What is a Social Media Portfolio?
A social media portfolio is a collection of your work, showcasing your experience and expertise in social media management, marketing, and content creation. It's a visual representation of your skills, accomplishments, and achievements in the field of social media.
Why Do You Need a Social Media Portfolio?
A social media portfolio is essential for anyone looking to land a job or freelance work in the social media industry. It helps potential clients and hiring managers to determine if you are the right fit for the job. A well-crafted portfolio can be the difference between getting hired and getting tossed in the "probably not" pile of resumes.
What to Include in a Social Media Portfolio
A social media portfolio should include:
- Well-written, pristine copy: As a social media professional, you need to be able to captivate with the words you write: scripts, captions, and text on stories.
- Professional images: Aesthetic, high-quality images in your social media portfolio, whether that's the sample posts, photographs, or stats displayed.
- An about page or section: Going deeper than the surface level, in the end, it's not just your writing and visuals that companies want. But the actual person behind them.
Benefits of a Social Media Portfolio
A social media portfolio has several benefits, including:
- Showcasing your expertise: A portfolio is concrete evidence of your expertise, skill, and success on social, so potential employers know that you can really walk the walk.
- Sharing your personality: A social media portfolio shows not just your skills, but your personality—your taste, your design sensibility, your voice—and can help a hiring manager get to know you.
- Standing out amongst the competition: Often, hiring managers will have more job applicants than they know what to do with. A social media portfolio can help you stand out amongst the competition.
How to Create a Social Media Portfolio
Creating a social media portfolio is easier than you might think. Here are some tips to get you started:
- Choose a format: Decide which format of social media portfolio best suits your needs, such as a document or PDF, a website, or a social media profile.
- Select your best work: Choose your best work to include in your portfolio, including successful campaigns, rockstar analytics results, and stunning design work.
- Write a strong tagline and add a picture: Make sure everyone who arrives at your site knows who you are and what you do. Capture their attention, or they'll click away in seconds. Then build rapport, so they keep reading.
- Display your projects: Create case study pages to showcase stories, visuals, and performance numbers, or link to specific social media posts or pages to show your work in action.
Tips for Creating a Social Media Portfolio
Here are some additional tips for creating a social media portfolio:
- Be specific: Be specific about what part of a campaign you worked on when including it in your portfolio.
- Showcase work you enjoyed doing: It's possible that your most successful campaign was a nightmare to execute—do you want to do it again? It's important to also consider what you like and don't like when you're choosing content to be in your portfolio.
- Save time managing your social media presence: Use tools like Hootsuite to publish and schedule posts, find relevant conversions, engage your audience, measure results, and more — all from one dashboard.
By following these tips, you can create a social media portfolio that showcases your skills, expertise, and personality, and helps you stand out in the competitive job market.