You know how important your portfolio is—but it’s also one of those things that’s constantly slipping to the back burner.

Your client work, projects, and emails always take top priority. And, while maintaining an impressive portfolio matters, it hardly ever feels as time-sensitive as the other stuff.

Until it is. I know firsthand the panic that arises when a prospective client asks you to share your portfolio and you realize you haven’t made any updates in months (or, gulp, years). Cue the mad dash to knock off the cobwebs and find your most recent samples.

Or even worse: when potential clients find your portfolio on their own and end up perusing your stale, out-of-date samples. You end up making a bad impression (and losing out on opportunities) without even knowing about it.

Those situations are enough to send your stomach plummeting straight to your shoes. Yet, most writers don’t have room for one more task on their to-do lists, which is why our poor portfolios are often left to collect digital dust. Fortunately, maintaining an up-to-date portfolio doesn’t need to be a super heavy lift.

Let’s take a look at a few different ways you can always have an accurate, well-curated portfolio in your back pocket—without a bunch of elbow grease.

1. Use Authory to auto-update your portfolio

Particularly when you’re writing a lot, it’s tough to keep track of all of the work you’re submitting (let alone when it’s actually published).

So, when you finally decide it’s time to add new pieces to your portfolio, you have to take on the tedious task of searching websites and digging through old email threads to refresh your memory and find your clips.

Authory saves you this hassle with a self-updating portfolio (yes, you read that right). Here’s how it works:

1. Sign up for an Authory account.

2. Add a piece of content to your Authory portfolio by pasting a URL.

3. If you haven’t already imported content from that website, Authory will ask you to name it. This is the name that will show up in your list of content sources (i.e. places where Authory pulls content from).

Name the publication you are importing from.

4. Authory will automatically find and import all of your existing bylined content from that publication. Yep, you just need one piece, and then Authory will find everything else that outlet has published with your name attached.

5. Decide whether you want Authory to automatically update your portfolio with new content from that content source. I recommend doing so to maintain a fresh portfolio that’s completely hands-off. Don’t worry—you can set different rules to control what gets automatically added (and what doesn’t).

Set the auto-update conditions.

Moving forward, whenever a new content item (whether it’s an article, podcast episode, or video) is published by that source, Authory will automatically add it to your Authory portfolio using the rules you specified. You’ll get an email notification when this happens so you can check out the new piece that’s been added to your portfolio and make any changes (if necessary).

Heads up that automatic updates only work for bylined content pieces that have your name attached. However, that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck if you do ghostwritten or non-bylined work. You have a couple of other easy options here:

  • Create an alias: When you import an article, you can create an alias that Authory will also search for. So, for example, if your articles are always published under a “CompanyXYZ Team” byline, you can add that as an alias so those samples get pulled in too.
Add aliases (optional).
  • Manually add content items: For anything that Authory can’t find automatically, you can manually add it to your portfolio by copying and pasting the URL. It’s a little more work than auto-updates, but rest assured that it’s still quick and easy.

Plus, with Authory, you don’t just need to stick with one, broad portfolio. Use Collections to organize content into different categories or buckets—perfect for sending a personalized or highly-curated portfolio when you need to.

Either way, once you add your content sources, Authory will take it from there. Every time your work is published on one of your source sites, it’s automatically added to your Authory portfolio—without you having to lift a finger.

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What exactly do we mean by “auto-updates”?

Listen, plenty of solutions claim to have auto-updating portfolios—but they hardly ever work that way in reality. We’ll spare you the technical lesson, but many services that claim the “auto-updating” feature can only do so using some complicated mechanics.

Here’s an example: If your new articles happen to be in a specific RSS feed that’s only dedicated to your articles, then you can use that feed on your website or portfolio page. In that case, it will auto-update.

But this only works if the publication or client you write for provides a custom RSS for only your articles (not the entire publication). And you probably already know that hardly any publication does that. So, is that solution technically auto-updating? Sure—but only if you can meet those very specific criteria.

Authory is different. Authory will use your byline (or the alias you set) to automatically find your published work on your source websites and add it to your portfolio. No clunky RSS feeds or other hoops to jump through.

2. Set aside dedicated time for portfolio updates

One of the reasons updating your portfolio feels like such a daunting project? Well, because you keep avoiding it. It’s like anything else: It’s easier (and a heck of a lot less stressful) if you stay on top of it.

That’s why setting aside time in your calendar can be another way to take some of the pain out of portfolio management.

This doesn’t need to be anything complex—block off 30 minutes or an hour at the end of each month and then use that time to swap out your portfolio pieces and make any other necessary updates.

We’ll admit it’s not quite as easy or low-touch as an auto-updating portfolio with Authory, but it’s still better than having to tackle a major portfolio overhaul every couple of years.

3. Build portfolio updates into your workflows

Another option? Instead of treating portfolio management as a separate, dreaded task, try to find ways to integrate it into your project workflows.

Exactly how you do this will depend on your preferences and your clients’ publishing cadence, but here are a few ideas:

  • When you submit the finished piece, ask the client to send a link when it’s published. Once they do, add it to your portfolio right away. (Hint: Authory automatically notifies you when new content items are published, so you don’t have to rely on your clients’ memory.)
  • When you send your invoice, check if the piece is published yet. If so, add it to your portfolio.
  • When you wrap up an engagement with a client, review your completed work, add any missed pieces to your portfolio, and ask your client for a testimonial while you’re at it.

Again, you have the flexibility to customize your approach here. The point is that all of these make your portfolio updates a more standard part of your typical work and routines—instead of setting it aside as a tedious, periodic undertaking.

4. Keep a running document

Did you see that something of yours was published, but don’t have time to add it to your portfolio right then and there? That’s when it’s smart to keep a simple note or document where you can drop links as they come up.

Just copy the link to your content item and drop it into your document. Then, when you’re ready to make updates to your actual portfolio, you can skip all of the searching and scrolling and easily snag the links from one spot.

Of course, you’ll still need to make the actual updates manually. But, keeping a running list will save you the time (and stress) involved with racking your brain and digging.

Making your portfolio a (painless) priority

You don’t need me to tell you that your portfolio is important. It’s one of your best resources for establishing credibility and showcasing your work.

But keeping it updated? Sigh. I get it. Despite the many benefits of an always-up-to-date portfolio, it’s still one of those tasks that repeatedly slides off the old to-do list.

Fortunately, you can maintain a fresh and impressive portfolio—without it turning into a major time suck. Whether you want to set aside a few minutes each month or use Authory to take portfolio updates off your plate entirely, just a few small changes ensure you’re always ready to showcase your best work.

Get started with Authory today and experience the peace of mind of a beautiful, searchable, automatically-updated portfolio.