Portfolio

Why you need a social media portfolio

The fact that there are more social media positions than ever doesn’t mean that it’s easy to snatch one. As the number of job postings grew, so did the competition. This means a curated personal feed won’t cut it anymore if you want to stand out in the crowd of applicants. While your CV will give hiring managers a factual list of your previous jobs and accomplishments, your social media portfolio will show them your expertise and the results it brings. They’ll be able to see how you think, solve problems, and where your creative strengths lie.

How to present your projects in your social media portfolio

Even if you know that creating a social media portfolio would be a huge advantage, actually making it is easier said than done. Especially when it comes to presenting your projects. For photographers, designers, and even writers it’s more straightforward, but social media jobs cover a lot of different aspects. You might be working on strategy, writing ad copy, setting up the targeting for the ads, or even designing the visuals to go along with your posts. But no matter the type of task a project focuses on, when it comes to presenting them in your social media portfolio, it should be in the form of a case study.

Breakdown your Project into Key Sections

Let’s start with the basics. For the most part, you’re going to be showcasing your work to someone who is interested in hiring you. Whether that’s a client for your business, or if you’re job-hunting you may be showcasing your work to a new employer. So let’s think about what they’re going to want… short, sweet, and to the point! That way they can easily browse through multiple case studies and get right to the juicy parts right away.

In our case studies, we have 4 main sections including:

The Project: Which highlights the duration of the campaign (whether it’s complete or a benchmark — we’ll talk more about that later) and the platforms we managed

Overview: In this section, we break down the key objectives of the campaign. Whether that was to increase awareness of the accounts, increase engagement rates, influencer marketing outreach, etc.

Strategy & Tactics: This is where we breakdown a few of the strategies we implemented in the campaign. Again, nothing too crazy in detail but this is where we mention if we were focused on creating a consistent content strategy, creating custom graphics or lifestyle photos, Facebook ads campaign, etc. This gives them a little more info so they understand the point of the campaign and how you approached it.

The Results: This is the most important part! Numbers talk, and we’re not just talking about an increase in followers or likes. Sure, you’ll want to mention those too but this section will include anythinggg that showcases the difference the campaign you executed had on the brand. Maybe that’s how many influencers you partnered with, an increase in average weekly post engagements, an increase of web traffic, etc. You’ll also want to make sure these are simple metrics so that they are easy to understand.

Showcase the services you offer

The best social media portfolio’s I’ve seen break the services down into bite-sized pieces. Here are a few tips for creating this section of your social media portfolio.

• Images are your friend. Find generic stock images representing the services you offer and the types of clients you serve
• Highlight the services you offer
• Make it interesting

You can expand on and explain the services you offer, or not. It depends on your target client and what will speak to him/her.

List your clients

• Describe the types of clients you’ve worked with and the types of services you provided
• Include links to client websites if you can
• Include client testimonials where you can

It also depends on what type of social media project we’re talking about…

While all social media case studies should cover the topics above, overall their content will be quite different depending on the specific task on hand.

Social media strategy: as your output might not include visuals or specific copy, writing about your thinking process and showing the results will be in focus here. Share some before and afters both for how the account looked and performed and include a testimonial for each project.

Account management: as this job can include multiple different aspects, it’s important to write about what exactly you were doing and what aspects of the account management process you delegated. Did you manage the editorial calendar or did you also create the content yourself? Make that clear and write about the impact your time managing the account had on its performance.

Copywriting for social media: it’s the writing samples specifically that you want to showcase here —but they’ll need a visual presentation to make them interesting. We recommend taking screenshots of individual posts and adding them to mockups. Using either a smartphone or laptop frame will instantly give it a more polished and professional look.

Advertising campaigns in social media: advertising campaigns also have many aspects. Write about which part you worked on: how it fits into the overall marketing strategy, setting up the actual ads, writing the ad copy, or making the creatives go with it. Also, include the measurements for each project —because what is an ad campaign without data anyway?

Choose a format for your portfolio

Considering the nature of social media, paper-based printed portfolios are out of the question. But even within the realm of digital portfolios, there are many formats to choose from. 

