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

[amazonavocado]

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.

[vfulco2]

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.