The 3 Rules of Self-Marketing
October 24th, 2007 (11:00am) Mike Gunderloy 17 CommentsTweet This (3)
We’ve written before about building your personal brand online, and about various ways to promote yourself through your web site. The topic is worth revisiting, though: because they’re often lacking in traditional face-to-face ways to bring in new business, web workers need to be keenly aware of their own image and how they sell their skills to others. Successful web workers are often good marketers, whatever their “real” business may be.
Now developer (and web worker) Rob Walling has published another take on the subject in his article Self-Marketing for Software Developers. Based on his years in development and management, he offers 3 rules for marketing your own skills so that you stand out of the pack. Although he’s writing for software developers, the rules can be widely applied by many types of web workers. Here’s a quick overview; refer to Rob’s original article for more depth.
Rule #1: “Knowing how to market yourself will do more for your earnings and reputation than becoming better at what to do.” Don’t believe it? Think about the people in your industry who make more money and are more famous than you. Do you think they really know more than you? Did they just happen to get lucky? Or were they savvy about how to promote themselves? My money is on the latter. This can be a tough truth to accept, particularly when you’re new in a field and still think superior knowledge will conquer the world, but the sooner you realize that marketing is important, the better.
Rule #2: “Start now.” Why? Because this stuff takes time. Building blog circulation, getting people to notice you, cultivating your social network, working your way on to the speaker list at conferences…good marketing can take years to pay off. If you put it off until next month or next year, someone else who didn’t put it off is going to eclipse you.
Rule #3: “If you have an exceptional talent, market yourself through exceptional means.” How many blogs are out there today? Just having a blog isn’t marketing any more; you need to do something different. Set yourself up as the expert on some subject, blog relevant articles on a regular basis, and mail the links to everyone who might be remotely interested: then a blog is worthwhile. Or use social networks or video links or something even more innovative. The goal of marketing is to stand out from the pack; you can’t, by definition, do this if you insist on doing exactly what everyone else does.
You’ll notice that I didn’t say these were 3 easy rules. Simple, yes, but not easy. But if you want to work your way up to reputation ladder (and justify charging higher prices and getting offered more interesting work), the effort spend in marketing yourself in innovative ways is more than worth it.
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
Rule #1 in my book: Start blogging, get into the conversation, and build a reputation!!!
I started blogging in February 2007, and by June, I got recruited to move to Denmark and work at HelloGroup – which was awesome – I was planning to stay until, 2 months in I got recruited back to Seattle for a role that I couldn’t refuse at blist – all just through blogging creating an online platform to reach out to interesting people from. I am continually amazed by the contacts I make through blogging!!
Highly recommended.
Good thoughts. As I found out, building a repuation in the bloggosphere can be very very difficult.. :(
Quality and originality is what people expect from a good blog. But that isn’t enough. Building links are the most important. If you dont participate in discussions in other blogs and try to learn new things, there is no much use of having a blog with a cute name and quality content.
Rule #1: “Knowing how to market yourself will do more for your earnings and reputation than becoming better at what to do.” Don’t believe it?
* Look at the kiss-ups who get promoted, even though they couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag.
* Look at any politician.
* Look at any big name clothing company. A $1200 purse? $200 shirts? $60 for a t-shrt? $600 jeans? What are people thinking?
* Look at boxers. If you are not promoted right you fight for $500 a match.
These examples seems proof that it is more about what people think of you, then what you can do.
I couldn’t agree more… I’m sometimes amazed when searching for tips on the internet and tips from personal blogs outrank official documentation. Personally, I’m very busy and have found it difficult to increase the use of my blog from a collection of “what I think is cool” to “what I do/ know that is cool”
Couldn’t agree with this more. We’re using http://www.lyro.com to create and control the professional identity. Very important in the online space. It’s an area of opportunity to drive more business that too few people are taking advantage of.
Number 1 really struck me. I’m often too busy doing what I do and trying to make ends meet to actually get out there and promote. Seems like I need to factor this in to my time a lot more.