Your social media strategy is a part of your portfolio that should never be overlooked. It might not seem as challenging to showcase, but it’s one of the critical factors in building an impressive online presence for yourself or your company! You are in a constant state of growth, so why not reflect that by updating your social media portfolio? One big reason it can help you close new business deals even more accessible! It shows prospects what they’ll be getting with their brand and helps prove how effective you’ve been at work for other clients.
Why Do You Need A Social Media portfolio?
There are a few key reasons you need a social media portfolio, no matter your profession.
1) It showcases your skills and experience with social media, which is an increasingly important part of many online marketing strategies.
2) It illustrates how well you can manage social media for a digital brand or business.
3) It proves that you are an expert in your field and can help others succeed with social media.
Breakdown Your Project Into Key Sections
Let’s start with the fundamentals. You’ll most often be showing your work to someone interested in hiring you, whether it’s a client for your company or if you’re looking for a new job. So let’s consider what they want… short, sweet, and to the point! That way, they can quickly go through several social media case studies. The main headings include:
- The Project: This shows how long the campaign has been going on (whether it’s complete or a benchmark), as well as which platforms we’ve managed.
- Overview: In this section, we examine the campaign’s primary goals. There are numerous ways to measure success, whether it was to raise awareness of the accounts, increase interaction rates, or influencer marketing outreach.
- Strategy & Tactics: This is where we detail a few of the campaign’s tactics. Nothing too unusual in terms of specifics, but this is where we’ll briefly explain whether we focused on delivering a consistent content strategy, developing unique visuals, or lifestyle images. This provides them with a better idea of why you ran the campaign and how you planned to accomplish it.
- The Results: This is the most crucial portion of the whole affair! Numbers speak, and we’re not just talking about an increase in followers or likes. Sure, you’ll want to include those as well, but this section will cover anything that demonstrates how effective your campaign was for the brand. Maybe it’s the number of influencers you teamed up with or an increase in average weekly traffic and conversions.
Steps For Making A Social Media Portfolio
Step 1: Prepare
You have two critical things to accomplish the same way as you would with an award show entry. First and foremost, PREPARE YOURSELF. Prepare to convey objectives and statistics (and strategy or tactics if applicable).
Step 2: Get Permission
Second, don’t take risks: get the PERMISSION. Before gathering any information or assets, check with your client or boss to ensure you won’t be breaching any contracts by doing so for personal or company benefit. Most individuals are okay with it, but having more formal documentation for things like this is a good idea because it helps to protect oneself lawfully and be ethical.
Step 3: Gather Available Assets
Make a spreadsheet of all the paperwork for each job and as many precise figures as you can. Grab pictures of postings. Keep a record of your activities. You might want to go back through your data and present your findings in a different light or create a case study out of it. There are various ways to reuse your material over time, so make sure you have as much information as feasible on hand.
Even if something is public, there are still many known details. If you use any of the material from the internet, double-check to make sure you’re correctly crediting your sources and giving attribution.
Step 4: Identify Your Social Media Portfolio Format
When planning the presentation of your project, keep emotional appeal in mind. Consider the best format for telling your project’s story. You are not restricted to five pictures and a place for a link at award shows. Experiment with various designs to see what works best for you.
Video
Make a video with your song or, even better, your voice as the soundtrack. There are many applications on the market where you may use anything from iMovie to your iPhone for it. Get inventive!
Blog Post
Write an article about your business. It’s an excellent method to use your assets, and you can reference them back to yourself.
Presentation
If you’re feeling confident, a great way to share your work is through a presentation. This can be accomplished with software like PowerPoint, Keynote, or Prezi.
Infographic
This is a low-budget option, but it’s still worth considering if you have the resources. Suppose you’re working on a data-rich project and want to effectively communicate its key findings to your audience in an easy-to-understand format. In that case, an infographic might be a helpful approach. You’ll need some design know-how for this, however.
The 4 Must-Haves Of A Social Media Portfolio
To put it another way, a portfolio is a piece of writing that recounts the story of your professional project. Instead of just displaying the final product, it provides insights into the process, demonstrating your expertise more clearly. No matter what kind of project you’re working on, specific topics should be covered in your social media case study.
- The goals or KPIs. What was the project’s aim? Did you have any particular KPIs in mind when you set out to accomplish it? Before anything else, seeing the goals and objectives will provide clear expectations, making it simpler to evaluate the rest of your work.
- Your reasoning & creative process. The result is essential, but how you get there is just as significant. Showing how your creative process works may help them understand whether the project is a 100 percent fit for what they want to do.
- The results and measurement. You can always claim that you’ve done something, but making a show of the actual work is preferable. If the project is complicated, you may always offer a few lines to describe each component and how they are linked.
- Screenshots of the finished/published work. Even if your work is published on the internet, it’s a good idea to include screen captures of it in your social media portfolio. You never know when a client or past employer may archive or delete their social media accounts altogether.
Conclusion
Creating a social media portfolio is a great way to show off your skills and expertise. By following these four essential steps, you can ensure that your project will be well-presented and professionally executed.
Remember, your social media case study should always tell a story–and that story should be backed up by evidence. So make sure you include plenty of visuals and data to support your work.