How To Build Your Social Media Marketing Agency Portfolio In 2024

Step 1: Keep It Simple, Stupid

The goal of your social media portfolio is simple.

You want your potential clients to:

1. read the whole thing
2. understand what you can do for them
3. get back in touch (and hire you!)

Most business owners operate in a fast-paced environment though. They won’t create a lot of time to inspect the entirety of a lengthy document, especially from an agency owner who messaged them out of nowhere.

It’s therefore your job to make your portfolio SIMPLE to consume. You have to catch people’s eyes and show them what you can do as quickly as possible. Finally, you’ll end with a simple call to action to move your negotiations forward.

Step 2: Create Your Social Media Portfolio Using Canva

If I could share one tip with you, it would be this. Take the time to make your portfolio visually striking.

First impressions count. An aesthetically pleasing portfolio will instantly make your agency appear more professional. Readers will be inspired to continue to the end. It also confirms the idea that you’re the man or woman who can get results on social media. After all, most social media is visual.

Don’t fall into the trap of believing that the content is all that matters. Your presentation is just as important.

That’s why I recommend creating your social media portfolios in Canva. This free online tool has thousands of templates to create eye-catching portfolios within minutes. (I’d recommend using Canva templates to quickly create graphics on social media too. It has templates correctly sized for every social media platform.)

Once you’ve created an account on Canva, you can follow these steps to find a suitable social media agency portfolio template.

• Navigate to canva.com and log in to your account.
• Click ‘Templates’ on the left-hand menu.
• Search for ‘Portfolio Presentations’.
• Choose a template which best matches your company’s branding (some are only available with Canva Premium, but there are plenty of great free options).
• Click on it, then click on the purple button that says ‘Customize this template’.

At this point, you’ll be ready to add your company information to transform this template into your own portfolio. Provided you have a working internet connection, it’ll automatically be saved in your Canva ‘Projects’ tab as you go.

You’ll be able to change the text, colors, fonts and design of the template as needed. However, unless you’re an experienced graphic designer, you’re usually better off utilizing the templates as intended. Tweaking them too much may compromise their professional appearance. They’re already meticulously engineered for maximum visual impact, so you don’t need to spend hours playing with the design.

Step 3: What To Include In Your Social Media Marketing Portfolio

Remember: we’re aiming to keep this portfolio as brief and on-point as possible. Your potential clients don’t care to read your life story. They only want to know what you can do for them.

With that in mind, I’d recommend adding the following chapters to your portfolio.

• Introduction
• Services
• Tools and Systems
• Work Samples
• Client Results And Testimonials
• Call To Action

Below, we’ll explore what to include in each of these chapters, as well as how and when to send your portfolio to a client.

Introduction

You don’t need a full bio here. It’s far more powerful to add one sentence explaining who you help and how you help them.

“I help small business owners use social media to turn their followers into customers and increase their brand awareness.”

Assuming you’re sending this portfolio to your target audience, a bio like this will reassure them of your suitability. If you serve a smaller niche in a more precise way, go ahead and add this to your introduction instead.

The only goal of your introduction should be ensuring the client understands you can do the job they need…

Add your name and a professional portrait of yourself too. Your client will usually like to see who they’re working with.

Services

If your agency offers a range of services, outline these in your portfolio.

This will save clients from getting on a sales call with false expectations of what you can do for them.

List everything you can potentially do on behalf of the client. The longer your list of services, the more valuable your packages will look.

I’m a big advocate of adding prices to your portfolio. Some people prefer to reveal prices on a sales call, which might work well if you’re a hardcore ‘closer’. But, for most normal people, this will only lead to more sales calls with potential clients who bulk at the price and don’t pay you a penny.

Most likely, you don’t want to waste your time like this. So, list your prices loud and proud. This will help you to avoid time-wasters and close a higher percentage of your sales calls.

Tools and Systems

It can be comforting for potential clients to see a list of the tools and systems used in your daily work.

Hiring managers want to feel that you’ll be able to slide into the team effortlessly. When they see you’re proficient with the tools they use, you’ll help them feel confident.

Got any qualifications associated with these systems? Go ahead and mention those too…

Work Samples

A social media portfolio allows you to show off the content you’re most proud of creating.

It’ll impress a potential client to show content creation from a wide range of social media accounts, but you don’t have to show off every project you’ve worked on.

It’s suggested that 3-6 projects is the perfect number to showcase on your portfolio. This allows you to achieve a balance of showing your best work and your versatility.

Make sure to include all types of content that you’ve produced for clients. Perhaps you’ll dedicate one page of your portfolio to each of the major social media platforms you work on.

If you’ve worked with well-known brands, include them somewhere in your portfolio. That social proof can prove vital to landing more clients. Consider listing all of the clients you’ve worked with somewhere on your portfolio, even if you don’t link to projects for all of them.

