What's in Your Portfolio?

[Angela]

Hello everyone.

I'm new to this Content Strategy group and the world of content
strategy. I'm currently an editor seeking to transition into a content
management role. I'm looking for insight on the best way to present
my content strategy related experience to potential employers.

I apologize if this topic has been addressed in this group already. I
did a search for "portfolio," which only returned a few results. While
one result mentioned the issue of portfolios being addressed
previously, but I was unable to find the original discussion.

Any insight you can provide about what information and items should be
included in a content strategist's portfolio and the best way to
present this information would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Angela

[Jean Gazis]

I am also interested in this topic!

Jean Gazis
www.jeangazis.com
je...@jeangazis.com

[Andrew Gent]

OK. I'll take a stab at answering the question as a straw horse for others to shoot at.

In my opinion a portfolio is part of your overall resume. It is a marketing tool. So whatever else it is, it has to be easily understood and appealing. The two key troubles with content strategy portfolios are:

• The content strategy is not always "visible", so showing a web site, for example, can be misleading because one screen cannot capture the actual scope of the work. (And usually is more illustrative of the work of others first.)
• For many of us, the work done is proprietary to the client (or in case of "innies", the employer). Finding a balance between self-promotion and allowably public content can be hard.

That said, here is what I put together last time I did a portfolio: http://www.radiopoets.com/library/AndrewGentPortfolio.pdf

What I tried to do was pick a few representative projects (interesting, but each showing a different aspect of work).  I then tried to boil down what was interesting about them to a single page. Keep it simple: simple explanation, a few screens for illustration purposes. (Note that I deliberately blurred out URLs and names, to avoid revealing corporate information. Again, the screenshots are representative of the overall project, not meaningful by themselves. Which is why there are several screens or highlighting of the part that was meaningful to the project.)

My portfolio at the time was focused on my role as an information architect and KM specialist rather than content strategy specifically, but I think the same principles apply. Two extra notes:

• The portfolio listed above was the marketing part. It was backed by actual design and project management documents from the projects  that I then shared with any potential employers who were interested in digging deeper. But because of the proprietary nature of the sample documents, those links were only shared with appropriate caveats concerning confidentiality.
• Here's where I fall short: don't wait until you are looking for a job to create and/or update your portfolio. Trying to collect the needed screenshots, dates, stats, etc after the fact can be very time consuming. Update your portfolio periodically (every year?)  so it is ready when you need it. I know that, but notice my portfolio is already four years out of date....

--Andrew Gent

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From: Angela <angelajohn...@gmail.com>
To: Content Strategy <content...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, June 11, 2011 8:36 AM
Subject: What's in Your Portfolio?

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[Rahel Bailie]

What a great question! We've all had to show our value so I'd pose this to the group as also what do you expect to see from someone showing you a portfolio?

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[Cliff Tyllick]

What a challenge!

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From: Rahel Bailie <rahel....@gmail.com>
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Sent: Sun, June 12, 2011 4:12:39 PM
Subject: Re: What's in Your Portfolio?

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