Behance is a great place to get your work discovered by potential clients. This is extra helpful if your own website is new or you are not getting many visits yet. Because Behance is so popular, we can use it to build interest and then encourage people to visit our website. This has a couple benefits. First, we can learn more about potential clients from our analytics and secondly, we can build up an email list.
Behance is also a great place to showcase your projects if you would like to get work from other creatives.
For your portfolio to be discovered, there are a few things to keep in mind. Behance features selected work every day which will give the creator a massive boost in exposure. You can still get a lot of traction from your Behance without being featured but it is an effective way to promote your brand.
We will look at the criteria Behance use to select their featured work as well as what you can do to increase your chances of getting noticed in general.
OVERVIEW:
What is Behance looking for?
Setting up your profile
Creating work that gets you noticed
Picking the right cover image
Engaging with the community
What is Behance looking for?
Behance uses curated galleries to highlight both projects that are displayed on the home page and for selected categories like illustration. Each project is selected by a person in their curation team based on their Behance Philosophy and Approach.
Any project that is uploaded to Behance can be selected, you do not have to apply. This video from Behance shows their thinking behind the selection process.
Even thought there is no exact recipe, there are a number of things Behance look for in a project. As a rule, projects that are longer (6-20 images), show something innovative and have high quality images and case studies are more likely to be selected.
Let's look at some things you can do today to improve your chances of getting work from Behance.
Setting up your profile
When a potential client or Behance curator has found one of your projects, they will most likely visit your profile to find out more about your style, how to get in touch and your background. You can make sure they get a great impression by adding a professional profile picture and writing a description explaining how you can help. As with your website, your description should focus on benefits to the client and not necessarily be a biography of you. This way, you can add links to your website in your profile and encourage potential customers to explore more about your company and get in touch.
Creating work that gets you noticed
Behance and clients alike want to know the story behind your work. Make sure your projects explain the brief and the goals you were trying to achieve. I like to include a little bit about the client, the problem they approached you with and a few key impacts that your work had on their business. If you helped your client launch a new product, get more website visitors or better explain their message, share it in your case studies.
Even if your project is only one graphic, like an illustration, there are plenty of ways to show the process of going from idea to the final design. You can also alternate between showing the full work and more detailed shots. This gives a more complete understanding of the work, like in this case study from Sophia's Tea Branding.
Some creatives choose to add a client testimonial or a link to the finished work (like a website). This can help bring credibility to your work even if Behance do not specify their opinion on this.
Another great way to present your work is to include a video to show your process. Consider mixing an interview format where you explain the brief with examples of the work as it developed from idea to finished result.
I really love this one from Farm Design where they show their packaging design process for a coffee bar.
Picking the right cover image
Cover images should grab your attention and get the viewer excited to see more. Also consider how the cover images work together in your portfolio. Many people on Behance are looking for a creative with a clear style or niche. Even if your work is all for different clients, you can use layout or other design elements to create a cohesive portfolio feed just like you would for social media.
A great example of this is Martyna Paukste's Behance. Even though each project is different, there is a clear food and drink niche going through the work. There are also a lot of round shapes coming back in different ways in each project. Remember that your Behance profile should be a curated selection of work so there is no need to add projects that are no longer a representation of your best work.
Engaging with the community
One of the factors Behance considers when they curate work is the response it has already received. This might seem disheartening if your projects don't get much attention but there is a simple way to fix that - engaging with the Behance community. If you appreciate and leave valuable comments (none of the "please check out my profile") other users will see and appreciate your work. This of course works best when you have already spent some time making sure you have quality case studies and engaging thumbnails.
You can also choose to share your Behance portfolio to your other social media platforms. While this might be helpful for driving traffic to your Behance, I would weight this against the benefit of spending that same time promoting your website, so make sure you test both and see what works best for you.
If you are remaking your Behance portfolio and want feedback from fellow creatives, join our Facebook community! Everyone is welcome and we are a very supportive bunch.
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