You could choose to include screenshots of several posts from one campaign in your portfolio. However, I think it’s easier to include one preview image per campaign with a hyperlink so potential clients can explore more for themselves.

Client Results & Testimonials

This is arguably the part of your portfolio that potential clients will care about the most.

Most will be more interested in how much money you can make them than how aesthetic your content is.

So, make sure to include a page or two showing off your biggest client wins.

• Perhaps you helped one business double its follower count. That’s a win!
• Maybe you helped a small brand build its email list from scratch using Meta ads. That’s a win!
• Could you prove that your ad campaigns brought in a certain amount of revenue? That would be a huge win!

Whatever your client wins are, include screenshots and a short description of your achievement.

If you’re new to the game and don’t have many impressive wins to shout about, feel free to skip this section.

However, you should at least be able to ask your existing clients for a short testimonial about their experience working with you.

If you’re so new that you don’t have any clients yet, don’t worry. I’ll explain what you can do later on…

Call To Action

Strong calls to action are key to sparking high engagement with your social media campaigns.

Most digital marketing experts understand that.

Well, it’s the same deal with your social media portfolio too…

You should aim to make it as easy as possible for a potential client to schedule a call and start working with you.

That’s why I suggest ending your portfolio with a strong call to action and a link to your Calendly page.

“Want to chat further about my services? Click here to book a 15-minute consultation call with me.”

This is direct enough without making potential clients feel like they’re going to be hard-sold on the call.

However, since you’ve shown so much of what you can do in this portfolio, you can expect the majority of callers to be ready to pay for your services.

Make sure you have a PayPal or Stripe link ready to send them during the call, so they can complete their payment while still on the phone with you.

Step 4: How To Send Your Social Media Marketing Portfolio

Is your social media portfolio ready? Fantastic!

Canva offers an impressive array of methods to share it with potential clients.

The simplest method is arguably downloading your portfolio as a PDF.

To do this, you’ll

1. Click the ‘Share’ button in the top right of the screen
2. Click ‘Download’ from the menu that pops up
3. Make sure your File Type is lasted as ‘PDF Standard’ and you’re downloading ‘All Pages’
4. Click the purple ‘Download’ button.

From there, you’ll be able to choose where to save your PDF portfolio. Once it’s saved, you’ll be able to send this file to potential clients as an email attachment. Alternatively, you could upload your PDF to Google Drive and send them a link.

Make sure to download your portfolio as a PDF so the links added to your document remain available. If you download it as a JPG or PNG, your links won’t work any more.

Alternatively, you can create a link to view your portfolio within Canva.

To do this, you’ll

1. Click the ‘Share’ button in the top right of the screen.
2. Click the ‘Public View Link’ button with a link icon above it.
3. Click the ‘Create public view link’ button to create your link.
4. Once the link appears, you can click the copy button and paste it into your conversations with potential clients.

This could be a more convenient option for quickly sending your portfolio to people. Just be aware that your client won’t be able to download your portfolio with this option.

An impressive final option is creating a portfolio website directly with Canva.

To do this, you’ll

1. Click the ‘Share’ button in the top right of the screen.
2. Click ‘More’ on the menu that drops down.
3. Find the ‘Website’ button or type ‘Website’ into the search bar at the top of the menu
4. Click the purple ‘Convert To Website’ button.
5. Click the purple ‘Send Confirmation Email’ button
6. Follow the instructions in your confirmation email to publish your website.

You can publish your portfolio site to a free Canva domain, a paid customer domain or an existing domain that you’ve already bought. Here are the instructions for each option.

With a portfolio published on a custom domain that includes your brand name, your perceived professionalism may rise another notch. I wouldn’t call this a necessary step though. Many online business experts are suggesting that certain types of businesses might not need a website at all in 2024 and beyond. A solid social media presence is enough, they argue.

Indeed, a good social media portfolio will tell most potential clients everything they need to know. Those who need more information can ask questions on your consultation call.

Step 5: When To Send Your Social Media Manager Portfolio

My research suggests that social media professionals tend to have differing opinions about the best times to send your portfolio.

I prefer to send my portfolio after someone asks for it or after they’ve booked a consultation call. Alternatively, you can do it after someone has expressed interest in your services.

In my experience, these have proven to be the most natural times to send a portfolio.

Technically, there’s no harm in sending it with your original outreach message. It’s not as if they’re printed on flyers and it’ll cost you extra to create more. Still, this comes across as too pushy and salesy for my liking.

Additional Tips

My first and most important tip is to have someone look over your portfolio before you start sending it to clients.

A spelling error might not be as much of a deal-breaker for a digital marketing gig as a freelance writer job, but it still makes you look lazy and unprofessional.

