Thread by @OlamideTowobola

This is a WELL-DETAILED THREAD on how to BUILD an ONLINE PORTFOLIO to LAND MORE CLIENTS.

Freelancers, creatives, job seekers, remote workers, etc.

Even if you don't need this, you can help those on your TL by retweeting.

Whether you are a freelancer or looking to get hired by a company, an online portfolio is an effective way to showcase your best work and highlight your personality.

There are dozens of online portfolio platform/builders to choose from. I’ll tell you what you need to know about building your portfolio.

I’ll outline best practices to help your portfolio stand out, including promoting your work through social media and SEO so you can grow your traffic and get found in Google searches.

You can use website builder to create your portfolio website. It is fast, and easy to create. Here are a list of portfolio builders: 🔸🔹

🔹Squarespace

🔸Weebly

🔹Wix

🔸Duda

🔹GoDaddy

🔸Strikingly

🔹WordPress.com

🔸Jimdo

🔹SITE123

🔸SiteBuilder

Choose the Right Website Platform
How do you create an impressive online portfolio? If you’re not a programmer, you’ll want to start with a site builder.

For example, site builders come with professionally designed layouts and functionality built in. They make it easy to set up and launch a website and you have a large number of designs to choose from.

Also, more than 75 million sites use WordPress, so it’s a great place to start.

Note: WordPress.com is not the same as WordPress.org. WordPress.org is the organization that develops WordPress software.

WordPress.com is their commercial service that provides hosting, website assistance, and everything you need to launch a website.

With WordPress.com, you can choose from dozens of themes, edit, upload or embed media files, and so much more.

Squarespace is similar to WordPress, in that it is a template-based site builder. You start with your choice of template and then use the intuitive editor to customize it.

They even have multiple templates for portfolios, but since Squarespace is so oriented to sophisticated design and visual display, many of their other templates can easily be re-purposed to serve as a portfolio.

Wix is the most straightforward tool on this list. If you are overwhelmed by the tech side of things, Wix is likely your best shot.

They offer a wide range of professionally designed templates, including more than 20 specifically built for portfolios.

Here are free online portfolio websites to create online portfolios:

behance.net

dribbble.com

pixpa.com/?refcode=mockp…

coroflot.com

myportfolio.com

carbonmade.com

cargocollective.com

crevado.com

portfoliobox

portfoliopen

techtinium

flickr

wix

weebly

journoportfolio

format.com

foliohd.com

jimdo.com

youpic.com

Once you’ve chosen your platform, now it is time to build your site and show off your best work. The first step is to objectively evaluate your work and choose the pieces you want to include.

Aim to highlight the range of your skills, don’t only include one specific method or style of work. If necessary, create categories or pages for different types of work.

Include Crisp Descriptions
Once you have decided which pieces to include, it is time to write a description of each piece. Take the time to think about what you want a client or prospective employer to know about each item.

The length of your description is going to vary based on the template you use in your industry, but aim to keep it under 50 words. Use an app like Hemingway (shown below) to make sure you aren’t overly-wordy.

Showcase your personality. Remember, they aren’t just hiring a robot to complete a task, they are hiring a real person; so let them get to know you.

One way to do that is by adding some images of you at work in your environment.

Slideshows and Other Formats
Consider using a variety of visual formats such as:

🔹Slideshows

🔸Videos

🔹Timelapse

🔸GIFs

🔹Stop animation

Apps for producing a variety of visual displays include:

🔸RenderForest for videos

digital.com/go/renderfores…

🔹Layout from Instagram

digital.com/go/insta-layou…

🔸PicMonkey for photo collages

digital.com/go/picmonkey/

Provide Testimonials and Reviews
Social proof is the idea that people are more likely to buy or do something if others have expressed satisfaction.

For example, when you shop on Amazon, you likely look to the reviews before making a purchase, right? The same strategy can work on your portfolio site. Testimonials and reviews provide social proof. They show potential clients that other people trust and love your work.

Don’t have any reviews? Email past clients and ask for a few words about what they liked about your work. (And, implement a process to ask every client after you finish a project for a review!)

Get Found
You’ve built your site, you’ve uploaded examples of your fantastic work, now what? Well, now you need to make sure people actually find your new portfolio site. It might be easier than you think. Here are three ways to help your portfolio site get found online.

Use Good SEO
SEO (search engine optimization) is, as you may know, a strategy designed to help sites perform well in search engines and show up when users search for related key terms.

Google uses more than 200 factors to determine which sites make it to the top, but the top three are content, metadata, and site performance (how fast your site loads, among other things.)

No matter what platform you use, make sure to make the most out of their SEO features. For example, be sure to fill out your title tag and meta description. These are the headline and description that show up in search results, so use that space to draw people in.

Here are the SEO guides for some platforms I covered above:

en.support.wordpress.com/seo/

support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/artic…

seoguide.wix.com/en/

I hope this answers your questions on how to build an online portfolio. I'll keep updating the thread.

@ToyosiGodwin @tweetsbylance @Alex_Houseof308 @iefamharris