If you’re serious about a career in social media, you need to have a strong portfolio that highlights your skills and most importantly, your work experience.
When putting together your social media portfolio, be sure to include the following:
- -An overview of your work experience and expertise
- -Links to your most successful social media campaigns
- -A list of your clients or employers, with a brief description of each project you worked on
- -Any relevant awards or recognition you’ve received for your work
- -Examples of your content creation and community management skills, including images or video clips
By providing this information in a clear and concise format, you’ll be able to show off your social media expertise while also allowing new hiring managers to quickly assess whether you’d be a good fit for their team.
When it comes to your portfolio, it’s important to highlight more than just the end result and images. Your portfolio should give a complete picture of the entire process, from start to finish as this will give hiring managers much better insight as to how your campaign actually performed. Showing off the background of a project and giving a little story behind the goal of the project is called a “Case Study” and you should include this for every campaign you’re showing in your portfolio.
A case study is a way of sharing your project experience in a more in-depth and comprehensive manner. It allows you to explore the different aspects of your work, from the planning and execution phases to the results and impact. By presenting your projects in this way, you can give potential employers or clients a better understanding of your skills and capabilities.
5 Must-Haves Of A Social Media Case Study
When you’re writing a case study, it’s important to focus on 4 key elements: the background information, the content itself (problem/challenge and solution), results of your work (project objectives achieved) and impact. Let’s take a look at each of these:
The Background Information and Goal: It’s critical to keep the context of your project in mind when creating a case study. For example, why was this task assigned to you? What were the challenges faced, and what types of results were they hoping for?
The strategy behind it. How did you approach creating and executing your campaign? Were there any unique strategies or tactics that helped drive success?
The Content: Show the work you created for these campaigns demonstrating the content you can create.
The Results: This where you describe how your project’s goals were fulfilled. Do you have any hard data that proves this? Did you see an increase in followers, engagement, or website traffic? Were there any other key metrics that you tracked and evaluated to measure success? If so, be sure to share it in your case study especially if you exceeded the targets that were given to you.
Key takeaways. Finally, what did you learn from your campaign? What are some key takeaways or lessons that you can share with others who may be looking to launch a similar effort?
Keep these 5 key elements in mind when writing your case study and focus on communicating your work clearly and effectively. By doing so, you’ll give potential employers or clients a better understanding of your skills and capabilities. So don’t forget to go beyond simply listing the campaigns you’ve worked on— include the details that show off your true understanding of social media and your ability to deliver results. After all, that’s what hiring managers are really looking for!
Why you’ll need a social media portfolio
With the rise in social media positions, it has become increasingly important to have a solid social media portfolio. A well-curated portfolio will help potential employers get a sense of your expertise, your skill set, and how you can use your creativity to bring results for their company. Whether you are applying for a new job or just trying to impress your current employer, a social media portfolio can help you stand out from the crowd as this is your “selling document” showing off why you’d be a good fit for their company.
If possible, when creating your social media portfolio, try to include a variety of different content types and from a variety of different social media platforms (unless your goal is to only work on 1 social media platform). Use your best designed images and videos upfront and allow people to scroll through the other images that you’ve used for your campaigns as not everyone will scroll and you want to make sure you put your best foot forward immediately just in case they don’t scroll through all the images. Be sure to also include links to your social media accounts so that potential employers can see your complete online presence.
Keep in mind that quality is more important than quantity while creating your social media portfolio. Showcase your best work and make sure that everything is up-to-date and relevant. Take the time to proofread your work and make sure there are no errors as the last person hiring managers want to hire is someone who doesn’t pay attention to detail as you will be the one representing their company and they need to make sure you aren’t going to make mistakes.
If you don’t have a lot of work experience in the social media field yet, don’t worry you may still have a strong portfolio by concentrating on the talents and competencies you do have. For example, if you are a skilled writer, offer to write content for your company’s blog or social media accounts. Or, if you are particularly good at graphic design, create marketing materials or infographics to share online. Although doing this won’t be enough to get hired (as all companies want you to have Marketing work experience), this is still better than nothing in showing what you can do.
How To Construct A Social Media Portfolio
When creating a social media portfolio, one of the most popular options is to create a PDF portfolio. This allows you to customize your portfolio without limitations, and to make it match your personal brand completely.
There are several applications and websites that may assist you in creating a PDF portfolio quickly, including Canva or Adobe Spark. To get started, simply choose a template that you like and then add your own images, text, and other elements to customize it. Once your portfolio is ready, you can share it with others on social media or via email with your resume (if asked).
Creating A Portfolio Website.
Rather than just having a portfolio that you can individually send to people when they ask for it, many people want to have their portfolio online so the whole world can check it out at their convenience. The first step in doing this is to decide what kind of website you want. There are many different platforms out there and a simple Google search will help you see which are the best free ones you can use. Once you have your website set up, it’s time to start adding content.
In your about me section, be sure to include a brief introduction, your contact information, and any relevant work experience you have. You can also include a headshot here if you’d like to give it that personal touch.
For your project section, showcase your best work as we discussed above in a Case-Study format. Be sure to explain what role you played in the project and what the end result were as discussed above.
If you have any other skills or work experience that you think would be relevant in making you sound like a stronger candidate, feel free to include them on your website as well. You can also use this space to blog about industry news or your thoughts on design or the future of digital marketing to show that you’re focused on trends and paying attention to the industry as a whole as it changes quickly.
If you have your portfolio online, make sure you make sure you’re updating it with each new successful campaign you’ve run to show off the value you can bring if hired. And that’s it! With a well-designed website, you’ll be able to showcase your skills and work experience to the world.
Once you have built a portfolio you’re proud of and have it online, be sure to promote it through your social media channels so that you can get more eyes on your work product.
A Social Media Portfolio Will Not Land You Your Dream Job – but it can help
Your social media portfolio is a great way to show off your skills and work to potential employers. However, it’s not enough to just have a nice portfolio – you also need to have the right work experience that hiring managers are looking for as your portfolio is just the vehicle to show off your work experience. So, simply creating projects and having a nice portfolio is unfortunately not going to lead to job offers so just make sure you understand that before spending a ton of time creating one. What will lead to job offers is if you have the right work experience hiring managers want and then a portfolio helps show off that work experience in a demonstrable way.
So, when creating your portfolio, try to show off the work experience that the jobs you’re applying for are asking candidates to have. While having internships is certainly a positive, if the experience you gained and what you’re talking about in your portfolio isn’t directly relevant to the jobs you’re applying for, it may not be as helpful as you hope.
If you’re looking to get started in a marketing career, you need more than just a great social media portfolio. You need the work experience they are asking for in their job posts as this will show that you already know how to do the job they are hiring for.
If you don’t have the Marketing work experience that companies want you to have, don’t worry, JobPrepped has you covered every step of the way and we’ll even give you the exact Marketing work experience you need immediately as part of JobPrepped’s Digital Marketing Training + Get You Hired Program to ensure you can give hiring managers exactly what they want, line-by-line in their job posts to ensure you get hired faster, by better companies, and for a better salary.
So, get the work experience for the jobs you desire and then use this guide to show off the campaigns you’ve run via a nicely made portfolio.
Good luck!