Lessons

Lesson Info

Integrating a Blog into Your Portfolio

number four is why you should have a blood and how to integrate one. Now, a lot of that stuff really is about blogging as well, because there's only so much you can write in caption about with your projects because your work should speak for itself. Now, if you have a blawg, it's gonna add credibility beyond what you will ever say. If you tell me that I'm interested in the design and then I see another portfolio that's also telling me I'm interested in design. But that person has a blawg about specific design that resonates with May. Then I'm gonna want to meet him or her more than you just telling me through your about page. Okay, now it doesn't have to be a full on blawg. It could be a tumbler account. It could be through Instagram and you've got your instagram feed as a tabal. However it might might be, it might be through riding, which is what I do on giant thinkers dot com. Uh, but that's that's what it's about. Okay. And frequent visitors. If the senior work, how often are they? ...

Are you gonna update your work? What next project? What happened next month. Next six months for some. For May, maybe once a year. The big ones cause I'm taking such large projects. Now, why would they want to come to my website again? Have seen it well by blogging fresh new content that you're posting And he could just be once a month. But it's still better than once a year, isn't it? So two point type of love. How does it relate to your portfolio? It all comes down to this authenticity. Do what you say and say what you'd say what you do. OK, so blogging is going to do that for you. Um remember the depth that we were talking about before it really links with this? Remember what we're talking about about design briefs. Potentially not meeting our creative fulfillment or the brief. We might not be happy with that design that we did. This is an outlet for you guys as well. Stay fresh. Give what you receive his inspiration shared on your blogged share three or social networks Write about it. Tell me why you love it. Tell me that you went to the Chocolate festival downtown. Take photos of it. Show me what you did tell me what designs you liked. Live and breathe Design in your blood. Okay. I'm not telling you what your blood should be. A bad you might be into something completely different. Might be. You know, you might be a professional athlete. You might be, Ah, on a professional archery shooter. Fun. Have a blood about that, then, you know. But then also use your your social media platforms to show depth in your character, you know, But you are also interested in design. So there are two ways to integrate your block in your portfolio. The 1st 1 is simply it's already inbuilt with most of the CMS platforms that you that you have available to you. That includes squarespace. That includes WordPress. They have that functionality already. Inbuilt. That's what makes it easy. Or you could create a separate one all together. That's what I do for joint. Think is dot com, because the context of it is quite different. One is for my portfolio work, but I have ah, tab that says blawg that links to my giant thinkers lug so again, Still, I'm linking linking up. But I've got one there, and that's about writing about getting a job is a design, and on that aspect of design that that was appealing for me. For you, it might be a set, another part of design that you might love. Ah, so unless you have a good reason to keep him, have him separate than keep it together if you can. Here are some examples of successful design bloggers that I follow. Jacob Cast Check out just creative dot com. He It's incredible he got a job from Australia by Twitter. You can read about his story. He now lives in New York, found love in his life, been living there for over three years now, and, ah, his side just create Eve has been viewed over three billion times, and he has over 71,000 Twitter followers. A lot of people looked to Jacob to get some really cool assets off different designs, whether they be logos or cool fonts, things like that. So again, take him out. It's a good example, you know, he's contributing and giving freebies, and he's posting about design, not just saying he's a designer. Everything he's putting out into the universe is about design, so he has just created as a blogger, also as a design firm in one David area, of course. Ah, very iconic in the blogosphere. David area dot com. Check him out. Um, tried to get him on here, actually, but incredibly busy guys from Ireland on As we know, there's Tina Roth Eisenberg. She is the founder and creator of Swiss Dash ms dot com. Check her out. She's very well known as well online. So are there any questions on launching your portfolio and getting noticed? Anything Here, We've got a couple online. Let's take this one first. Go ahead on a bill. Yes, I'm just a question in terms of like copying. Have you ever had or experienced anything where people copied stuff and put it on their own site? I've just had situations where people have done it on lengthen and things like that. So they're just nervousness to put everything out there. Sure, knowing that people might replicate elsewhere. Can you give me an example of what? What you mean like more text? It was more just a creative profile. Wording. Right? And I found elsewhere, so that's a good one. I like that one. Um, it's happened to me before. Where your bio that you've written. They just switched out their name essentially for their own. Uh huh. Yeah, but in terms of I mean, you can't necessarily avoid that. But is there anything I don't really know? There's just nervousness that show people might replicate your work in other forms, whether it's design or set up or whatever. I think that it means that you're doing something right. Yeah, it's the truth. If you look at I read a I read a ton of books, but one of them in particular said, If you are doing things that people want a copy, then you are leading the pack in that field. So I think I wouldn't worry about that. I've had some my illustrative friends, beautiful illustrations. Then one of them is walking through Bangkok in the markets and the illustrations on a printed T shirt. It happens, guys, there's no avoiding people that want to break the rules. Of course, you know, I'm I'm telling you guys to credit those you're working with. I'm telling you guys to be transparent. There are people that won't, and that's unfortunately you know, the ah, a handful of people. I'm sure that that are going to do that. Ah, don't be afraid of it. Ah, your intentions are right. It's important that you get your work out there. You can prove and back up that it was yours. That's