Freelancing can get quite lonely and you may feel rather disconnected from the outside world. While many advocate working in an environment filled with others (such as your local Starbucks), the fact remains that you just don’t get the same benefits of being able to bounce ideas off of colleagues. While this may seem an unfortunate side effect of going solo, I have the mindset that working independently doesn’t mean that the array of community focused efforts online can’t benefit you.

Being a freelancer means being in charge of your destiny, it doesn’t mean that you need to become a caveman in some contact free environment. Whether we are emailing, tweeting, reading the latest Freelance Switch article or something entirely different, it’s the way we choose to communicate that dictates how we run our businesses and keep our knowledge current. Participating in social events at our own choice can increase our sense of independence whilst maintaining useful relationships.

The loneliness we suffer is often caused by our own lack of willingness to spend time outside the projects we work on for clients, effectively leaving us as drones of our own productivity. While the idea of putting aside an hour a day to cultivating yourself socially may seem like wasting time, the fruits of your labor make themselves apparent as you’re not only helping others better themselves but you gain meaningful personal and business relationships that may well help you in the future.

Firstly we should pay close attention to the places where social interaction can occur that may enrich ourselves and our businesses. The list below outlines just a few of the potential networking opportunities that could benefit you over time:

• Blogging: Passing on your own knowledge or contributing useful comments.
• Forums: Showcasing your skills, helping others, getting support and more.
• Conferences: Word of mouth, chatting with experts and learning new skills.
• Social Networks: Gaining support, friends and followers with links or content.
• Side Projects: Money earners, extra-curricular activities or contributory work.
• Mentoring: Potentially gaining potential employees or job opportunities.
• Meet-ups: Getting like-minded people together to interact and gain leads.
• Skill-swaps: Offering services for others in return (bi-directional outsourcing).

Each of these sources has their own pros and cons so it’s worth weighing up the cost vs benefit ratio before undertaking a specific method of socializing. It’s also worth highlighting that it depends on the amount of time, effort and energy you put into each that will determine what kind of response you get. Not every solution will be suitable for every kind of person but finding something that works for you (over the long term) may undoubtedly help you escape the trappings of freelance isolation.

So what are the benefits of participating in communities and why should you spend time taking part in such a convention, well amongst the many benefits, the below should seem somewhat tempting, even to an individual with little free time:

• Giving back: You should get a warm fuzzy feeling from helping others.
• Contacts: You may gain friends or colleagues that work in similar fields.
• Advertisements: Potential opportunities to highlight your sites and projects.
• Potential leads: You may be approached to undertake their paying projects.
• Free assistance: You can gain useful assistance with your own questions.
• Resume boost: Showing community spirit gives your resume a nice edge.
• Education: You can learn plenty by helping or chatting about subjects.
• Social interaction: You will make friends and become less socially excluded.
• Reputation: Helping others and showcasing your talent boosts credibility.
• Experience: You gain communication skills which may help you gain clients.
• Job prospects: Regular contributors may be offered full time (paying) jobs.

As a regular contributor to a well known web design forum, I have myself benefitted from several of the above benefits which appeared entirely as a lovely consequence of my attempts to simply gain a few extra friends in order to stave off the loneliness of working from home on a daily basis. So many people get so much out of contributing to communities as a whole that it often surprises me that the vast majority of working professionals still haven’t considered the importance networking can have.

As you read this article, the benefits for business networking should become quite obvious, and the ideal response would be for more of those individuals who stay in the background, simply reading about what others are contributing to get involved themselves. Perhaps you might be shy or have little in the way of free time, but being a freelancer shouldn’t hold you back. It’s important as a solo practitioner to cultivate yourself in the community if for no other reason than to establish yourself.

Why not set yourself aside an amount of time over the coming year by establishing some networking goals you wish to accomplish. It could be anything from setting up a blog to build up a user base to spending more time cultivating a crowd in Twitter. Whatever method you choose, you should place an emphasis on making the communication work in both ways (not just to advertise your products and services). Who knows how such interaction could improve your business and life in the future?