
Ask HN: Self-marketing? - yuvadam
How much time and effort do you spend on marketing yourself? (Mainly interested in devs)<p>Do you have a website? Run a blog?<p>How important is your online presence to building your reputation?
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patio11
I spend a wee bit too much time on the Internet, and much of that is sort of
dual use for my personal enjoyment and marketing. I have participated in HN
and a few other forums for about fivish years now, and that has been a great
opportunity to meet people. I try to get out to conferences and meet ups to
meet folks outside of the massive Ogaki tech mafia. I also have a blog which
has been fairly popular.

The most important thing I do for marketing is helping people, frequently. It
opens a lot of doors. It also means there are a couple of... thousand, maybe?
(crikey) ... people who will say nice things about me even when I'm not in the
room. That has lead directly to consulting work (and business opportunities)
in the past.

Can I say one heretical thing? Contribution to OSS is not by itself marketing.
It is a fairly low ROI way to reach decision makers unless you are identified
with a popular project. (You can easily spend many hours on a commit that no
one but you or the mainainer will ever know you wrote. Spend the same amount
of time directly solving a problem for someone and you have a fan for life.)

P.S. I truly love Github, but would not host my OSS on it, because it
encourages use patterns which are extraordinarily suboptimal for marketing
oneself. YMMV.

~~~
s-phi-nl
In what way might you host your OSS that would be more optimal for marketing
yourself?

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patio11
Put it on your own website, and actively market it to people who need it
(including productization steps that OSS often doesn't take like having a
logo, an install guide, etc). You'll be identified as the relevant expert.

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kylebragger
I'm a developer, and to be honest, not a ton. For better or for worse, I spend
the majority of my time building cool[1] stuff. Some things, like Forrst, have
taken off and garnered me some nice exposure. Other things have ended up being
duds. Other than that, I do blog[2], albeit infrequently, but I'd like to
change that; I think it is important to speak up if you feel you have
something thoughtful/insightful to add to your community/industry. However,
I've found that I much more enjoy the passive recognition that comes as a
result of creating neat stuff, because it feels much more "real" than trying
to promote myself for the sake of it. I really don't care /that/ much about my
reputation[3] insofar as I'm not out to be the #1 anything; I'd rather build
amazing things than worry about what top 10 list I'll (never) end up in.

[1] at least to me

[2] <http://kylewritescode.com/>

[3] that's not to say I don't care about it generally speaking; I do strive to
be thoughtful, helpful, and someone that people respect.

~~~
medwezys
Just yesterday I listened to your story in the pipeline podcast :)

