some platforms also offer creator and business profiles, which give you access to marketing tools and metrics.
Make sure to use a link-in-bio tool like Bio Sites. These tools keep all of your most important links in one place, so profile visitors can easily click in and access your store, website, and more.
Choose the social media platforms that make the most sense for your project. If you’re teaching yoga classes, for example, you may not want to invest much time in promoting your side hustle on text-centric platforms like Twitter. But posting short videos and photos on Instagram and TikTok could be a good way to raise brand awareness. You can also resize your images to create posts or stories on multiple social platforms using the same image.
When you share on social media, use hashtags relevant to your niche so that new followers can discover your posts. Consider stitching or collaborating directly with another content creator to gain exposure to new audiences.
Go to in-person events
Does your side hustle involve something you could share with an in-person audience? If you make a physical product, like ceramic vases, see if there are any meetups or marketplaces for artists that you could join.
If you’re making a digital product, are there other ways you could share your work in person? A yoga instructor could offer to teach an in-person class, for example.
Third-party platforms
While keeping everything contained to your own website and online store gives you the most control—and the biggest share of any earnings—third-party marketplaces and ecommerce platforms can help you reach prospective customers.
Check out the platforms used by others in your niche and set up a business page for yourself. Once you’ve built up a loyal customer base, you can rethink how or if you want to use third parties for your side hustle.
Paid advertising
Paying for ad exposure for your new project isn’t necessary, but it is an option if you have the extra money to invest in it. If you’re going to pay to boost your posts or links to your website, do careful research into the costs and who you want to target with your ads. Start small with a test advertisement, then decide if it’s a good option for you from there.
Create and share promotional content
While you’re making work for your side hustle, think about ways you could repurpose what you’re making for your marketing efforts. For example, if you’re going to teach an online class, you could take snippets of the lesson to share as a text or video post on social media. If you’re selling hand-embroidered art, film video content of the creation process or reuse your product photos.
Some tools can help you repurpose content quickly. Marketing Kit in Squarespace iOS pulls images and complementary colors to generate editable videos and images based on your physical products. The Unfold app’s templates make creating and sharing trendy social posts quick. And Squarespace’s asset library makes it easy to reuse images and videos you’ve uploaded across Squarespace’s products.
Create anticipation for any new products and announcements by sharing teasers leading up to your launch date. Use a content calendar to help you plan your posts and take advantage of scheduling tools. Squarespace blogs and emails can be scheduled in advance, and Unfold offers scheduled posting for certain social platforms.
Use search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization involves making updates to your website to help it rank higher in search results related to your niche, which makes it more likely for people to discover your work. There are some technical factors to SEO, like making sure your website runs well on mobile devices, that a website builder like Squarespace can take care of for you.
Other factors, especially website copy, are in your control. Do some research into common keywords and search phrases associated with your side hustle niche or project. Weave those terms naturally into your website description, page titles, image alt text, and other copy like your blog or product descriptions.
If it makes sense, you can also create a business listing for your side hustle so that it shows up in search engine results pages and directories. For example, if someone searches for “design consultant near me,” a business listing might help you get discovered.
Find your advocates and build community
One of the most valuable ways to share your work is to build a community of supporters and nurture your best advocates. Kickstart your connections by networking with peers and interacting with your customers and followers regularly. With some effort and openness, you can create a community organically over time. That community will naturally share your side hustle by word of mouth.
Don’t forget to spotlight your community either. Encourage your followers to share reviews and testimonials of your work. If you have an online store with Squarespace, you can turn on product reviews. Or share testimonials in quote blocks on your website.
Another simple way to connect with your customers is encouraging them to share user-generated content (UGC). For example, ask customers to tag your account whenever they mention or show your product, then reshare on your own channels. Or offer a discount for referrals to your project.
Ready to launch your idea? Read our full guide to starting a side hustle