Developing your personal brand as a developer
“You are the chief marketing officer for the brand called you, but what others say about your brand is more impactful than what you say about yourself.”
This Thursday (28th April, 2022), we had an insightful discussion during our community Discord event. The event was about "Building your personal brand as a developer". Find out what we discussed and how you too can learn, network, and grow as a professional.
What is personal branding
Personal branding is a broad term that covers various aspects of how a person wants society to see them. Personal branding begins with self-discovery.
What's the need
These days, social media has impacted our lives in many different ways; some are good, some are bad, and some are ugly.
So now it's possible to reach a larger audience, get noticed and be an instant hit, so why not use this for professional use!
Here are a few points that will convince you to build your personal brand.
- Networking
With great brand comes an awesome network of people. - Opportunities
If they know what you do best, opportunities will be delivered to you at your doorstep. - Learning
It is a process in which you learn, share, and grow. It's scientifically proven that the more you share what you learn, the more likely you are to remember the facts yourself.
How to get started
1. Know yourself better
Once you know more of who you are, then only you can realize more of your potential. You can improve and be the best version of yourself.
Personal branding is talked about a lot these days, and everyone is creating a YouTube channel to get started. Sure you can do that, you can also deep dive into the subject talking about psychological techniques such as "Three Animals Technique". But there are tremendous other ways in which you can build your brand.
2. Create content
Content is the key ingredient in building personal branding
Your content reflects what you know and what your brand stands for. So for this, you can get started with creating videos, vlogs, tutorials, reels, twitter threads, blogs (like me) and many more.
We have plenty of platforms as well to share the content. There's Twitter🚀(with Tesla's "T"), Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. You can start by picking a topic that interests you and documenting your journey. In this way, you will be helping other folks planning to get started in the same field and boom. Your content strikes a chord and steals their hearts.
Well, that part takes time, sometimes days, sometimes years, but isn't it the same as developing an application. You need a good CI/CD in place, so you keep launching latest and better version of yourself without breaking things up. Keep up with the new innovations in the topic and keep upskilling always.
Your consistent efforts will eventually lead you to become synonymous with the topic you create content around. So get started today, create content and let the world know.
Problems faced
While building a personal brand, there are several issues faced. Some of them are
- Many folks are creating similar content
- Your content gets less noticed
- Loss of relevance over time
- Your audience's interest in your topic has waned
- (*Occasionally) disagreements with other creators
Solutions
Well, there is not a particular solution, nor is there an ideal approach to resolve all the above issues. But for a start, you can do some relevant searching.
It's all about "connecting the dots". You can start by
- Exploring existing content for your topic
- Observing what's missing
- Creating your content according to what others need
- Make your bland content a bit spicy🌶️🧂
Some other suggestions we heard from the community:
- Read a lot
- Be a good observer
- (*Philosophical) Find patterns in life, and use them
- Don't try to copy, create
- Stay Humble
Personal branding has many benefits and will help you get opportunities, that others won't. But it is surely a not-so-easy process. So find your calling, get your audience, create content, and inspire others 😃.
I hope you liked it😊. The right time to begin is now, so get started and be a better version of yourself. Join us every Thursday for more such amazing events; we'll be waiting in the lounge. Come join our Discord now!