Portfolios – Design, be everywhere and prosper

“I’d like to ask if there’s a noticeable benefit to updating a wide range of sites for you. Would love to know if “expanding your reach” through the use of many portfolios as opposed to a few has truly lead to worthwhile client relationships.” Dave Boni – http://twitter.com/davidboni

That was a question posed to me in a comment on a earlier post titled 22+ Creative online portfolio sites and felt it warranted a small answer. Check out this post to see some of the places I upload my work

The answer

Yes.

I nearly finished the post with that, but I decided to expand a little. My feeling is that clients, potential customers are everywhere, in places you wouldn’t even think of. Sticking to main stream sites like Behance is a little naive in my opinion. No doubt sites like Behance offer invaluable contacts and resources, but not everyone who eats and sleeps design will be aware of these sites.

It’s all to easy to get into the mindset that ‘everyone’ both client and designer will know and frequently visit these so called mainstream external portfolio websites, but that’s simply not the case.

A client who is not Twitter savvy, or aware of these mainstream portfolio sites may rely on the sites they are familiar with to find designers to work with. If you limit where you place your portfolio then you are also limiting your reach with potential new clients. Remember, it only takes one good client to have made setting up a portfolio on some obscure website worth the effort. That’s what I think anyway.

Where did you find me?

On my online quote form, I ask where or how they found me. I have been surprised with some of the answers. A lot are from Google search terms, where I rank highly. Some are from recommendations from other clients or other designers that I rub shoulders with on social media. A nice percentage of work comes direct from Twitter. But interestingly, a few clients have stumbled upon me literally on StumbleUpon, a few via my external portfolios on  CargoCollective, Flickr, LogoGala, Crowdspring, Dripbook and Coroflot.

The other significant site is Facebook. I upload all my logo designs, concepts to my FaceBook photo album. This has proven to be a hugely valuable portfolio platform. I also use sites like Image Spark, Vis.ualise.us, Picocool, Yay!Everyday, FFFFound and Dropular etc to upload some ’select’ logo designs and portfolio work.

Simply, I am pretty much everywhere.

Based on these results

I decided to further expand my reach, to set up external portfolios in as many places as possible. Yes, it takes time, but as I mentioned, it only takes one client to have made it worth it. And it’s not just about finding clients, its about putting you and your brand out there for all to see. The more other designers and potential clients see your work in their daily routine, the more you are likely to remain in their thoughts.

It’s advertising in it’s most simplest form. The more places you appear, the more chance you have of stumbling into someone who wants you.

Be everywhere and prosper

Doesn’t take forever

It doesn’t actually take that long to keep all these sites updated. For some of them I only keep my most recent designs in the portfolio. It’s more a presence for me than being ‘active’. It’s better to have a presence than no presence, even if you don’t fully utilise the services and features of the site in question.

No doubt, the community side to Behance, Coroflot etc can be time consuming, but I tend to draw a line here. I just focus on having my portfolio updated and that’s about it. I focus on the community side of Twitter, my blog and other social media sites. That’s where I believe the likely hood of finding potential clients is highest.

Interestingly I have just subscribed up to DesignTaxi which has a strong focus on both designer and client. I will look closely at this site over the next year and see how this works out for me.