Create a PDF portfolio

One of the popular social media portfolio-building methods is showcasing projects in a PDF file. You can customize it without limitations and make it match your personal brand completely. Just have it downloaded on your phone, and you’ll be able to send it over to anyone even on the go. The downside is that once you send it, there’s no going back. The other person will have that file forever —so if you left a typo in or would need to update it, you’ll have to send another file. 

PDF portfolio is made up of:

• A cover page

• A selection of projects (normally between five and ten)

• An end page

• Your contact info (including name, email address and social media links)

Cover page

A typical cover page will include your name and location. Sometimes, if you’re submitting a PDF to a specific person or company, it can be a nice touch to opt for a more personal introduction. This could mean opening with a customised greeting like, “Hello Design Studio!”

Selection of projects

There’s a whole lot of varied advice out there on what projects to include in your PDF portfolio. But ultimately, it all depends on the type of role you’re applying for. As a general rule, you should only include the work you’re most proud of. Be selective and avoid adding any projects for the sake of it. Aim to keep your selection below 10 projects, and try to balance different approaches and outcomes, making sure the projects you choose fit the brief and role advertised. If you don’t have loads of experience just yet, remember that employers are most interested in new voices and fresh perspectives; they’ll want to see an eagerness and hunger to learn. So even if you don’t have any published or commissioned work just yet, you can include self-initiated projects, rough ideas, drafts or experiments. This shows that you’re interested and keen to learn.

End page

Your final page is a chance to thank the reader for their time. Feel free to add a touch of personality, include a fun GIF, or even a friendly note. You can be the judge of this; work out if a personalised message is something they’d like to see, or whether they’d like it to be a bit more formal.

Contact information

It’s up to you where you include your contact details, but just make sure they’re easily findable somewhere in your PDF. You don’t need as much info as you’d write in your CV, but it’s good to include:

• Your email address

• Your location, or where you are based

• Links to a website, blog or relevant social media platforms

The last thing you want after sufficiently impressing a potential employer, client or collaborator is for them to give up because they can’t work out how to reach you.

You can also embed hyperlinks in your PDF and export it as an interactive document – just be sure your links are working and correct – there’s nothing worse than realising that your website or social links are broken – or accidentally linking to that tray bake brownie recipe you were looking at over lunch!

Use a dedicated social media account

As someone who works in social media, hosting your portfolio on one of your favorite social media platforms is definitely an option. You’ll have to do it carefully though: just reposting a bunch of content you’ve done for others won’t cut it. You should still have the case study-centered mindset, and use the platform to introduce the different projects that you did. You can do a carousel post or story highlight for each project —or come up with another creative and platform-specific way. Just make sure you keep your portfolio separate from your personal accounts. And while it can be effective, it’s hard to get it just right. So choose this method only if you’re confident that you’re going to get it right.

Build a portfolio site

Your best bet is to create a portfolio website that introduces you and showcases your top projects at the same time. Having a website will let you organize all of your content in an easy-to-digest way. You can create separate pages for your about me section, your contact information, and all your projects. This way you can still have all the information without overwhelming the viewer with a 50-page document or a never-ending page. You can always update your site and it’ll be instantly visible to whoever’s looking at it. So what could be a more professional way to share your portfolio than sending a link to your own website?

Before & After

Pretty basic, but excellent for showcasing visual improvements. 

Video

Take advantage and create a video with a song or, even better — your voice as a narration over it. There are ways to do that with anything from iMovie to your iPhone. Get creative!

Blog post

Write an article. It’s a pretty limitless way to incorporate your assets and you can link back to it.

Presentation

The method of choice for 2013 and 2014, as pictured below. Don’t think this is passé, oh no no, this is classic. Download this baby as a pdf and print it out, add it to Slideshare, then take that link and embed it into blog posts (like this), put it on your LinkedIn profile, share it to email and social media. Depending on your presentation format and design, you could even section off the pages and repurpose them for social media posts…

Infographic

You might need a little design talent for this, but an infographic can be a unique way to showcase a data-rich project.