promoting professional geekery

Promoting Professional Geekery #32 – A Newsletter?

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(For more Promoting Professional Geekery check the roundup.)

Let me take a moment to praise MailChimp.

For those of you not familiar with it, MailChimp is not a character in an Adult Swim cartoon called “Primate Postal Service,” though that would probably be popular.  Instead, it’s a mailing list and mailing campaign management system with some sweet free options.  Pretty much – it’s a way to run newsletters.

Of course it’s just one way to do it – I myself use it to run my own Geek Beacon.  Based on my experience, I’m noting it’s awful easy to run a newsletter . . .

So you probably see where this is going.

If you want to promote the Professional Geek ideal and lifestyle, you have to share your knowledge and wisdom (of which I’m sure you have at least one if not both).  We’ve discussed blogs and books, but the humble Newsletter is a great way to reach people as well:

  • People have to opt-in to one (so you get an interested audience).
  • It’s delivered right to their email inbox (so it’s hard to ignore).
  • It’s an alternative to having to go to a blog or read a book or soforth.
  • It lets you engage with people very personally (because it’s not necessarily public).
  • It’s easy to put little subscribe widgets on your website(s) which looks cool.

I myself subscribe to several newsletters, and, yes, I actually take time to read them.  There’s some great stuff out there, and it comes right to me.

It’s also way for you to share Professional Geekery.

Think what you can do with it:

  • You can target.  You can focus on a very narrow, given area of interest because people who sign up for something like this are probably actually interested in what you have to say.
  • You can do serial work easily.   You can run continuing series of columns on advice, jobs, careers, a specific career, etc.  People will easily follow it since it’s in their email inbox.
  • You can make it personal.  People respond to (and I find, like) personal tones in email newsletters a lot more – and you may find it more appropriate than blog posts or books.
  • You can gauge interest.  The amount of people who sign up tell you who’s interested in your subject – which may give you other ideas.
  • You’re hard to forget.  Face it, you’re in people’s email inbox.  Don’t abuse that, by the way.

As for your subject?  Well what are you a Progeek about?  Then do a newsletter.  Cosplay and body type, the role of nonfiction writing in a fiction writer’s life, computer careers in your state/province.

A blog or book may not be your thing, but the more intimate, immediate world of the newsletter?  That can let you share your Professional Geekery quite easily with the right people – you may even be more comfortable with it!

Of course this could tie into a blog, or launch a book, or something else.  That’s just one more way to keep spreading the word and encouraging people to make their hobbies their careers.

– Steven Savage

Promoting Professional Geekery #30 – Tell Authors and Creators

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When is the last time you told an author how much their book helped you in their career?  Or an instructional video creator how much they changed your life?

Probably not as often as you’d like.  Actually *I* could be better at it, truth be told, but at least I feel guilty about it when I don’t do it.

If you want people to appreciate and see the value of the Fan-To-Pro lifestyle and career, you need to tell people who helped you out.  That includes authors of the career guides, instructional videos, and other information products that are helping you build your dream job and life.

Almost every author out there has a blog/book web page/something out there.  It’s not hard to find them – in fact it may be hard to avoid them as authors want to be found.  They’re not writing the Necronomicon, they’re writing and selling books and they want to be located.

So go out there and find the author whose book or video changed your career point of view or opened your eyes and let them know how good their creation was – and let them know you’re a professional geek.

Why do they need to hear this?  Well first of all, trust me, any author wants good feedback, we can be kind of insecure.  Also, it helps us become better authors by finding what you liked and didn’t.

But for we progeeks?  We need to let authors know they help us, because they need to know about us and our demographic.

Unless said author is writing a book specifically targeting progeeks, they’re not going to necessarily think about us very much.  They may not even know we exist.  Their world may not include anime-fanartists turned UI designers or ambitious writers turned to tech communication.

When you let them know how great their books or classes or whatever was, you let them know about you.  You let them know about people like you.  They get a sudden jolt that gives them a bit bigger picture of reality.

That means they can better get their books, videos, or whatever out of people like you.  That may mean supplemental material that helps out your fellow progeeks.  That means they may make new and interesting creations targeting people like you  They may blog about their thoughts on people like us.  Making them aware helps them work with people like us – and helps them more.

You help them become aware, do more, and reach more, just by saying “I consider myself a professional geek, and you helped me reach this dream.”

Who knows you might make a new friend or find some new options yourself.

So when an author makes a difference in your career, reach out to them.

– Steven Savage

Promoting Professional Geekery #24: Start a Meetup

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you've got cons, you've got your video viewings, you've got your midnight runs with your gaming group to get pancakes.  You've got a lot of social events, my progeeks.

So if you want to keep promoting professional geekery, why not make an event just for career geeks like you?

It's easy – you take a coffee shop or cafe, coordinate with various geek groups, and/or throw it up on http://www.meetup.com/.  Then keep doing it until you bloody well help people.

There's a variety of things you can do:

  • Have people swap job search tips.
  • Help the unemployed network.
  • Do workshops.
  • Commiserate and drink alcoholic beverages.
  • Have particular themes.
  • Run oddball documentaries on the history of your industries.

Of course whatever benefits these actions have, it also means that people will A) appreciate the potential of professional geekery, and B) They'll be drawn closer together.

Really it just helps for people to have a place to meet with fellow and future pros, whatever you do.  It's outside of other events so people aren't distracted, but formal enough that you can work together to help each other out.

Or do the drinking thing.  Hey, whatever works. 

– Steven Savage