Portfolio Building Tips & Other Useful Resources for Journalists
Journalism as an industry has been keeping up with the rapid technological changes, growing even more fast-paced, and moving online. You, as a journalist, have to follow suit too, when it comes to your career and professional representation.
It’s hard to carve time out of your already limited free time as a journalist, so doing things like creating an online portfolio and building your personal brand have to be incredibly time-efficient. But how, when you’re not even sure how to get started?
Our team at Copyfolio, a portfolio website builder for writers, is dedicated to helping you learn and get it done as quickly and easily as possible. Over the course of the years, we’ve published many useful resources that walk you through the process step-by-step and answer all your questions.
So in this post, we’ve collected some of the most useful ones for you as a journalist, to help you create a portfolio website you can be proud of —and polish your personal brand along the way.
Portfolio website building tips for journalists
Let’s start by discussing that portfolio website. Contrary to some beliefs, it’s not only essential when you want to switch jobs and get hired by a new publication. No, it’s also an online cornerstone of your personal brand, so it’s important to get it right.
Your Journalism Portfolio Guide & 5 Easy Steps to Create One
This article has all the journalism-specific details you’ll need to create your journalist portfolio. So if you’re only reading one blog post today, let this one be it. In it, we go over why you need a journalism portfolio and what a good one looks like. We cover how you can get samples with no experience and how to then present them in your portfolio. And last, but not least, we end with a simple 5-step guide to creating that portfolio website.
How to Set Up the Perfect Homepage for Your Writer Portfolio
That first article gives a great overview —but in this one, we start going into more detail. This post tells you all you need to know about creating the perfect portfolio homepage, especially if you work in-house. As your homepage will essentially make your first impression online, you should aim to get it right. Here, we’ll show you how.
Actually, what we just wrote isn’t 100% true. Because the very first thing someone encounters will be not the homepage, but the link to the portfolio. To make it look and feel as professional as possible, you definitely should customize it. Either with a custom URL ending or your own domain. Not sure how that works? Check how we do it on Copyfolio in this article.
Being on-brand is one thing, but being credible is a completely different story. In a professional setting, it’s important to show others that what you’re saying doesn’t only sound good, but it’s also true and reliable. There are a few different ways to easily add credibility to your journalist portfolio, and these are what this blog post is about.
Freelancing & career advice for journalists
Taking one step away from portfolios, we have a few more generally career-related articles for you. In these, we discuss options for different career paths, freelancing, and resumes.
Find Your New Career Path: 11 Alternative Careers for Journalists
If you’re feeling burnt out from journalism and want a change, but would still like to make a living with writing, this one’s for you. We’re introducing 11 alternative careers you could turn to, explaining what they entail. We cover skills you gained as a journalist and give you an easy 4-step guide to starting a new career after journalism.
How to Become A Freelance Writer: Networking, Pitching & More
Going into details a little more, we have an article for you if decided to go freelance. A freelance writer can do different types of writing, but the principles of being a successful solopreneur will stay the same. So if you’ve been thinking about taking the leap, but are not 100% sure how, check this article out!
If you don’t want to go freelance, but would like another job or career, writing a strong resume will be essential. In this post, we’re discussing skills, showcasing experience with a bigger impact, tailoring your resume to each application, and more.
Boost your career and create your journalist portfolio with Copyfolio!
After reading through a few of these articles, you’ll see that having a strong portfolio is crucial both for building your personal brand and for getting hired. By now you’ll know what a good portfolio should be like, and likely gathered the samples you want to include.
So there’s nothing else left, but to actually start building!
With Copyfolio, you can create a portfolio website in a matter of minutes. The first thing you’ll have to do is create an account, which takes about two minutes and gets you started with a simple site. Then just customize your homepage, add your projects, and fill out your about page.
Whenever you’re not sure what to write, there’ll be guiding questions to lead the way.
Give Copyfolio a try & create a free portfolio website today!
Not a journalist? Check out our other resources
We have all kinds of career and portfolio-related posts on our blog for you to browse through —but if you’d like a similar collection, for another writing profession, check out our:
