Marketing Yourself To Boost Your Career

John Sonmezhttp://simpleprogrammer.com

Why Listen To Me?I actively managed my personal brand to go from relative obscurity to a pretty big following in just a 3-4 years

2009• No blog• Relatively unknown

2013• Blog gets 100k views a month• 55 Pluralsight courses• Podcasts

• 3x Hanselminutes• Windows Developer Show• 2x Tablet Show• Dot Net Rocks• Yet Another Podcast

• Several Hacker News front page appearances• Big social network presence

It doesn’t take a long time to build a big personal brand

Why Marketing YourselfIs Important

“I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man!”- Jay Z

How come this guy getsPaid so much to speak?

You need style and substance

The Game Plan

• Building a personal brand• Building brand recognition• Creating social proof• Creating the right connections

“Be everywhere” – Pat Flynn

Getting Started

Your blog is the best place to control your image and message

Your Blog

Your home base

Social media

Branding

Resume

Books, Articles, Podcasts, etc

Everything you do you should lead back to your home base

Creating a Blog

• Options– Free service: wordpress.com, tumblr, blogger, etc– Paid hosting: Bluehost, Hostgator, etc– Virtual Private Server: Digital Ocean, Linode, etc

What I Suggest

+

This is a good balance of simple and powerful

Branding

Branding is more than just a logo

Creating a Brand

• Overall message– What is your mission statement?

• Logo– http://

britfitzpatrick.com/15-super-fly-personal-branding-logos-to-inspire-you-and-me/

• Consistency– Use the same message, same images

Don’t be the guy who works for company X

Cheap And Easy Branding

• Fiverr– http://fiverr.com

• oDesk– http://odesk.com

It is amazing how cheap talent is

Social Networks

Twitter

Facebook

Google+

LinkedIn

• Add your complete resume• Make lots of connections• Ask for recommendations• Join groups

LinkedIn can be one of the most important networks

Managing It All

I use buffer (bufferapp.com) to do frequent posts

Resume

If you get this wrong, it could hurt you real bad…

My Resume Advice

A resume is like an ad for yourself

Getting Your Name Out

It’s all about creating value

Blogs

• Write good content that gets linked to• Guest post• Syndication– DZone (http://dzone.com)– InfoQ (http://infoQ.com)

Articles

Developer publications are always looking for good submissions

YouTube

Great way to deliver a personal message, or tutorial

Books

• Self-publish– Leanpub– Kindle Direct Publishing

• Traditional publisher

Writing a book is hard, but publishing is surprisingly easy

Online Courses

• Create your own• Pluralsight• Udemy

Speaking

• User groups• Code camps• Conferences

Podcasts

• Be a guest on someone else’s• Start your own

Open Source

• Contribute to projects• Start your own project

Don’t Forget To Search

The first thing a potential employer or customer will do is Google your name

Networking

• Join user groups• Talk about famous people• Comment on blogs• Reach out and help someone

Wrapping It Up

Try to view yourself how others view you