all it comes down to, you know, And in fact, posting it is proof that it's yours first if you don't post your work. But they found it because it's on your resume or in an email or something. They've got it published before it's published on your page. You need to. It's probably best. Yeah, yeah, I you'll notice on my ramp. Castillo dot com Own personal portfolio website. I've actually got date as part of my captioning. It's It's encrypted, documented in time. Right then and there. It's not gonna change. It's when I did it. And I've got evidence of people that I work with. So do not be scared. If they're copying you, they want to be you Scary. Yeah, conduct the the guy who are girl who was copying your stuff and just asked to remove it. Yeah, because it's your Yeah, I mean, if it's teachers who have been that have been copied off line. That's from my website. That's got my title. But the picture on this person's website with my name in it, um and I just emailed them and they took it down. So you have the right to do that? Yeah. Official official. Any chatter online, Chris? Yeah, We have a couple of questions that came in here. This one comes from Cindy McKenna, and we had a couple people vote on it. You mentioned Hoot suite as a way to get out all of your content in one blast. But Cindy wants to know what's your opinion of posting different types of content to different media? I have some people that I follow on Facebook, twitter and instagram, and you get the same exact post on all of them. Is it more credible to not do that to have something different on each channel? That's a good question. Uh, in my experience, thank you for asking that, in my experience, the benefit off, uh, defining who you are, who you're speaking to and consistency in a personal brand is K the benefit we have off also integration. Where if you post on Twitter, I do this. If I know, even take a step back. If I do a post, it automatically goes on Twitter and Facebook with my one click. So it goes on all my social media platforms and you'll notice even on linked in if you're on it. If you post a status update, there's the option to link it to Twitter to post that exact post to Twitter. Ah, I personally think that it's a good thing to do that makes your life so much easier on also, the audience that you have on Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook are all gonna be different. So the ability to post Okay, I found this or on posting. Ah, this particular website, I think, is gonna be useful to all my design appears, and I want to post it on everywhere. That is absolutely not a not a problem at all. I think it's gonna only work better for you because the rate in which things are going these days, they might only find it in one of them, or none at all. And at the end of the day to value, you're not posting stuff that's not informative again, you're building your personal brand and of course when it comes to images and Twitter. Ah, I don't post all my instagram photos on Twitter. If it's relevant, I do. If it's a shot of my great coffee, just leave that for the instagram. How's it helping your twitter? Faultless? Um, yeah, you've got to be just mindful of it. But don't be afraid to link it all together and blasted out in one hit. Yes, I experienced that myself. And I just figure out, OK, where is this person? Best fitting into my social media strategy. And I just turned off on the other channel. Exactly. Yeah, that's really good point, you know? Think about it. And the other side of this, isn't it. There's another the whole other point to this which is posting stuff that can damage your brand. You know, hopefully you're not posting the crazy picks that you had on the weekend made a bachelor's party or the bachelorette body that you into, um, and then linking that and forgot that he was linked to your Twitter account and, uh, linked in or whatever. Don't be doing that. Yeah, that's not gonna That's not gonna help you at all. It'll get attention But you just be mindful, you know, try to keep a professional presence. And I'm trying to do that as much as I can now as well. You know, a lot of the times I was posting stuff that we're quite irrelevant to people. When now I'm really curating what I'm posting out there if it's designed, related or helping people, or I really think it's just funny and people will benefit from a cool video. Ah, you know, I watch one recently those a parody off how it is to work in an advertising agency. And the point of this story of this video was was the company was rewarding their employees by letting them see their family. So you know how it unfolded was like hilariously true on. I'll post stuff like that. But know your limits. You know, I always put yourself in the shoes of an employer is a professional. Is it worth their time now? We had a couple of questions here. I know that this is not a specific blogging course, but we had some people who had blogging questions. You just want to touch on a couple of quickly. Yes, now these air just a couple of comments, but it's pretty general around the chat room. Here's one here. They got two votes from one of our viewers. Who says I don't think I agree with blogging. What if you just suck at writing? So there's that. So take that into account. We also had one that said, What are the do's and dont's of blogged posting? Are there things that you just should never blogged about? So what is your advice to these people who feel like they don't have anything in particular to block about? How do they come up with ideas? Things like that? You know, it's funny. Every all the principles that I have just spoken about on your portfolio creation apply to blogging. Go back to the first step. We won't be doing that right now. You go back to the first step. Personal analysis. Okay. Were you speaking to, uh, sorry. That's the second step. He's speaking of the first of these is who are you and what do you want to block about? You don't want a longing to be a chore If you can't write this photo blogging this video blogging There are other ways the blood, then riding and ah, my goodness, Hasn't video blogging now become so incredible? You know, I a Sydney side, are many Sydney bloggers, actually, but one that I know who's earning 120 k a year, just blogging on YouTube. So all she does that she is one of those personal. She does all these personalities, so she's the one addresses off and then she'll edit. And then that's a lot of time and effort. But she creates these Siri's. It's the same thing going down to what you should blood about, uh, again it it's There's this two part of this don't be feel that you have to be boxed into, uh, blogging about design. Yeah, that's great, actually. Just chime in quickly because we had a similar questions along those same lines. Belinda Vega and a couple of people voted on this. Belinda asked. Well, should your blogger effect your business? 