How to Organize Your Clips on Your Website
Note from Jennifer: After seeing my post about Content Marketing World, the nice folks at Content Marketing Institute contacted me and gave me a $100 off code for any of my readers wanting to attending #CMWorld. To received the discount, enter CMWRITER100. This is not an affiliate link, just a discount code. Before registering, be sure to check out my post to see if attending the event is right for you.
Your clips are the main reason prospective clients head to your website. They want to see your writing style as well as the topics you’ve covered. However, if they don’t find what they are looking for, they will leave and you won’t get the gig.
You want your website in general and your clips in specific to show potential clients that you are an experienced freelancer with extensive experience in their niche. By making everything on your site—from your clips to your recommendations to your brands to your About Me page—work to give potential clients confidence that you are an experienced professional, your website will more than pay for itself by landing you new gigs.
Organize Your Clips by Niche
The most important thing that content marketing agencies and brands are looking for is expertise in a specific niche. I know that most of us can write about anything, but clients want proof and clips before they will hire us, at least for the first client. So you want them to quickly find clips that back up your expertise so they will hire you.
I personally think from my own experience, talking to other writers and most importantly talking to content marketing clients that organizing your clips by niches is most effective. I help one of my clients look for new freelancers and have spent many hours looking for writers to fill their positions, and I am more likely to contact a writer who clearly brands themselves as an expert in the niche I need.
If you have several niches (like I do) that are not totally related, then I recommend separate pages for each niche if possible. I used to have the niches on one page organized by section with hyperlinks to each section at the top. If your niches are all related, such as health, then you can either put all clips on one page or separate by sub niche.
Which Niches to Showcase
When deciding which niches to represent and how to structure your portfolio page/pages, think about the type of clients that are most likely to hire you. What are they looking for? Be sure to use the wording for SEO that your industry uses. For example, healthcare technology is often called Health IT so I used this terminology on my website.
Structure your clips to present yourself as a top expert with those skills and in those areas of expertise. It’s also important to remember to change the structure of your clips as your niches evolve. I used to have all technology clips listed on one page. It worked fine, but a few years ago I moved to separate pages for each niche, which I think works even better, especially if you have a lot of clips and your niches are not related.
It’s also important to continually re-evaluate the niches you are showcasing to make sure that you appealing to the clients who are most likely to hire you. Over the past two years, I began writing in the verticals Hospitality Technology and Healthcare Technology, which are very in demand these days. I recently added new pages to showcase these specialties and since doing that have noticed a significant increase in cold calls from clients in these industries.
Putting Your Best Clips Forward
Here are six tips on organizing clips on your portfolio page:
1. Put your highest profile and most impressive clips at the top of the list. Many people only glance at the top of the page. Make it count.
2. Do not separate out content marketing and journalism clips. Yes, I know a lot of people do this, but I personally think that it dilutes your expertise. My post tomorrow is going to explain exactly why I recommend keeping the clips together.
3. Think about what your ideal prospective clients are looking for. Use your portfolio to showcase the type of clips that would be of interest to the majority of people looking at your website. Are they looking for storytelling? Or technical expertise? Or is writing infographic copy your sweet spot? Put up the clips that will help them hire you.
4. Leave off the dates if the clips are old. It’s fine to have no dates. Just don’t draw attention to the age of the clips and no one will likely really notice.
5. Make changes to the order based on page views. Oddly enough, a post I wrote for an Intuit blog on a portable toilet business is my most clicked on clip. When a client tells me they contacted me because they liked my clips, I always ask what clip made them reach out and the majority of clients mention this off the wall clip. So I placed it higher in the order of my clips based on this insight.
6. If your clips are for high-profile brands, be sure to include the brand name on the clip. Sometimes writers just put the title of the pub or blog for content marketing, but often it’s the brand that is most meaningful.
How do you organize your clips? What have you found most effective?
Great topic, Jennifer!
I love the way your portfolio is organized. Very clear and easy navigation!
Makes me think about reorganizing my portfolio page. Here’s a link if you’re interested in taking a look: http://stacysare.com/samples
Most of my leads come from LinkedIn, but I don’t know if these specific leads view my website before deciding to contact me. I guess I should ask.
Right now my work is organized by media: articles/blog posts, direct mail, newsletters, etc. I’ve also done B2C copywriting.
Do you suggest keeping copywriting on a separate page and B2C separate?
I did a lot of B2C direct mail for high profile cruise ships and some email marketing when I worked for an advertising agency. So unlike you specializing in article writing/content marketing, I’m across the board.
I know Carol Tice has a separate link to her copywriting work.
