Choosing a Portfolio Project

It’s time to accomplish something new.

 This week in Praxis, we are getting ready to move into Module 2, which is our Portfolio Project month.  Praxis gave us detailed explanations about the different roles we could tackle and then gave us a list of some project ideas relating to each one.  We could choose between:

• Sales
• Marketing
• Operations
• Technical 

They also mentioned Customer Support/Sucess a few times, but that wasn’t delved into quite as much.  Operations and technical were quickly cast aside.  I personally have no interest in doing payroll or learning to code computers.

That left marketing and sales, and I went a bit back and forth.  Originally, I was going to go for marketing.  I have experimented a little bit in marketing already, and writing blog posts, running social media accounts, and trying new ways to get people’s attention sounded like fun.  Still, I was also drawn towards sales as I learned more about it.  I’d get to talk to people, get to practice my speaking skills, educate people on my company, and apparently, I’d even get to be creative with my methods.  

So, I decided to go for sales.  I wanted to push myself to learn new things, and told myself that if I ended up hating it, then at least I gained that valuable skill.  But after I decided to go into sales, I felt nothing but stress.  I kept going “But what about marketing?” and the decision was not sitting right with me.  Making 100 phone calls a day and getting mostly “no”s as a salesperson was appealing to me less and less the more I thought about it.  

Praxis asked us to complete some personality tests this week.  As I read my results after doing them and envisioned myself in the role, sales started to make little sense for me.  Of course, I don’t see personality tests as an end-all, and I disregarded the parts that I didn’t really think applied to me, but the bits they were right about did not seem to fit a salesperson.  They did however, seem to fit a marketer.

My gut was screaming at me, and I’ve regretted not listening to my gut before.  

I mean, let’s look at what Praxis says is involved in Marketing:

• Creating, managing, and measuring social media advertising campaigns: At first I thought this would be boring, then I thought about when I’ve created Facebook ads and Tweets.  I actually liked looking at the numbers and seeing them going up.  I like seeing which tags and hashtags grab people’s attention the most.  
• Implementing email marketing funnels: I’ve never done it before, but it could be fun.
• Figuring out who your ideal customer is and identifying ways to reach them: As a fiction writer, getting into people’s heads and seeing things from a different perspective is a huge part of my job.  
• Clearly communicating the features and benefits of your product: Again, a writer.  Communicating, especially through the written word, is my specialty.
• Finding and testing which calls-to-action generate the most conversions (sales): A bit of a mixture of the writing and the analyzing.  
• Crafting a narrative: Literally one of my favorite things to do.  
• Measuring and managing your business’s reputation: I’ve managed my own reputation as a babysitter and a tennis instructor before.  
• Designing digital and print collateral: Basically just creating the actual marketing ads/social media/blog posts/brochures/etc.
• Writing blog posts, lead generation PDFs, ebooks, and articles: I’ve run two blogs for myself, I know a bit about PDFs, I’ve written not just an eBook, but also three other printed books.  As far as articles go, I can do it, I’ll just need to brush up on my skills a bit.  
• Tracking analytics for campaigns to measure effectiveness: Like I said above, I like seeing what people respond to the most. 
• A/B testing email campaign titles: Never done it before, but it’s writing and seeing what people respond to.  
• Defining specific customer profiles and researching audiences that fit that profile: Creating characters and then finding “real-life characters.”
• Making videos or podcasts: Videos, while not my passion and I don’t like being in front of the camera too much, is also something I’ve done before, am fairly good at, and is exactly the kind of group project I would love to be in charge of.  As far as podcasts, I’ve never done it before, but it’s something I’m definitely up for.  
• Buying, cleaning, and segmenting email lists: This is something I’ve never done before or even considered doing, so there might be a learning curve, but I’m confident I’d get the hang of it quickly.

So I changed my mind and stuck with marketing.  Immediately, the stress melted away and I was much, much more confident in my decision.  

Now I just have to decide which skills and traits I have that I want to showcase through a project, then pick a project that showcases those skills and possibly develop new ones.  

Here are five skills or traits I want to showcase in my Portfolio Project: 

• Good Communication
• Creativity
• Determination
• Adaptability
• Resourcefulness 

Next, I just have to pick a project that showcases all or most of these skills.  However, I’m having a hard time picking one at the moment.  There are the projects that seem like fun to me, then there are the projects that seem like they might do a better job preparing me for a sales role.  I have to remind myself as I choose that this is meant to showcase my skills, and not necessarily prepare me for one role.  Skills are transferable, so I need to show those first and foremost.

Here are my project ideas:

Start a podcast: This is something that sounds fun to me.  I have a good microphone and a website, so all I’d have to do is create a new page on my site and upload my episodes there.  Plus, I’d have a chance to practice speaking in a clear and concise manner, which I sometimes have problems with.  I fumble over my words and my train of thought can be messy.  That’s why I like writing, I have to focus on one thought at a time, and really flesh it out before I get to move on.  However, what would I talk about?  Who would I interview?  How does one conduct an interview with someone who’s not in the same room?  There’s plenty to learn here.

Scan a companies FaceBook page for FAQs and then answer them: There’s more detail to this one on the Praxis Portal, but that’s the main idea.  This idea involves a learning curve (TextExpander) and at a glance, I personally think it could be done fairly quickly.  Of course, I could be wrong, but if I’m not then all I’d have to do is do it a second time with a different company.  This project would also help me if I eventually wanted to move into customer success/support.

Set up a Shopify store and run FaceBook ads: I found this idea under the marketing section, but I still think it’d be kind of fun to try it out.  Marketing is something I’m also somewhat interested in, and I think it’d help me in sales, marketing, and design because I’d have to design the FaceBook ads.  

Recreate 10 emails or ads from other companies: This one I think could be fun.  I’d get to practice writing copy, designing ads, and thinking critically about what works and what doesn’t.

Analyze the websites and calls to action on 10 different websites with similar products: Again, this one could be fun.  I’d get to experiment with what works on me, get to see what other people are doing, seeing if one is more successful than the other, and on and on.  

Pick 3 brands and follow them on every social media account.  Then, analyze what they use each account for: I think comparing not only social media accounts, but also three totally different brands, would be interesting.  I know I’ve been saying a lot of things could be fun, but now that I’ve officially decided to go into marketing, I actually mean it.  This one could be fun.

Honestly, I found myself overwhelmed at all the ideas I was given for this project.  To narrow it down, I disregarded the ideas that made me go “Meh” and considered the ones that made me get excited.  The problem now is that I have these five ideas that make me excited.  Some more so than others, but the ones that are lacking in the pure excitement department make up for it in the potential value department.  

So what will I choose?  I’m not sure yet, but you’ll know in a week when I post my project choice and my outline for said project.  Wish me luck!