In this article, Jo Burthem of Source, a London based creative recruitment agency, offers tips that you can keep in mind to get your portfolio noticed online and land yourself that next big job.
Self-promotion doesn’t come easily to some of us. But being a wallflower about your portfolio is not going to help get you a job. If you’ve got a great folio, it’s time to shout about it, and what better place than on the World Wide Web? But how do you ensure yours doesn’t get lost amongst all the other folios online? We look at how to get your portfolio noticed.
Promoting your work online has to be the fastest and cheapest method of getting it in front of potential clients and employers. But for this reason, it’s also a bit of a cattle market with thousands of creatives all vying for the top spot. Marketing your work digitally could present you with the opportunity to be truly inventive and original, but for many of us finding the time to reinvent the rule book is not feasible. Instead there are tried and tested methods for promoting your work online that are just as effective. The trick is to make your work stand out from the crowd. So where should you start?
How to Get Your Portfolio Noticed Online
Bespoke Website or Blog
For anyone working in web design a bespoke site is a must; giving you the chance to showcase your skills on a project close to your heart, your employment prospects! For other creative fields, a customised website would be nice, but perhaps not a priority. Fortunately there are plenty of alternatives including off-the-shelf portfolio design sites and blog sites. Whether these are self-hosted or fully hosted by a provider, you can use your own domain name to give it the appearance of a bespoke site.
Alternatively you may decide that a blog is a more interesting way to promote your work, allowing you to share projects, inspiration and ideas in a fluid and engaging way. The downside of a blog is that you need to update it regularly. Here at Source we aim to post new content on our blog two times a week; quite a commitment! However any personal website will need to be kept up-to-date with your latest projects.
Online Folio Showcase Sites
As well as having your own personal online portfolio / website, you should also have a presence on folio showcase sites. These are often free, curated sites showcasing recent projects from creatives around the world. Top sites include: Behance, Coroflot, Carbonmade, Cargo, Squarespace and Dribbble. The advantage to these is that thousands of potential employers and clients search them every day. To make an impression ,you should think carefully about the work you choose to upload. Here’s our advice on what to include:
- A great stand out cover shot for each project or category.
- Approximately 20 images in each project: updated and edited regularly.
- A concise profile with all relevant sections complete.
- Where possible, links to your website and social media.
If you’ve got a LinkedIn profile, and if not why not? Use the LinkedIn Creative Portfolio Display app to sync your Behance online folios. Other platforms may offer similar apps for linking to your social media profiles.
Social Media
We recently posted a blog about How To Use Social Media To Help Your Career. Used correctly, social media is a fantastic way of making connections with potential clients and employers. However it’s very easy to turn people off if you only use it to sell yourself and your talents. Social media is all about engaging with others, not hard sell. That said ,you should not ignore social media as a means to signpost people to your online folio. Just don’t do it all the time! For example if you’ve recently updated you website, added new projects to a folio site, or posted a new blog; tell everyone about it through your social media profiles.
Optimising your Online Presence
With a bit of engaging copy, it’s relatively easy to get your existing connections to view your online folio. However you also want to attract visitors who don’t have a direct link with you. To do this, you need to use search engine optimisation (SEO), and encourage visitors to your folio to share it and recommend you.
SEO is a big subject but boils down to identifying the keywords people use to find someone with your talents. Use Google’s Keyword Planner to find suitable keywords for your field and then apply these across your online presence. This should include; your social media profiles, status updates when relevant, biographical information, as well as your website content.
Checklist:
- Concise bio so visitors know who you are, what you do, where you’re based.
- Apply SEO to your online content (keywords, tagging images etc.).
- Call to action: what do you want them to do? Call you, share your page, recommend you, hire you?
- Contact information: make sure it’s easy for potential clients and employers to get hold of you.
Have we left anything out? We’re interested in hearing what works for you. Can you recommend an alternative folio showcase site, or do you have a top tip for getting your folio noticed online?
Source provides recruitment services for employers and jobseekers in the creative sectors in London, primarily serving advertising and creative agencies.
Image source: thegirlnamedlove.blogspot.co.uk
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