Lately, I’ve been writing blog posts/articles in the B2B sector, which is where I’m putting my energy.
What do you think?
Always appreciate your advice and expertise!
I just looked at your clips and I would definitely rearrange them by niche. Odds are pretty high that someone looks at your website before contacting you on LinkedIn. Especially if you have a link from LinkedIn. Can you look at the analytics and see if you are getting referrals to your site from LinkedIn.
As far as copywriting being separate, I think in some cases like yours it might make sense. Copywriting is a different skillset than content writing and copywriting clients want to see copywriting samples. I stink at copywriting but I am a great content writer. But you may want to put some clips on both the copywriting page and the separate niche, if it is copywriting but shows expertise.
I wouldn’t put all B2B clips on one page and all B2C on the other. However, if there is a niche where it matters, then you might want to separate it out. For example, B2B technology is it’s own niche from B2C and clients hiring for this niche want people with specific B2B tech skills. If I did both, I would probably separate it out on the same page or even different pages.
The real test is to put yourself in your clients shoes and approach your organization of clips based on what information the client is looking for. And if you have clients that you consider friends, the best route is to ask for their opinion and what they like when looking for writers like yourself. The specifics of exactly how each writer should organize is different because we are marketing ourselves to different clients in different industries. If you start with with your client’s needs, then you will be more likely to get it right.
A cavat and I will add this to the post, the only deliverable I would be tempted to have separated out are whitepapers because this is a very specific type of writing and a client is not going to likely hire you without experience. So if you are marketing yourself as a whitepaper writer, then you may want to include that as a category. I used to have one until I recently hi-jacked it for my HealthIT Niche.
A big thank you for your feedback!!!
I forgot to add that you have some REALLY good clips on your site.
Thanks!
To quote an editor of mine, “BoyohBoyohBoy…”
I think I might be the poster child for this. My clips were just disorganized enough to be confusing until Jennifer straightened me out.
Now, even I (and hopefully my prospects) can find and read the work I’ve done!
Note to all: Take Jennifer’s advice and put it into action!
You did the hard work!
Great post! This is vital information, I struggled so much trying to figure out what to write in. Once I figured out my niche things started to make sense and writing was a bit easier for me to focus on. I admire the information you put on the website because this is something EVERY blogger should know. I appreciate you sharing your knowledge.
Glad you figured your niche. I really think that is the most important thing. What niche did you decide on?
@Jennifer: Oddly, I couldn’t find any LinkedIn referral links under tracking sources/referral. I’m still learning analytics, so they could be hidden elsewhere.
@Jamie: I agree, Jamie that this post contains vital information! I also struggle with organizing my clips into niches. I find it challenging to separate niches when they cross over into two or more niches, for example, an article on boating apps could be leisure technology, travel technology, or boating technology.
I imagine you should go with the more general category until you have enough clips to form a separate category.
Here’s a question: how many samples do you think you need to create a new category? My guess is at least three. Wondering what others think?
@Robin: Will check out the transformation of your site.
Stacy, I agree on a general category until you have enough. I would say 3 to 5 until you break them out by niche.
Something I did is that I have a few stories that are different but I wanted to showcase so I do have a section for features/profiles that is not niche specific. I did this because these stories are very different than my other clips and show a different type of writing. By putting myself in the client’s shoes, I realized that someone wanting that type of writing would want it all in one place for impact.
As far as ones that cross niches, put yourself in the client’s shoes. Think about what clients would look at the boating niche and which would look at the boating technology niche. Under which niche would this particular clip, be more likely to tip a client into the direction to hire you.
If you have a good amount of clips (especially if they are on separate pages like mine), you can also get a way with putting a few clips in multiple categories. Especially if someone is not likely to visit both.
You make a vital point about putting yourself in the “client’s shoes.” for your features/profiles section. I think brand journalism could be another separate heading.
Brand journalism is actually the exact same thing as content marketing, just another name for it. If you wanted to have a Brand journalism section, you can but it is the same thing as having a separate section for journalism.
However, I do recommend that if you separate it out that you use Content Marketing instead of Brand Journalism. This pains me to see because I VASTLY prefer the term brand journalism and really wish that were the industry term. But it’s not. And I think that to to get people to hire you that it’s important to use the industry accepted term, which unfortunately is content marketing.
Hey, great article, yet again, Jennifer. I realise I’ve been lazy and posted links to my published work only on Facebook, then had that Facebook feed on my home page. Does not make for easy viewing for the prospective client, I now realise!
Am very prompted to work on my website.
Thanks again
Rgds
M
Yes, I totally agree that probably isn’t the best organization. You want it as easy as possible for potential clients to find what they need to hire you.
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