Enhance Your Personal Brand With A Blog

Easy steps to enhancing your personal brand with a blog.Return to Work CenterApril 14, 2010

Enhance your personal brand with a blog • Return to Work Center • April 14, 2010

Today’s agenda

For beginners and neophytes More ‘how-to’ than ‘what-to’ Why blog? Relation to personal branding Where to start/models of blogging Cool things you can do Getting started Refining and enhancing


Why blog?

“A blog can lead to bigger and better things.”

--Personal branding guru Dan Schawbel,

personalbranding.com


Why blog?

Key component of your personal brand Establish credibility

Maximize SEO

Hone writing and expertise

Update LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter

Reinforce your website OR

Serve as your website


Personal branding across platforms Establish your full name,

consistently LinkedIn profile Twitter name Facebook

Purchase domain name Multiple email addresses Your blog and/or website

Make it look right!


Where to start blogging?

Blogger.com Part of Google, free

Relatively easy to use, many options

Typically ‘blogname.blogspot.com’

TypePad.com Also free (paid options)

Many templates

Good reputation among blogging community


Where to start blogging?

WordPress More like TypePad than like Blogger

Free and paid options

Highly customizable

Easy to use (in 5 minutes!)

Clean, elegant look and feel

Growing use for both blogs and web pages


http://alis-space.blogspot.com


http://wmubhelpdesk.blogspot.com


http://www.futilitycloset.com


http://us29blog.wordpress.com


http://bit.ly/clevesblog


http://clevecallison.com


Three models of blogging with WordPress

1) Install WordPress.org Content Management System (CMS) on your own web hosted space

2) Publish as ‘yourname.wordpress.com’

3) Publish as ‘yourname.com’


WordPress.org CMS on your space

Domain and web space

Most flexibility and control

Strong personal brand

Cost is reasonable ($50-100 per year)

Greatest refinement of look and feel

Requires some knowledge of HTMLand/or SQL and PHP, at least for now


Arthur C. Clarke

“Any smoothly functioning technology will have the appearance of magic.”




5 cool things you can do with a WordPress blog (automatically) New content on your LinkedIn

profile

Tweet

Update your Facebook status

Maximize SEO For Google, Yahoo and Bing

Post from your cell phone


‘yourname.wordpress.com’

Most common

FREE!

Easy to use

Good technical support online

Starts in 5 minutes

Little or no HTML required

Partial personal branding


Publish blog as ‘yourname.com’

Strong personal brand

Minimal technical requirements(same as ‘yourname.wordpress.com’)

Low cost (c. $50-$100 annually)

Can be made to integrate with your website


Starting your WordPress blog

••••••••

X

johnsmith

••••••••

[email protected]


Choosing a look (Theme)


Navigating the Dashboard

data: posts, pages

data: views

options


Shaping display contents with Widgets

select

available widgets

drag to sidebar


Creating and editing Posts

put your post title here

put your post content here

preview

categories

write a brief excerpt here

Twitter and Facebook

publish


Pages


Pages


Creating and editing Pages


Creating and editing Pages


Publish blog as ‘yourname.com’ 1) Buy domain name through

WordPress Least complicated

Least expensive (c. $15/year)

Some restrictions (e.g. no Google ads)

2) Use one from another ISP Publish your blog to the domain (or sub-

domain)

Change ISP settings to allow this


Profile photo

Comments -- allow/ moderated?

Jump posts, or full? PermaLink to full post

Private or public?

Allow search engines?

Other items


Using your blog as your web site

“Not every website is a blog.

But every blog is a website.”

Easy to update without HTML

Multiple contributors if desired

Automatically creates an archive

Archive is searchable





Modify blog so structure is minimal Look at entries per page

Modify navigation and other elements

Make a static page the home page Blog can still be one of the alternate pages

Requires careful construction of widgets


Changing your home page


Automatic publishing on LinkedIn

excerptmost recent post


Search Engine Optimization


Goodbye.


Cleve’s contact info

[email protected]

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/clevecallison

Twitter: clevecallison

Blog: bit.ly/clevesblog

Documents

Enhance Your Personal Brand With A Blog