Geshan's Blog Newsletter Vol1 Issue 1 - Personal Branding for technologists
Hello!
Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter, this is the first issue which will have a small post about Personal branding for technologists and 5 links of the month towards the end. Let's get started!
Personal Branding for Technologists
We as technologists should spend some time in personal branding, it helps us get a higher leverage.
Personal branding is not on the top of our priorities as technologists. But things should not be that way. We must exploit our social media, and blogs to our full benefit. We should also take advantage of public speaking and brand ambassador programs to shine in our areas of expertise.
Step 1: Sharing on social media (0-3 months)
Even though I have been on a social media break for more than 1 year. I have kept the one way flow of posting without logging into any of the social media websites using Buffer. The free plan in Buffer.com also lets me schedule up to 10 posts. I post 3 posts per day on my facebook page, linked in and twitter. You should do the same. If you want to spend more time scrolling news feeds, I leave that decision up to you. You can post things you find interesting on Hacker News or DevUrls to start with.
Step 2: Start a blog (3-6 months)
Start a blog don't fuss on the technology -- go on medium or start something you host on your own on something like Stackbit. Write some posts but be consistent in posting be it 12 posts a year, but do it. Slowly start to cross post the same content on sites like Dev.to, Hackernoon and others. You can also re-post to tech medium publication. After you have some traction and popularity you can then write for places like LogRocket, HoneyBadger etc (more at Who Pays Tech Writers) and earn anywhere from 100-500 USD per post.
Step 3: Do public speaking (6-9 months)
The world has slowly started to come out of lockdowns, still even in 2020 virtual events were happening a lot. Next step to enhance your personal branding is Public Speaking. You can start off at Meetups (meetup.com is a good place to find them) and then try Conferences. Here are some useful resources to get started. Public speaking can really help solidify your brand as a skilled individual.
Step 4: Join brand ambassador programs (9-12 months)
All big companies (the FAANGs of sorts) have some brand ambassador program. AWS has AWS Heros, Google has Google Developer Expert (I am one), Microsoft has MVP. Others have their own flavor too. If you want a big brands stamp to elevate your personal branding to the next level get on board one of these programs. It is not easy to get into them but they do have great benefits.
This is a very rough outline to better your personal branding as a technologist.
Best of luck building your personal brand and please have a look at the Miro board which is a summary of this post!
Blast from the past
Geshan's blog has been online since 2007, there are many posts from the past that will be helpful for you. Here is one from 2015:
4 pillars of a solid software application and tools to support it
For solid software focus on maintainable code, automated testing (with CI), automated deployment and logging + monitoring. Keep in mind this was written before Docker and Kubernetes became main stream :). Enjoy!
5 links of the month
Here are some links that you would possibly like:
- Node.js Sqlite: Build a simple REST API with Express Js step by step - latest blog post on Geshan's blog
- Executing communication with SCQA - Situation Complication Question Answer - A bit old but the best 50 mins (video) you can spend about tech communication
- Why the Status quo is so hard to change in Engineering Teams - a great read in general
- Pushing Through Friction - Dan Na on Lead Times podcast - A great podcast episode to listen to.
- How I built a modern website in 2021 By Kent C. Dodds - Something to pay heed to from the React JS master, a bit long read but great things to know.
I share most of these things on my twitter too, so feel free to follow me there. PS: don't expect a RT or any activity though.
Thats it for this edition, see you in the next one. Keep visiting Geshan.com.np.
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