If you are starting a new business, the first thing you want to do is to build up your portfolio and profile.
As you are totally new, you have almost nothing to brag about. What you can do is try to highlight your strength and what you can do or achieve for your customers.
Building a business portfolio offline is a difficult task if you don’t have a physical store. However, creating a business portfolio for your business online is much easier.
Let’s see some of the tools you can use and tips on how to create an outstanding online portfolio.
1. Your Website
Simple as it is, your business website will be your first and most relevant online portfolio. The good thing about having your own business website is that you will have maximum control over what you want to put up, and how you want them to appear.
You should create a page dedicated to showcase all the works you have previously done. This can include your freelance projects, previous customers’ testimonial, existing and previous customers’ product and service that you have sold them. Name that page as “Our Clients”, “Portfolio” or “Our Works” so that people know what to expect.
Better still, you can also include a snippet or preview of your portfolio partially in the home page, so that people do not need to navigate away just to see your works.
Include every past projects and accomplishments in this portfolio page so that customers can compare your work and read about past compliments from other customers.
If you need help in setting up a website, you can always enquire our service.
2. LinkedIn
Despite being a social network site, LinkedIn is a very professional one. You can find many professional people on LinkedIn, and they all have a good profile and resume written there. In fact, LinkedIn has been widely used as a platform for employers to find potential employees, and vice versa.
At LinkedIn, you will sell yourself as a person, not as your company. You need to build your profile by adding your profession, past experience, skills, portfolio etc. in order to make yourself look credible.
Connect to as many people as possible, as LinkedIn use “Connections” as one of their algorithm to rank your profile. The more connections you have, the more “reputable” your profile look.
LinkedIn is useful as it can act as your resume, as well as portfolio for your business online.
3. About.me
About.me launched quite a few years ago, but not many people are using this platform to create their portfolio. This is actually a good site to create your micro profile, give introduction and description about yourself as well as linking to your social accounts. You can create a simple yet beautiful profile at About.me, however, the features provided are very limited and you are not able to put much information in it.
We recommend that you create a page at About.me with your business name or your own name in the URL,this will help as About.me is quite search engine optimized so when people are searching for your name or business, it should appear on the first or second page (provided the keywords are not too competitive of course).
Now let’s proceed on some tips to enhance your portfolio…
1. Firstly, make sure your profile is legit. Do not be tempted to put stuff that doesn’t belong to you or work that is not done by you. If people figure it out, surely they will have a negative image on you.
2. If you are in the service industry such as photography or graphic design, you can also leave a hyperlink on your page that points to your customers’ website. This can help to maintain a good relationship between you and your existing customers.
3. Got nothing to post? Create something! If you don’t have any customer yet, you can create a demo product or sample work to let people see what you can do. Everything has its first time, doesn’t it?
4. Proofread! Make sure you read what you have written a few times before you publish it. Do not make silly mistake such as spelling your client’s name wrong or publishing wrong information.
5. Include call to action and contact information. If people find you are good at what you do, you should make sure they can contact you easily by adding “call to action” button in your site or contact information such as phone number and email.
6. Use outstanding and attractive graphics to attract attention. Most people are attracted to nice looking graphics and pictures, remember to use this visual elements to help enhancing your portfolio.
A strong portfolio represent a person or company with good professionalism. So make sure you create an outstanding and professional portfolio for your business online!
Sanz Teoh
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