Freelancers are a gritty bunch – they are full of courage, resolve, and stick-to-it-iveness. They have to be, because freelancers don’t just carry the skills they need to do the jobs they’re hired for; they also have to run a business, doing the finances, marketing, client acquisition, and more.
Having an effective freelance portfolio can make this multifaceted task a lot easier. Your portfolio can act as an advertisement. It can convince clients that you’re the right person for the job. And it is a huge time-saver, especially when it is readily available to your audience.
Below, we will discuss several of the most popular mediums used for freelance portfolios. We will also highlight the types of freelancing each is best suited to.
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A New Take on the Traditional Resume
Skills-based hiring is becoming more common, and this requires a skills-based resume for optimum performance. This type of resume puts categories of skills center stage, whereas job history and education take a backseat. Skills-focused resumes are especially useful in the “new-collar” sector, which requires skills related to new technologies and learned outside of traditional education.
Every freelancer should maintain a resume; you never know when a client will request one, or you will decide to submit an application for an ongoing gig. But taking skills for your resume seriously is a must if you’ve been self-taught, neither working nor earning a degree in your freelance industry.
Your LinkedIn Profile
Once your resume is in order, you’re ready to create or update your LinkedIn Profile. Leveraging your LinkedIn Profile is one of the easiest ways to maintain a portfolio, no matter what field you freelance in. For example, you can:
- Use the Featured section to link to examples of your work online or post articles, pictures, slide presentations, or other documents.
- Write Articles on LinkedIn. These are included in your profile and can establish you as an expert voice in your field.
- Post about your projects and accomplishments. Like a social network, LinkedIn allows you to post text, photos, videos, and links.
- Add Licenses & certifications to prove that you are competent in your skills.
- Request skills Endorsements from those you’ve worked with or for. These kudos speak volumes; they’re more poignant than a skills list alone but it’s not just you saying you have a skill but an outside observer.
A Personal Website
Personal websites increase your online presence and provide a platform for storing and sharing articles, links, photos, and videos of your work.
Writing, editing, and search engine optimization (SEO) are among the most sought-after freelance skills. What better way to showcase them than to write a compelling blog that performs well on a Google search?
Of course, any freelancer could benefit from a personal website. Blogging about your industry can establish you as an expert, and many website builders have simple tools for sharing photo albums. Photos aren’t just for photographers—we’ll consider that more in the next section.
Your Instagram Account
Photographers and fine artists love sharing their work on Instagram, but the network’s benefits aren’t limited to them. Whether you’re a carpenter, personal chef, beekeeper, voice actor, or anything else, you can connect with a community of individuals interested in your craft. Create photos or videos of your process and tag them with appropriate hashtags (#hashtag). These work like keywords and allow others to find your posts.
A YouTube Channel
Educational or how-to videos are an ideal way to show off your skills and abilities. YouTube allows you to create your own “channel” that groups your videos together. If enough viewers are interested in your content, you may even be contacted by suppliers who want you to show off their products in your videos.
The Social Coding Platform
The portfolio options discussed above could arguably be used in every industry. GitHub, however, is hyperspecific to the realm of coding and development. This “social coding platform” allows users to collaborate on open-source coding projects. Code can also be posted for review and suggestions. Ultimately, your participation on GitHub acts as a repository for examples of your coding skills. This can be shared and accessed like a portfolio.
Don’t Forget Your LinkTree
If you’ve acted on more than one of the suggestions above, you may be wondering how they can work together. Building a LinkTree is the answer.
Rather than listing link after link in your website and social media bios, you can include just one link to your LinkTree. Once clicked, the LinkTree opens to a customized page where you can include links to all your media and group them into categories. You could even build a “portfolio” section with direct links to your favorite projects.
The Old-School Album
As seen above, there are so many options for building an online portfolio. But in some cases, you may not want to make your portfolio available to the world. Maybe you’re a portrait photographer, a fashion designer, or an inventor with pending patents. In these and other cases, there is nothing wrong with having a physical album printed for sharing with clients face-to-face.
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