100% and they perfect example. They are you. I professional she wants No. Would it be inappropriate to make my blawg about art movies, music? Or should it be specifically about the commercial work in the business that she's trying to get? Yeah, absolutely. Ah, for example, in that situation, uh, used blogging as a very defined way off, showing your other interests use the other platforms to mix it up. You know, perfect example is when I was in Washington, D. C. There was, ah, woman who was half 50 50 painter, 50 50 Web designer. So she was valid. Question, right, What? How do I present my portfolio? And I said, What's giving you money? She said, Of course, the Web design work. I go great. Put that up first because we want you to make a living. Then you have two options. Put you some of your paintings after or have a six separate sectional together. That's about your painting. Literally have painting on that on blast at the same format that you showed your your Web design work on painting and the beauty about that is, and again the painting can be your blawg. The painting can be your photo journal on Tumblr. The painting tab could be anything that you want that links to your interest, but you've got to show that, and it supports the fact that you are not just a designer, but you. Ah, a person that participates in the world around you, that you're an explorer, that you're curious. You know, there is no right or wrong. Answer really comes down to blogging about what you love. What is something that you can't stop thinking about. If it's not only design, common thing is photography. Common common thing is photography. Everyone loves taking photos, whether it's instagram, whether it's with your beautiful DSLR white intertwined with visual people, we want a document. So I encourage you have your photography as a section on your portfolio over the the user experience that interface that not using interface. They use experience that I drew up very pretty version. It was simply landing page project pages and yes, and what was that? Some notes make it a sudden enough. They will click that they will. Any fuel photography is good done. I would be crazy. Not Tonto, you know, hire This person not only is a good designer, but he's also got a very hi attention to a photographic detail that we could use as an advantage to attain. Yes, wondering, like if you were to summarize like all the content per day and like we're 35 action steps, Just the summary. Um, what's the bluff of this thing's workshop? Yeah, OK, well, to be honest, that kind of leads to the next in terms of in terms of action steps. You know, the highlight for me to create a knockout portfolio is really, uh, the trigger points. I really can't move too far away from those, Uh, you have to be showing work that's relevant or you lose them. You have to be showing work that's that shows you're competent or you lose them and aimed for work that years off high content quality, both in craftsmanship, both in showing the dimension off the story and the solution. Because that's all it is. It is a bridge to contact. You not see it. Then they're gonna call you for an interview. You gotta go through that and you go toe perform on the job, don't you? And then off course, there's all these other things in the background, such as networking, Reggie Maze, email crafting and all that, which is on the other workshop. But ah, in very deluded terms, a knockout portfolio. You selling your value, you know, and value comes in all those things Relevance Number one, it's It almost seems too simple, you know. But if if you look at your portfolio now and for those of you that I tuned in on the global audience, if you look at your portfolio and ask yourself that one question is it relevant to the job that I want? I leave that with you to answer that. Be honest. But I do want Teoh move on to a summary off the other areas which is standing and conquering. And I really wanted to just pull these points out for you, Bebe Rife. It's gonna be a tough world out there. You are going to get rejected. You are going to fail, and you are going to be disappointed countless times who have someone look forward to? Yeah, great way to end the workshop, you know? But be brave guys. You know, no one's going to live your dream for you. And I know that's like, quite you know. Well, man, that's pretty date. But look, you have to be brave. Don't sit there and be Ah, reactive. You have a purpose. You have the choice. Okay. Be willing to question, explore and dissect business problems on your quest for human eyes solutions. And there's something in. There is a key word in their willingness, a willingness to listen to a voice almost external to your own. Because all for now, our voice tells us we're not good enough. Adopt with change, very important. In order to survive and thrive, we must adapt, so be willing to adapt well fell but fell quickly in order to succeed. I have a rule in life when it comes to learning quickly, well, getting to where we want to be quickly. And it's a rule of 300 rejections. And I believe that's when you get good at anything. If you are on the to 50 mark, you're on your way. You've ended on 20. Get your other 20 rejections out of the way. Get your 25 years out. Trust me, 300 is where you need to bay. Get it out of the way. Whether it's got to do with ah, sending emails, send out your 300. You don't even want to know how many emails I've sent just to get jobs. You don't know how many you know. Doors are knocked. You know, basically, it's a lot be willing to do that. And that, of course, leads us to the final point, which is toe. Want it bad? As bad as you want to breathe. If you don't want it as bad as you want to breathe, it simply means that you won't sleep. Procrastination. Watching the telly, going out boozing with your mates were partying. You want all those things more, then you want a job as a designer or to live your dream. However, that looks like so hopefully that really gives you a great insight into the portfolio components of ultimately getting you noticed getting your work seen getting a job. But there are many other components to getting a job, so this is actually, I would say, a part one off the process. Many steps in this part one. But there are plenty more that we need to really dive into footfall areas a big one. So hopefully those tips can give you guys the right direction. Actionable steps to create a knockout portfolio. Wonderful. Let's give a huge round of applause around. Still, this has been great