Freelance Confidential - Amanda Hackwith [15]
In this case, I'm the client. I will visit your portfolio, click on the first interesting link I see (hopefully a brilliant sample of your work), and decide if I'm impressed or not. Right now, I don't care about your about pages or your testimonials or your prices. If I don't love what I see in the first fifteen seconds of a portfolio site, I'm not going to stick around to be impressed by your resume. You get one, perhaps two, clicks to impress me.
Perhaps you think your portfolio is fine—you've got clients after all. Your professional website has worked for you for years—why change it? You should continually re-evaluate your portfolio for one simple reason: it is the part of your business that is always working, even when you're not. A portfolio can generate new leads from the undecided or it can turn very likely clients away.
There are some easy steps you can take to evaluate and improve your portfolio, no matter where you are in your business.
Quality over quantity. As freelancers build up experience, it can be very tempting to stuff your portfolio full of every project you've ever worked on, in order to show "variety." Resist this urge. If you've done brilliant work for a Fortune 500 company, do not distract from it with the design project you did in college. Make sure your clients see you only at your best. Limit yourself to only your most impressive, most current samples.
Know your field. Your portfolio or professional site should reflect the values of your industry. A technical UI expert does not need a flashy, artsy website with obtuse navigation. An illustrator may not need a detailed resume dictating her technical proficiencies and education, but she better well have those illustrations immediately featured. Know what is valued most by clients needing your services, and make sure your portfolio demonstrates only the very best of those values. If you could only show them one thing, what would it be?
Show signs of life. An active professional should have an active portfolio. You might think this would contradict "quality over quantity" but it doesn't—make selective updates to show you're still competitive and active for new client work. If your portfolio items tend to not change too frequently, then at the very least ensure items aren't unnecessarily dated. "Last updated: three years ago." will not inspire credibility with web-savvy clients. If your portfolio is attached to a blog, that blog absolutely needs to be updated. If it's connected to Twitter or another social media outlet, make sure it's active. (See our next section for social media tips.)
Portfolio Resources
There are lots of great sites, design galleries, and other resources out there to help you continually evaluate your portfolio and improve how your work is presented to potential clients. For example, FolioFocus (http://www.foliofocus.com/) is a gallery service for browsing what others are doing with their portfolios and submitting your own for feedback.
For a full list of great resources for improving your portfolio, including galleries, round-ups, and guides, check out Further Reading at the end of the book.
Use Social Media to Engage
Tell me if this sounds familiar: you hear about a new face on the scene in your industry—a professional, a writer, a blogger. You follow him on Twitter. His feed consists predominantly of generic promos for his company, or retweeted links shared by trend setters—or even worse, retweets he'll claim as his own. It's an echo chamber of tweets—full of activity, but ultimately hollow inside and therefore uninteresting. Sure, he may stay on your following list, but he won't be the first on your mind when you've got a project.
It's not enough to merely have a Twitter, LinkedIn, or Tumblr account. Social media requires being… well, social. That can be a challenge. When I first began freelancing and started taking the whole idea of "brand" and reputation seriously, I was incredibly stiff. I was very concerned about professionalism and proving