Remember: first impressions are vital so you want everything playing in your favor. A second pair of eyes can spot the silly errors that tend to bypass a creator. Double-check that all of your links are working before you declare your portfolio finished too.

What To Do If You Have No Testimonials

Some of you guys are gonna hate me for saying this, but I’m serious.

If you’re brand new and have no testimonials, offer to work for free!

Drop your ego. You’re new. You’re inexperienced. You have no proof that you can produce great results for anyone. So, find at least three businesses that’ll let you prove yourself for no money.

But only if they promise to:

• publish your work;
• write you a killer testimonial if they like it.

It’s not easy working for free, especially if you have relevant experience as an employee, but suck it up! We all have to start somewhere. These testimonials will make it so much easier to get your first paid clients, so the voluntary work will pay off in the long run.

Once you’ve produced some half-decent results, that’s a good time to ask for client testimonials. You can show off these results alongside your testimonials.

I’d recommend keeping these free clients until you’ve found three clients that are willing to pay you.

At that point, you can explain that your calendar has been filled by paying clients so they’ll need to pay X amount to keep working with you.

If they say no, it’s no big deal. You’ve still got those testimonials and hopefully some impressive results to share on your portfolio.

Here’s to landing more paid clients with these assets in the future!

Common Mistakes to Avoid

The most common mistake I’ve witnessed is social media marketers believing that presentation isn’t important when it comes to their portfolio. I’ve seen some portfolios created on Microsoft Word, as if it’s an extension to their resume.

There’s no excuse to do this in 2024 when tools like Canva are so quick and easy to use.If there’s one disadvantage to Canva, it’s its unreliable spell-check feature. So, make sure to proof-read your copy manually.

The silver medal for common mistakes is making social media portfolios that are too long, too difficult to read or too difficult to access. I’ve seen one portfolio that was password-protected on Google Drive. I’ve seen many with links that didn’t work.

Clients won’t have the patience to try and figure out these errors for themselves. They’ll simply ghost you or move on to the next candidate. That’s why you’ve got to keep it simple and check everything is as it should be.

Another common error is adding too many calls to action. You might think it’s necessary to add your phone number, email address, LinkedIn profile and other contact details to make it as easy for people to contact you. If your own social media presence is impressive, you might invite the reader to follow you on every platform.

Sadly, it has been proven that too many calls to action overwhelm people and lead them to do nothing. That’s why I only recommend adding a Calendly link. If they don’t want to book a call, they can always contact you on whatever medium you initially reached out to them.

Pros & Cons

So far, I’ve mostly outlined the benefits of creating an awesome social media portfolio, but there are some potential downsides too. Let’s round up the pros and cons.

Pros

• A social media portfolio quickly and effectively shows off your services and your ability to do them well. This proof should ease any concerns that a client has about hiring you.
• A well-designed professional portfolio helps to frame you as a competent and reliable worker, as opposed to a random internet user looking to make a few bucks online.
• If you decide to publish your portfolio online and link to it from relevant social media profiles, this could boost the amount of inbound leads you receive.
• A social media portfolio can easily be shared by clients to other business owners, creating more effective referrals than simple word-of-mouth recommendations.

Cons

• If you’re a new social media marketer, you might feel as if a portfolio only serves to highlight your lack of skill, experience or success, potentially dissuading clients from working with you.
• A lot of experienced social media marketers believe that their past work pales in comparison to their current skills. These individuals may think they’re selling themselves short by sharing their previous projects.
• Some marketers might feel uncomfortable sharing their work out of fear of exposing their strategies to potential competitors.

Additional Resources

Here are some useful resources that can deepen your understanding of this topic.

• This step-by-step video guide by The Agency Edit walks you through the process of creating a social media portfolio on Canva.
• This video by popular social media agency owner Iman Gadzhi has some useful tips on finding suitable clients and sending outreach emails.
• This video by Alex Hormozi explains why you should work for free to get testimonials, how to find clients that’ll offer you voluntary work and how to transition into a well-paid social media marketer.

Hooray! Now You Know How To Build Your Social Media Marketing Agency Portfolio

I rate social media marketing agencies among the smartest online businesses to launch in the modern day.

Most modern business owners recognize the importance of using social media to attract clients, but a lot of them remain awful at it.

If you’re willing to reach out to these business owners, you’ve got a great chance of landing clients.

This process will be a lot easier if you have a professional social media portfolio to share with them.

So, why not load up Canva and spend the next few minutes creating one? That would be one of the most effective ways to boost your chances of succeeding as a social media marketing agency owner.

You should now understand the overall goals of your portfolio, how to create it, what to include and the best ways to send it to clients.

Essentially, you have all the instructions you could ever need in this guide.

Best of luck!