On Tuesday, 4 June, Ruth E. Thaler-Carter presents the live Web seminar Developing a Freelancer’s Portfolio from 10:00-11:00 AM EDT (GMT-4). Below is a guest post by Ruth on the topic.
In the past, technical communicators relied on portfolios in the form of notebooks or binders holding copies of published works that they toted along to in-person interviews. Many freelance tech writers and editors today do contract work onsite for local clients and can still use hard-copy portfolios, but today’s electronic age means that we aren’t limited to freelancing only for local clients. We often need—or want—to present our work to prospective clients whom we cannot visit in person and for whom we will work electronically. Today’s tech communicator portfolio has to be more flexible and go beyond faxing or mailing a couple of published projects to being visible online.
It can be a challenge to find ways to develop your portfolio so it helps you create opportunities to present your work to prospective clients both local and far afield, but tech communicators are uniquely positioned to meet that challenge. We tend to be ahead of the loop in using contemporary techniques for our jobs, so we should be comfortable with adapting those techniques to promoting our own skills, experience and interests as freelancers. We use high-tech methods of developing publications and projects, methods that may well work with our own freelance businesses. And, if we need to do something to promote our freelance businesses that we aren’t familiar with, it’s a lot easier for us to find colleagues who can help out than it is for people outside our communications niche.
Freelance tech communicators have to visible beyond their own doorsteps. That means websites, blogs, social media and more. The prospect of entering those realms and maintaining your presence in them can be daunting, but doing so is essential to the success of your freelance business.
I’ve found it to be both profitable and empowering to have and manage my own website, even if I relied on more tech-savvy colleagues to set up the site initially. It feels really good to be able to put my work and interests up on a site, and use social sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, to bring attention to the site and my freelance activities in general.
Here’s to developing effective modern “portfolios” that help freelance tech communicators bring new business to their virtual doors!