

Ask HN: How do you promote yourself? - giis

Though my work featured in Indian&#x2F;UK&#x2F;German magazines [1], I have a hard time promoting myself because it feels too much like bragging. How do you do that?<p>[1] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;giis.co.in&#x2F;LFY.png
    http:&#x2F;&#x2F;giis.co.in&#x2F;giis_LXF.jpg
    http:&#x2F;&#x2F;giis.co.in&#x2F;ct_pg2_Jan_2014.jpg
======
thebouv
What do you mean by promoting yourself exactly?

That gives me the idea that you expect people to find you for
work/jobs/thenextbigthing -- much like an actor might want to be promoted.
That's not usually what you're doing as a developer.

If you mean promoted just by having an online presence that you can share with
potential clients/employers/businesspartners, I suggest a few things:

1) Have a simple, clean website that talks about you and your work. It doesn't
have to be bragging -- just present the facts. Even though as developers we
aren't always concerned about the look of things, I suggest buying a good,
"pretty" template and using it. Or getting a designer friend to help you.
[http://giis.co.in/](http://giis.co.in/) for instance isn't what I'd go for.

Speaking of your current site if you're looking to promote yourself, you might
want to actually put content in your About Me page instead of just this:
[http://giis.co.in/readme.html](http://giis.co.in/readme.html)

2) Are you on Twitter? Make sure your tweets reflect who you are / who you
want to work with / what you're interested in / what you work on. Link to this
from your site, and vice versa.

3) Have a good LinkedIn profile set up as well. Don't just list where you've
worked and what dates, but explain the projects you've worked on. There are
multiple ways to link out to those articles you posted pictures of. Even
better if you can find online articles to link to instead of just pictures of
print magazines.

4) Much to my own chagrin, GitHub IS your presence online to other devs /
clients / etc. Is GIIS there? If not, could it be? That could certainly help
get attention on your project and you as a dev.

Again, let us know exactly what you mean by promote and I'm sure there will be
more advice given.

~~~
giis
thanks for the response. promoting myself so that I can establish contact with
recruiters/start-up founders/investors or businesspartners:

\- recruiters/managers/investors most often doesn't even bother about
CV/articles you shared.

\- I agree on (1) will make necessary changes.

\- I do have linkedin/twitter/github pages but they are not linked from
personal site and also they are missing most of the things you listed.for ex,
linkedin just list of companies, no projects listed.

~~~
thebouv
Still seems like you're trying to get them to find YOU, instead of you finding
them.

Find those people you're talking about. Tweet them, email them, look at their
sites and job postings. Apply.

They're not looking for you, or anyone else, specifically.

And yes on LinkedIn you can most definitely list projects. Attached to a
company, but you can even put your freelance as a company you worked for. Then
attach said projects to that. Even allows for screenshots to be attached,
links to external sources, etc.

~~~
cblock811
Exactly. If you want visibility in any community you need to engage with the
people there.

