How To Create A Social Media Manager Portfolio
How to create a Social Media Manager portfolio, what is a social media manager portfolio? And do you need a portfolio as a Social Media Manager?
In this blog post, I will explain to you exactly what a portfolio is, why you should have a portfolio as a Social Media Manager and How to create a Social Media Manager portfolio even if you haven’t had any clients yet! Yes, you read that right!
What is a portfolio, and do you really need one as a Social Media Manager?
A portfolio, what is it? You may have heard many types of businesses talk about their portfolios, from artists and photographers to actors. But what exactly is it?
A portfolio is very much like a CV; artists will use it to showcase their art, photographers will use it to give examples of their photography and style, and actors would use it to show new potential directors of their acting experience. As a freelance Social Media Manager, you wouldn’t send out a CV to your potential clients because your CV shows your education, personal details, and any previous employment you may have had, but a business that wants to hire a freelance Social Media Manager they don’t really care what education you have or what companies you worked for in your gap year they want to know what results you can give them, how your graphic design looks, how you can solve their pain points if you can run FB ads etc. and by providing them with a portfolio you will be able to showcase your expertise.
So you may be asking yourself, “do I need a portfolio as a Social Media Manager?” The easy answer is YES, yes, if you want to provide your clients with social proof and put you above the rest to secure the client of your dreams! “But what if I haven’t had any clients yet?” I hear you say.
Don’t worry; this is when you need to reach out to testimonial clients. Testimonial clients are businesses or individuals who you will work with for free for no longer than 1 month in return for a testimonial which you can add to your portfolio. The plus side to this is you have a whole month to prove how valuable you are to their business, and they may just end up becoming a paying client.
If you’d like to know more about how you can do that, then watch my FREE MASTERCLASS HERE, where I will walk you through all the steps.
5 Things Your Portfolio Needs To Contain
1. Who are you, and who are you working with?
It is very important that you are super clear about what your niche is straight away; for example, you need to introduce yourself as “I am Nadine, and I work with health coaches”. When your niche looks at your portfolio, they will know you are the expert for them.
If you don’t have a niche yet, please watch my YouTube video HERE on why it’s important to have a niche and how to find one.
2. What are you helping them with?
Make sure you show clearly what are your specific services, how can you help them?
Do you offer just organic marketing, or can you offer paid marketing?
Which platforms do you specialise in?
Can you offer graphic design?
Make sure you clearly provide all your services. All these things should be stated in your Instagram bio, as Instagram also acts as a kind of portfolio! Your bio should say WHO are you?, WHO are you helping? And WHAT are you helping them with? And your highlights will be where you showcase all of your work and results. To find out how to write a perfect Instagram bio then you can watch my video HERE.
3. Who have you worked with before?
In this section of your portfolio you need to be showing who you have worked with before, what kind of brands or influencers have you worked with? The person or the brand should be clearly named and, if possible, a photograph of them or the brand to show you are not making it up. Your potential client can then go and check out these brands/people’s websites and social media and see your work for themselves.
4. Example your work
Add examples of your work such as Instagram posts, graphic design, Facebook posts, videos, Reels, TikToks, Pinterest and literally anything you have created so you can show proof of what you are capable of. You can show this by adding screen shots, previous posts, ad designs and links to videos you have created.
5. Results
One of the most important things you need to add to your portfolio is all the results you have accumulated for your previous clients, which could be,
Growing Instagram following
Niche-specific results
How many clients have you generated?
Return on investment results
How many products did you help sell?
This is where you would also add any written testimonials from your previous clients and having them say how much you helped them is crucial to building up trust with your new potential client.
Adding a Case Study is a really great way to walk your clients through your relationship with that client. You will show where your client was at in the beginning before they started working with you and what were her struggles and pain points, which could be anything from struggling with what to post, limited Instagram reach, and so on, then you will go on to say what you have actually done to relieve your client of those struggles, for example, creating a strategy, coming up with new Reels ideas etc. and what the results were, how much growth did you get and what type of content helped to achieve that etc.
If you follow these 5 steps, you will have a perfect portfolio ready to send out to your new potential clients. If you’d like to see a real-life example of a portfolio from one of my fabulous students, Marina, then head over to this video HERE, and you can also SUBSCRIBE to my YouTube channel where we post weekly FREE trainings.