Ask HN: Inbound marketing with just LinkedIn and GitHub? (freelancer)

Freelancers, have you done any marketing just through these two channels? And what has worked for you?

I've been freelancing on and off for about 4 years now. Usually it's more famine than feast, but I had a consistent freelance job that lasted about 7 months and just ended at the end of February.

Now I'm trying to find more work. In the past, I tended to go on Reddit or Slack channels related to my programming field. But I need to build a bigger pipeline of clients and referrals.

Also have been browsing the Who's Hiring/Freelancer monthly threads, although none of the interviews from my responses have converted into offers so far.

I rarely meet my clients in person, nor do I network. But I've heard of people who don't do this anyways but leverage inbound marketing in other ways. I want to know if this is possible with just LinkedIn and my Github account. But should I be carving out a niche first? I guess web development is still too broad to start contacting people on LinkedIn.

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vfulco2 7y ago ↗

After considering the correctness of it for a long time, just this week, I started outbound marketing to my 1st contacts on LI. 100 so far, 2,500 to go. I decided to use the LI system directly vs. harvesting emails. I am a strong supporter of LI and want to "keep it in the family".

I run a professional services firm in Shanghai offering English resume editing, LinkedIn Profile enhancements, interview coaching, and corporate workshops on similar.

So far the response has been pretty low. About 3% thanked me for bringing to light fundamental flaws in their profiles or missing best practices.

I don't feel great doing it and need to tweak my messaging but truly feel I am offering invaluable insights. Still tough sledding.

I don't use github for marketing, only repo archiving.