Happy almost end of year aaAAHHH!!!!

Before we dive into this - I'm taking a winter vacation from the newsletter in December, so the next newsletter will be in February. 🥰

I've been chatting with several community managers about portfolios recently. While it's not necessary, it did get me thinking about what one would look like. (It's pretty common for social media managers, for example.)

Because I don't like talking about things I haven't done myself, I thought it'd be the perfect opportunity to make my own sample one! Keep in mind there are many different ways of making one and I'm not even sure mine is the "correct" way.

NOTE: I KNOW MY PORTFOLIO IS HECKED UP IN MOBILE VIEW. OPEN IT IN DESKTOP ONLY. I HATE WEB DEV. I'M WORKING ON IT.

Big thank you to the brilliant and wonderful @A_dmg04 for checking it over!

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But... what even goes into a portfolio?

• What it is: A curated collection of your experience and skills, with concrete examples of success. It’s not a resume (and shouldn’t replace one!)
• Formats: The most common are: slidedecks, PDFs, and websites. So long as it's easy to access and read, it shouldn’t matter much!
• Information: Your portfolio shows off not only your past work, but what you bring to the table. It’s time to brag! Just make sure the information you share isn't NDA. My portfolio only has one example, but two or three campaigns is a good number to show off.
• Case studies: When giving case studies or examples of what you’ve done, I recommend:
  1. A brief introduction to the campaign
  2. Action plan and goal for execution
  3. How the campaign was executed
  4. Performance results of the campaign
• Visuals: Make it easy to read! This doesn’t have to go super hard - just make sure it's easy to follow and shows your work.
• Numbers: When you’re able to give quantitative data to back up the qualitative, it makes it that much stronger.
• Keep it clean: Don't fill empty space or artifically create a "large" portfolio with meaningless information. This just muddles your up your appeal.
• Contact: Make it clear how folks can contact you, of course.
• Do I NEED one? Honestly? No idea. Practically? It wouldn’t hurt! I’ve hired people who didn’t have portfolios, but when someone did have one, it gave me a great concrete way of visualizing their expertise that I appreciated.

Remember I'm not a hiring manager!!! Take their professional advice over mine. I am merely sharing this as a starting point for those that are curious! (Because I’m someone who learns best with examples haha.)

Here are some other community folk with portfolios/personal websites! You can check out Catherine Litvaitis, Charmaine Duff, and Anton Charpentier.

Community Activity 📝

Every month we do a new community together. Here's the new one!

The question:

Feel free to email me back with your answer - I always respond to them! My answer will be in the next newsletter. If you have future questions you'd like to ask the community, let me know!

Previous Community Activity 📫

Here was the question from last month.

Question refresher:

We got some GREAT responses to this question - seems like it opened up a can of worms haha. I thought it'd be interesting to add in perspective from other folks, so let's get into those first:

"All in all, I think if having a personal online presence brings you joy, then that's great and keep it up! But if it doesn't, that doesn't mean community management isn't for you. There are still a bunch of other ways to put yourself out there, network, and build up your portfolio. Personally, choosing not to concern myself too much with my online presence has been good for my mental health and given me more time to dive into things I really enjoy." - Madeleine Gray, Director of Communications, Brace Yourself Games​

"I don't think you need to have a personal brand to be a successful community manager, but I do think you need to be plugged into online spaces in some way, shape, or form." - Josh Simons, Community Manager, Demiplane

My opinion is that while it can be useful for a multitude of reasons, it isn't and shouldn't be a requirement. Many successful (and talented!!!) community managers I know don't have a personal following online, while I have seen folks who are veryyyy good at marketing themselves online not be great at community work.

However, I say this knowing I do have somewhat of a presence, and that successful/more experienced community managers can more easily get away with not having an online brand due to their experiences and networking. And while I personally don't feel it should be a requirement, that practically there are some jobs that will ask this of you.

So, like most answers to questions - the real answer is that it depends. It is not required and I wouldn't push anyone to have one (in fact I think it can be a pretty bad idea), however if you're job hunting or looking to build out a network, you'll have to supplement it another way!

Community Chatter 💬

Here are the interesting and helpful things I've seen this month.

General News

• Video downloader extension for Premiere Pro & After Effects that downloads videos from any website
• New video from Kurzgesagt: "The Internet is Worse Than Ever – Now What?"
• ​TikTok says users spend half their time in the app watching clips longer than a minute​

Games Resources

• ​Game Content Triggers Database​
• ​GameMaker is free for non-commercial use
• I posted a TikTok on where to find digital gaming events for marketing. (Promoting myself in my own newsletter? It's more likely than you think!)
• ​Alex Strook's thread on promoting Spirit Mouse

Community & Marketing Game Jobs​
​These are not endorsements.

• ​Aquent Talent - Social Media Manager Contractor (New York City, NY, USA)
• ​Blindspot Games - Community Manager (Montreal, Canada)
• ​Corsair - Sr. Influencer Marketing Manager (Milpitas, CA, USA)
• ​DECA Games - Senior Community Manager (Remote)
• ​Dreamhaven - Brand Manager (Irvine, USA)
• ​Elodie Games - Influencer and Social Media Manager Contract (Remote, PST timezone)
• ​Fatshark - Community Manager (Södermalm, Stockholm)
• ​Frame Break - Junior Community Manager (Hybrid, Skövde, Sweden)
• ​G2 Esports - Various roles: Videographer/Social Media Manager/More (Los Angeles, CA, USA)
• ​Offworld Industries - Social Media Content Creator Contract (Remote)
• ​Omni Systems - Marketing Manager (Remote)
• ​PLAION - Global Social Media Manager (Planegg, Germany)
• ​PlayStation Global - Global Social Media Lead (Bellevue, WA, USA)
• ​Riot Games - Director, Publishing Content Strategy, Editor in Chief - Publishing, VALORANT (Los Angeles, CA, USA)
• ​Rovio - Community Developer (Hybrid, Helsinki, Finland)
• ​Secret Mode - Lead Community Manager (Hybrid, Leamington, ON, Canada)
• ​Yogscast - PR Manager (Remote or Bristol)

Phewwww. Thanks for a great year of community discussions! :D We are at about 2.5k subscribers on this newsletter which is way more than I ever expected (I have truly learned how expensive mailing services are geezes), and I am SO happy that it's been useful to so many folks. Gonna keep trying to grow and make sure next year is even more helpful and fun. WOO! Feel free to let me know if there's anything you wanna see more of in 2024.

Have a great rest of your year. :)

❤️

Victoria

Tiduidu @CuteMutePrude You say you dislike turn-based combat, yet you constantly get into beef on Twitter. Curious. 7:38 AM • Nov 14, 2023 12230 Retweets 56808 Likes Read 89 replies

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