Use your portfolio to attract clients
Hi Friend,
The key to finding clients is to make it as easy as possible for them to figure out if you’re a good fit for each other. By taking the friction out of the vetting process, you’re making it easier for the right people to find you and realize they want to work with you.
One way to take the friction out of that process is by having a portfolio site where you highlight the best work you’ve done. (If you haven’t done any paid work, that’s okay. These days you can put up samples of unpaid work that showcases your skills. In my Insider Tips issue tomorrow, I’ll go into how to do that.)
Whether a client finds you through a referral, through social media or through a job posting, they’re going to want to see samples of your work. Those samples tell them a lot about you without having to interview you:
Do you offer the services they’re looking for?
Do you have the skills they need?
Have you done similar work in the past?
The best way to attract clients is to show them you can give them what they need. Like the trailer of a movie, your portfolio should give your clients a taste of what you can do for them. How well you write or edit. What your niche is (if you have one). Where your strengths lie.
Use social media
You should host samples of your work in a few locations that are easy for people to find no matter how they hear about you. You can host some of your samples on one or two social media accounts as well as on a website. That creates a nice funnel where people who find you on social media can view some samples of your work on that platform before seeking out your website for further verification. (My go-to for this is LinkedIn.)
If the work on your portfolio site is paid work include a note about what you did, what the client wanted, and, if you have the information, what the results were. If you have a testimonial from the client, include it on the portfolio. Use keywords in the descriptions to make your portfolio more easily found through a search.
There are many platforms that enable you to create small portfolio sites. Such sites include Contently (my portfolio is on Contently), Copyfolio, and Squarespace.
Setting up your portfolio
The key here is to showcase your best work. That can be based on any number of factors:
Work that garnered huge results for the client (like millions of dollars in sales)
Work that was particularly meaningful to you or that you’re proud of
Work that was difficult to complete (maybe there were a lot of constraints around the work or the client’s expectations were high)
Work that enhances your credibility, such as being for a respected company
If you have a niche or a target audience, keep the majority of your portfolio samples relevant to those areas. You can include a few outside samples to show that you’re well-rounded or have outside experience but ultimately you want to focus on the clients you’d prefer to work for.
The pieces in your portfolio don’t have to be 100% identical to the work you want. If you’re a journalist who covered technology and you want to break into technology websites, your articles will still be highly relevant. They show that you know the industry and can write well. If you write grant applications for non-profits and you want to write business proposals, your grant work is relevant.
When you’re looking to break into a niche, examine your existing work to see where there are commonalities between the fields. Use those as the basis of your portfolio.
Number of pieces to use: That’s up to you, but I’d say no more than 10 per niche and no more than 2-3 niches. You don’t want to overwhelm your potential clients.
Keep your portfolio up-to-date
Unless something is really impressive, try not to have anything more than 3-4 years old. I still link to my very old CBC article because people in Canada are typically impressed by CBC bylines. If they weren’t, I would pull it.
(Seriously, we Canadians still love a good CBC reference.)
If you’re linking to outside sites, check a few times a year to make sure the links still work.
If you’re an editor or typically write in situations where you don’t have a byline to prove you were involved in the piece, see if you can get a testimonial from that client as evidence you did the work you say you did.
Include images if you can, as they break up the text and give the page visual appeal.
Don’t fall into the trap of writing too much
(This is a case of do as I say, not as I do.)
I’m about to change my regular website into more of a portfolio site because it has too much writing about me on it. That content shows I can write, but so do my work samples on my portfolio site. Those work samples are a lot more relevant to my clients.
We think we need to write a lot about ourselves but in truth, there’s not much clients need to know about us beyond whether we can do the work they need and whether we’ll work well with them.
The first can be determined through the portfolio. The second, through a short “About me” page and a meeting. (Yes, it’s a good idea to get comfortable with meetings. Even as a freelancer, you should sometimes still interact with other people. And yes, I know how exhausting and terrible that sounds.)
Clients are busy. They need the process of deciding to work with you to be as easy and painless as possible. Fewer pages, smaller websites and more relevant samples enable this.
Tomorrow, I’ll share the steps for building a portfolio if you don’t have enough paid samples.
(If you want to view beautiful portfolio websites, just Google “best portfolio sites for writers [or editors].” You’ll see lots of examples and can choose the ones that are most relevant to you.)
Here’s to your freelance success,
Heidi
PS, I’m old enough to actually have a beautiful physical portfolio folder which is almost entirely irrelevant now, but I still love it.
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