For one year, I wrote in my design portfolio’s blog almost every week. The first 40 weeks or so, I wrote updates on the work and shared a little bit of stuff that caught my eye around the web (example). The next dozen weeks, I tired to share some insights into design strategy that I’ve learned over time (example).
Simultaneously, I ran an email newsletter, and shared each post to LinkedIn.
After running these experiments for a year, it brings me a small of amount of shame to report that it has been entirely fruitless. I have nine email subscribers. One is me. One is my wife. Six are friends of mine that I know personally. That’s eight total. So what that really means is that this work has produced one subscriber.
Additionally, it has resulted in no work from LinkedIn. No leads. No “connections” (gross). Etc.
I don’t mean to sound like a crybaby. That’s not the point. But this didn’t work, and it’s time to go back to the drawing board.
I have two blogs — this one and my portfolio. But I run a one-man design studio, so I’ve never been sure how to differentiate content between these two sites. Common sense says that I ought to post everything on the portfolio, and let my true self shines through, but that feels gross to me — I think because the portfolio isn’t a personal site. It’s a business site. And perhaps that distinction is silly, but it feels important. I don’t think I want this post to appear on my portfolio, for example.
It feels to me like this is the site where I figure things out, and the portfolio is for what things look like when they’re done. But I don’t know how that plays into a blogging strategy.
It’s possible that the portfolio blog should be exclusively focused on the work. Blog posts are minor work, case studies are major work, etc. That’s meritorious, but it feels too corporate for my liking.
It’s also possible the portfolio doesn’t need a blog at all. But blogging has merit: my client found me through my personal site, and didn’t care what was in my portfolio. (His opening line in our first meeting was “I read your review of the new MacBook Pros and really liked it.”)
I’ve always been a fan of Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work, and have to admit that I’m disappointed the behind-the-scenes approach didn’t bear much fruit. If it works, it attracts a lot of designers, but sharing what you know is a great way to learn yourself, and it’s also a great way to demonstrate bits and pieces of the work along the way. Those posts can then form the foundation of case studies later.
I’m not attempting to become a famous blogger, but it would be nice to build some traction with this work. The great thing about toiling in obscurity is that your mistakes aren’t as visible. The difficult thing about toiling in obscurity is a lack of feedback. For all I know, the BTS stuff was great, but nobody saw it. Tree in the woods and all that.
My point with all this is that I’ve been thinking about this for over a year and don’t have any answers. If you have thoughts on this, I would love to hear them.
Sometimes we are so close to our own problems we can’t see the solutions right in front of our face.