Your Guide to Building a Social Media Portfolio

"You’ve already done the work. Now it’s time to celebrate yourself."

Compiling a recap of my 12-year career in social media is a daunting task. My thumb hurts at the idea of how much scrolling back I’d need to do. It’s why I’ve put off making a portfolio for so long.

Tools like Gondola can be helpful for aggregating posts you’ve worked on—see an example here—but I think many of us have a desire to editorialize our work a bit more. A site that we can share with prospective employers or clients that allows us to talk about the posts and the strategies behind them.

That’s why when I saw previous Link in Bio interviewee and Social Media Marketing Manager at BAGGU Alex Hao’s brand new portfolio I got a jolt of inspiration to finally build out mine. Maybe you need that jolt too.

Alex’s portfolio scrolls like a social platform and feels equal parts informative and delightful. I can quickly see all of the brands he’s worked with, along with deep dives into various strategies.

Below you’ll find my conversation with Alex about his process for building his portfolio. At the end, I included some resources—links to other social media portfolios, designers to work with, and more—to help get you started on your portfolio journey.

Finally, if you love your own portfolio, please share it in the comments! I think we could all use more jolts of inspiration.

Rachel Karten: In general, how was the process of creating a social media portfolio? I have been putting it off for years.

Alex Hao: I feel the same way about putting it off and even tweeted about it:

For the longest time, my portfolio was simply a public Notion page (here’s a great example from my friend Ryo). IMO having anything is better than nothing, and the nice part of using Notion is that you can rely on its pre-built gallery view. No design needed.

But this February, I was coming off of a year of working freelance, which meant I had ~5 new clients and >10 new projects to showcase.

I was also beginning to look for my next full-time job and knew I wanted to present something that was reflective of all of my skills, which includes design/creative production. So in that sense, my portfolio is not just a container for my work—it is in-and-of-itself a project that showcases what I can do.

When the overall idea of having a “social media feed” as a portfolio crystallized, I became really excited and designed + built the site in one weekend (fueled by energy drinks, of course).

RK: I really love how you broke it out into projects and posts. Yes, there are lots of posts when you work in social, but there is also a lot of bigger marketing thinking. Why did you decide to break it out that way?

AH: The first exploration was actually centered around creative skills, rather than posts/projects. People who work in social tend to do so many things (maybe too many things) and I’m no different.

v1 of Alex’s portfolio design

But that was too complicated. With portfolios, it’s all about “show” and not “tell.” Nobody is gonna click across seven different tabs. Even though I’m a proud generalist, you have to give your viewer a really clear one-line description of what exactly you do, and immediately back it up with examples.

My “one-liner” is that I can execute creatively, but am also deeply strategic. So it became clear that I could bucket everything into two categories:

• posts (showcasing execution): proof I could make one-off engaging content pieces, spotlighting copywriting, community management, and design/animation

• projects (showcasing strategy): anything where I played a part in planning, spotlighting brand strategy and campaign construction

Components of v2 that made it to the final site

RK: When you were beginning the process of working on it, what felt important to include?

AH: The first criterion was “does this feel ownable”: was I in charge of this post/project? Did I play a large-enough part that I felt confident claiming it on my portfolio? If someone asked me about this in an interview, would I be able to walk them through, end-to-end?

The second was “does this showcase one of the two areas (① creative execution, ② strategy) that I’m centering my portfolio around?” Everything needs to ladder up to a clear picture of what my capabilities are. And even though it’s a diverse set of work, I want people to be able to describe “oh this is what Alex does” in one sentence after they scroll through my site.

RK: Did you have a way of bookmarking or saving old posts before you made it? How did you dig back to find things you wanted to highlight?

AH: I did not. Cut to me frantically downloading old TikToks the night before the ban, and cursing out LinkedIn’s awful search functionality.

The good thing is I only had to do this once, and I also never clean out my computer storage, so had a lot of the assets still saved. And now that I have a portfolio, it’s much easier to add in new projects/posts as they launch.

I haven’t used it extensively, but Gondola is a great tool that lets you search through social content and add it to your own profile. It also aggregates metrics so you don’t have to manually calculate the impact of a multi-post campaign, or the total impressions on content you’ve made for a brand.

RK: Who did you work with on it? The way it mimics a feed is so clever and easy to digest.

AH: Just me :) Designed in Figma, built in Framer.

Wireframe of the site in Framer

But I did replicate many design elements from Threads, Instagram, and Twitter—so whoever those original designers are, thank you for your service and I owe y’all one!

And big shoutout to my friends Maya Bakir, Jake Xia, and Antonio Mestre for being my early bug-catchers and cheerleaders as I shared in-progress designs.

RK: How did you think about how much text to include vs letting the work speak for itself?

AH: Back to show, not tell! Good work speaks for itself, especially in social. My site is heavily inspired by design agency portfolios because they do a great job of this. Right now, I only have one image per project cause it suffices, but am working on adding more.

I stole some formatting from my friends at Design Business Company (incredible agency, BTW) and included text to provide:

• context on the project (AKA the brief)

• my role in the project

• collaborators I worked with

P.S. There were so many portfolios and websites that lended inspiration to mine, and you can check some of them out here.

Portfolio inspiration

RK: I love that you credited your collaborators. Can you talk me through that decision?

AH: To steal a brand headline from Figma, “nothing great is made alone.” Cross-functional collaboration is a core part of any social media workflow and something brought up quite often in interviews, so it’s a nice way of getting ahead of that question.

I deeply believe in “lifting all boats” — if one of us succeeds, we all do. I have had the pleasure of working with + learning from some incredible creatives and strategists. If someone gets a new client because their name was included in my portfolio, that’s an amazing win for me as well.

I also cannot tell you how angry it makes me to see people (especially middle-level managers and high-up executives) put a project on their portfolio without accurately spotlighting others that contributed to it. I think many people climb the career ladder by taking credit for others’ work. This is often at the expense of teammates or direct reports who were just as, if not more, responsible for the final product.

So crediting collaborators is a way of rebelling a bit against this corporate bureaucracy, and showing love to fellow creatives who may not always get the recognition they deserve from their own teammates or managers.

RK: What advice would you give someone (me) who is overwhelmed at the idea of creating a portfolio?

AH: In social media, it can be hard to pull yourself out of the daily hype cycle of briefs, drafts, posts, comments, and follow-ups to recognize just how much you’ve done.

Hopefully you’re proud of what you’ve made. And if you are, it should feel easy to talk about it. You’ve already done the work. Now it’s time to celebrate yourself.

Going back to the first question, I think that “good enough” is what to aim for. You don’t need to do what I did in order to land your next client or full-time job. Just put some of your favorite work in your notes app. A bullet list of links is better than nothing. A public Notion gallery is a little bit nicer than that. Start small, and you can buff it up as you go.

And look for help. Maybe crowdsource your own best work by asking a teammate/client about a favorite project you’ve collaborated on together. Is there a project that you talked about with a friend cause you were so excited? That’s a great place to start. I’m also always here to chat!

Resources

Websites and portfolios that inspired Alex. Loved seeing this Pablo Rochat photo in there.

Example Notion portfolio. I also know plenty of people who build their portfolio in Canva, Figma, and Google Slides as well.

Link dump of social media portfolios that I’ve bookmarked. Proud of your own portfolio? Share it in the comments and I’ll add it!

List of designers to potentially work with. Some lean more branding, others more web. Take a look to learn more about their capabilities!

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