personal branding

How Blogging Helps Your Career #1 – Presence

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I blog.  You kind of noticed that because you’re reading one.  Or you could go to NerdCaliber, or to my own site.  I’ve been doing it for years now, and it’s definitely helped my career.

Which of course is where I’m taking this all kind of meta and blogging about how blogging helped my career.  Which of course may also help my career.  We’re in deep, Inception-meme territory here, people.

So, when you ask is blogging for you and is it going to help your professional geek career, I wanted to share what it’s done for me – which is quite a bit.

First, blogging is a presence, a beacon that says “here I am, this is me.”

It’s easy to get lost in the shuffle in your career, because there’s so many people doing what you do.  it’s easy to be forgotten by recruiters because there’s a huge pile of resumes in front of them and their eyes are glazing over.  It’s easy to be looked over by a client or a boss or anyone else because you’re just not that distinct.

A good career, be it one inside a company, or your own business where you need to attract customers, is one founded on being visible.  People need to know you, people need to know who you are, people need to remember you.  Visibility and being memorable are just as important as anything else in your career, and in some ways (perhaps sadly) more important since no matter how great you are, it doesn’t help if people forget you two minutes after finding out about you.

A blog is one way to solve that.

Think of how memorable you are if you blog.  You may have a website you blog and at people will remember it for the URL, and the content, and perhaps the cute pictures of your Corgi dressed as Tyrion from Game of Thrones*.  You have, in short, become memorable by the act of establishing something, something people can recall and find again.

Even if you’re not up for your own blog, you can blog elsewhere to establish a presence, credibility, and to post those Corgi pictures**.   This helps you have most of the advantages of a blog, while sharing in camaraderie and/or helping out someone with their site.  You’re still there, visible, with a given location for people to visit.

There, visible, is a giant shout out “I am here, here are memorable things!”  Hopefully they’re good memorable things, but you are at least memorable and established.

For me, blogging has definitely had a benefit of making me more memorable.  People read my blog entries at various sites.  People remember me.  Recruiters comment on my recipe posts.  I am remembered.

So try blogging and announce yourself to the world.  Sure you may not be big or famous (who really will be), but you’ll shine a lot brighter than those who don’t.

Takeaways and To Dos:

  • If you’re not sure about blogging, give it a try at some other sites.
  • Your main personal site doesn’t have to be a blog, but be sure it links visible to places you do blog.
  • Decide when and how to share information on your blogging – it may not always appeal or help with your target audience.
  • Blogging has to be regular and relevant for people to pay attention.  I strongly recommend doing something you truly believe in.
  • It doesn’t have to be professional for you to be remembered, but again keep your overall self-image in mind.
  • If you want it to be a good establishment of your presence, a bright shining beacon, it has to be traceable back to you.  If you want to keep your blogging anonymous, then it won’t help.

Let me close with this: It’s a Corgi named Tyrion.  So close.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

 

* If you do this, PLEASE send me pictures.
** If someone had a website dedicated to fantasy costumes for Corgis, you’d go there, you know it.

Pick Your Passion Portrayal

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Passion is a powerful thing.  When given channels it can lead to miracles and amazing achievements.  Admittedly it can lead to terrible things, as any surfing of obscure movies on Netflix reveals,  but let’s focus on the good stuff for the duration of this column, OK?

We’re fortunate to live in an age where so many of us can leverage our skills and creativity on our own to create wonderful works, to manifest our passions.  Well, by “on our own” I mean through software and services like Photoshop, Lulu, Amazon, Bandcamp, etc.  But you get the idea; we can do publishing, composition, programming, etc. that we never could have a few years ago, and in ways that would be unthinkable a decade or two ago*.

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What T-Shirts Teach Us About Personal Branding

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Ever know people who have a collection of T-shirts?  People who wear them constantly?  Chances are those shirts say a lot about their personalities.  If you’re a person fond of his/her t-shirts, you know they say a lot about you (or just realized they did now that I’ve got you thinking about it).

T-shirts are actually a great way to easily understand that important, elusive, yet over-discussed topic of personal branding.

Think about t-shirts.  The purchase says something about you.  The contents say something about you.  Where you wear it, when you wear it, all say something about you.

A t-shirt is a giant signal saying “this is me!”

Which in many ways is what personal branding is about – making a statement about yourself.  T-shirts are the same thing, just informal and at times with obscure LOL-cat derived humor.

So look at people you know who are t-shirt fanatics.  Look at yourself for that matter.

What do they communicate about themselves – and do they communicate it in a good way, a bad way, or a neutral way?

When do they communicate it, and what can it teach you about timing?

What other other things are “t-shirt like” in that they’re common things that tell people about who someone is?

Ask how you – and others – may react to various t-shirts you’ve seen.  How did you judge people?

These little moments of analysis teach you a lot about how t-shirts are, really, personal branding.

Now, how can you apply that knowledge to things beyond your latest teefury purchase?  Well, just ask what you learned, and then ask what it teaches you about making the right impression and communicating the right side of you . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach for professional and potentially professional geeks, fans, and otaku. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/