Day 2 of the boot camp resumed with so much enthusiasm. The talk was centered around creating and managing your brand. I absorbed so many details that I can't wait to implement them after the boot camp. What I noticed is that the majority of writers or developers deal with anxiety about posting their content on their social media platforms. Let's get started on the excerpts of the meeting.
3rd Session: Leveraging Social Media for Monetization - Nader Dabit
Content creation, personal branding and social media are three basic dots that must be connected. How they fit matters to you as a developer or author. Nader Dabit handled the 3rd session of the boot camp. He gave a brief introduction of himself, started coding in 2013 and he works at Aave/Lens as the Director of Developer Relations. He is a developer, author and a teacher. He also founded Developer DAO. When he started coding, he encountered some problems which he solved. Not only solved them, he wrote blogs to answer the questions. Let's dive right into the first dot.
Personal branding
Does your online presence say who you say you are?
When people stumble on your content, they have some seconds to decide whether they will engage with what you posted. After capturing the attention of a person, he proceeds to your bio to know more about you. Outlined below are the steps to create a personal brand:
Make most of the people when they come in contact with your bio. Set up your LinkedIn so that people can reach out to you.
Say it in your bio if you are based on a particular technology. Stand out if they are looking for that thing.
Do a photoshoot. Stand in front of an audience and take high-quality pictures. Nader pointed out there was a point in time whereby he had to take a shoot, and that was when clients started reaching out to him.
Again clean, clear, consistent profile picture. Be known by a picture across all your social media platforms such as Twitter, Linkedin, Hashnode, TikTok etc.
Specialization is extremely important. If you say are good at a specific thing, show it.
Links to more information. Ensure you create backlinks to your portfolio and social media handles.
Online Social media tips
Share what you are learning online, this brings about lots of opportunities.
Be consistent. The best thing to do is to show up daily. Even when you don't have engagements, keep posting.
Be Helpful. You build quality relationships with people when you help them out.
Be authentic, this is a good signal that you are just being yourself.
Be active/engaging, network with people, and if you are looking for opportunities, interact with them.
Walk the line between engaging and helpful without relying on gimmicks 😅.
Backlink social media profiles.
Use rich media - Share code snippets.
If you feel uncomfortable or cringe, you are probably doing something right.
Be thoughtful about how you format your content - make it scannable. For instance, instead of a long tweet, break it down.
Leverage other people's audiences. If you don't have the audience to reach out to, you can collaborate with someone with the audience to work on a project.
Content Creation
Going out of your comfort zone is stressful, but it will always yield results. You have to be intentional when getting information out there for people to consume. Nader shared a slide on steps he takes when creating content.
Figure 1: Steps in creating technical content.
I was able to note down some content creation tips😅. I experienced some network issues. Some of them are listed below:
Reuse content in multiple ways.
Create resources for yourself.
Good artists borrow, and great artists steal.
Tap into other networks.
You only need to be good at 1 thing.
4th Session: Building Your Personal Brand on social media - Ákos Kómúves
Why build a personal brand on social media? There are various ways of building your brand. Ákos listed out some key points which include:
Simple tools.
Simple to build.
No competition.
No rules.
Simple tools
This involves taking advantage of writing and these can be in various forms. You don't release the best content in a day, you improve by practicing over time. Glance through the chart shown below:
Figure 2: Forms of Writing
For example, copyrighting involves writing content that captures people's attention, making them click your stuff.
The contents you put out directly influence the people you reach out to... - Ákos Kómúves
As a writer, filter and post quality content. From the perspective of a nutritionist, junk foods can be tempting but it's not a good thing. The content you share with people affects your brand.
Simple to build
The lifecycle of a post or content is divided into 3 parts:
Impressions.
Profile clicks.
Decisions.
When someone sees your post, they have to decide in a matter of seconds to engage. Ákos suggested a Typefully tool that can be used by every writer to know the impressions a post makes. Typefully has other features which include:
Write and publish scheduled tweets.
Analytics board which displays the impressions made on each thread posted on Twitter.
After the user finds your content helpful, it's normal for them to click on your bio. This shows that they want to decide to follow you for more content. A quick look at your profile shows what you do. It speaks a lot about your personal brand. Avoid long lines on your bio. These should be found in your bio:
Who am I helping?
Where to start?
Click this.
Figure 3: Ákos Twitter profile bio
No Competition
Remember you are not in competition with anybody. You are building your personal brand by helping people. This way, you are also networking with them.
Don't forget the Person in your brand
Just like Nader mentioned, be authentic. They can steal your post and not your person.
No Rules
Copycats.
Gurus.
The Algorithm.
Additional Key points
To monetize your brand, identify a company that needs DevRel. Approach them when you want to create content for them.
Decide the socials you want to be most active on. Focus on one or two platforms.
Take complex topics and make them easy to understand.
Conclusion
Enough of building in silence 😉. It's time to put your work out there. No one lights up a candle and puts it under a bushel. Learn and build in public, the consistency will surely pay off one day.
Building personal brand and leveraging social media opens you up for more opportunities. No one thrives in isolation. Anytime I encountered some issues while working on a project, I check a few articles on how I can solve them. This is because someone experienced that in the past and wrote about it. Splendid😃, isn't it?
Day 2 of Hashnode Bootcamp✨✨✨ was so much fun. Looking forward to the grand finale.
You can connect with me by following me on Twitter, LinkedIn and GitHub. Catch you later😜.