Other people, Forrst story is quite interesting, hear it if you like podcasts
<http://5by5.tv/pipeline/41> ;)

~~~
kylebragger
Thanks a lot, I'm glad to hear that. Hope it wasn't too obvious I used iPhone
headphones. Dan knew immediately :)

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DanI-S
This is a great question. I've been spending a lot of time recently building a
personal landing page, getting more established on public social media, etc.
It's incredibly time consuming and I feel really torn - I'd much rather be
learning new tools and languages. However, I've definitely gotten the
impression that if I can't somehow advertise the tools and languages that I
already know, I may as well not bother. Offline presence is also really
important - but I recently turned up to a meetup without any business cards to
swap and won't ever make that mistake again.

I moved from an academic background in the UK to the startup world in
California, so I feel like I've been born naked into a new world. I didn't
even use my Twitter account until recently. I'd like to hear from some
"veterans" about this - who has gotten a real impact as a result of their
self-marketing efforts?

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steveklabnik
Heh.

The key is this: realize that everything you do is marketing yourself. Any
time you interact with someone else, it's marketing yourself. Every time you
post to HN, every time you tweet, every time you blog... it's all marketing.

Now, that doesn't mean 'be dishonest,' or anything like that. Reputations are
incredibly important. Just be aware that you're doing it all the time, even if
you don't know you are.

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jarin
That's a pretty good question. I spend most of my time doing client work, so
my self-marketing is mostly limited to:

1) Posting code and rants on my blog whenever I feel like it

2) Contributing code to open-source projects that I use

3) Chatting with people at the bar or going to tech mixers (also at the bar)

4) Posting on various websites like HN

I get about 70% of my client work from #3, 25% or so from word of mouth
(friends, family, or past clients), and 5% or so from posting online. #1 is
mostly just vanity and #2 is out of necessity, but they probably help too
without me directly seeing the effects. I've never advertised or gone trolling
for clients since I started freelancing.

Also, my company website is terrible and hasn't been updated in about 4 years,
but it doesn't seem to matter. I'll get around to it eventually :)

Edit: I forgot to mention giving talks at Ruby groups and Ignite and things
like that. I've gotten a couple of clients from that but it's mostly just
challenging and fun.

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lsc
I'm a SysAdmin, not a dev, so things are somewhat different; still, the
marketing is probably pretty similar.

I wrote a book about some of the things I more commonly SysAdmin. By far, this
was the best marketing I've ever done. (It's also the most expensive marketing
I've ever done. No-starch paid to have it printed, but god damn, that was a
lot of work to write.)

Now, as for an online presence, in my field, being visible on mailing lists
and the like is pretty important. A nice website? much less so. Of course, if
you are a frontend dev, the opposite probably applies.

Eh, I do think that contributing patches back is pretty important. Good
decision makers consult good technical people before making such a decision,
and having some patches on public mailing lists shows that you know
/something/ (which is usually good enough for a SysAdmin. Nobody expects me to
be able to re-write apache, but I am expected to sometimes make some small
change to mod_auth_*)

Still, writing a book (and having it published by an established publisher)
might not be the cheapest way to reach decision makers, but it's one of the
more effective ways to do so, I think.

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RiderOfGiraffes
Although it garnered no comments, I posted something about this subject a
couple of weeks ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2155253>

Direct link:

[http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/SellYourselfSellYourWork.html?...](http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/SellYourselfSellYourWork.html?HN2)

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ecaradec
It's something I've been trying to fix lately. It's not only about your online
reputation, you should care of your offline reputation as well. I don't mean
it in a tricky way, by deceiving people : You should try to provide value for
others via your blog, etc... Do some projects, talk about them.

It's important because, as a developer, you usually don't make a lot of
connections with others. If you don't do anything your only connections will
be your peers and little bit a variety is better. Even if you and I would like
to be valued on our technical knowledge, it won't bring you very far. If you
don't talk, nobody is gonna to know you.

I use my blog more like a platform to share stuff I made, or thought, or to
clear my mind about some idea. It's also something I can point potential
employers to when I'll need it. It doesn't really matter if you don't have
readers, it'll put your resume apart in most interviews.

Also I added many local folks in my twitter, and it leads me to some meet up
that gives connections with new peoples around me. I live in a medium city in
the south of france, if I can met people there, you can probably too.

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spiralganglion
My startup hasn't launched a website yet (we've very, very young). When we do,
there will be a blog where we post the nastiest challenges our team has faced,
and the solutions we devised. The work we're doing is highly technical, but
there's also a strong artistic component, so we'll have a broad range of
topics that should be accessible to many. Ideally, by exposing our struggles
and how we've overcome them, we'll be benefitting others who face similar
woes, and opening up the discussion to include their solutions. Ultimately, I
feel that the best promotion will come from creating value for others,
especially if we can get our blog's readers to offer value of their own.

On a personal level, I engage in other projects in other industries (music,
web comics, computer animation) and use my communities there to cultivate
interest in my startup.

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anm8tr
I spend a lot of time at it, though hopefully not too much. Maybe 5-10% of my
working day.

You absolutely _must_ start with a blog or a website for your home base. Then
you go to YComb, LinkedIn, Stackoverflow, and ask and answer questions. Be
sure to use the same user name for as many sites as you can so you become
recognizable. First initial, last name is actually preferable - when dealing
with your field you don't want to hide behind an anonymous user name (like
AnM8tR - groan....). You can use fancy user name for movie sites.

I use <http://clubajax.org> to write my blogs, and while they are informative
blogs, I learn an incredible amount; because I do research before hand to
ensure that I'm giving correct advice.

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mrj
Personally, I've found it difficult to get much attention online. I guess I've
just been off doing weird stuff for too long to interest most programmers.

Every time I hear stories of so-and-so making a website that caught on like
wildfire overnight, it's often times attributable to a good network of
contacts who already knew that person and all tweeted for him.

I think having contacts is very important, and those people who can conquer
that fear of sharing too much are the ones who'll build the best
relationships, and by doing so, have more frequent successes.

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Aquisio
I think this issue is at the heart of why many devs (me more than most) fail
to live up to their potential. The mindset that makes for a great developer is
very different from that of a successful marketer, as is illustrated in this
recent post:

<http://joeyroth.com/charlatan-martyr-hustler/>

The commercially successful devs are those who manage to balance these two
essential challenges. I think it's also one of the key reasons why sole-
founder startups find it harder to win funding.

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motters
I've had a web site since 1995 and a blog since 2005. I never really thought
of it as marketing, but of course it is. Online presence has some importance
in terms of finding out who your peer group are and acting as a starting point
for discussions. Probably most of the jobs I've held though have had no
connection to what I've published online, although in many (but by no means
all) cases employers tend to view personal open source projects positively.

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gaustin
Not as much as I should.

Yes and yes. But I don't spend any/enough effort on them.

Very. I live in a pretty remote low-population part of the USA. The people I
want to work with will probably only ever get to know me online, until I move
somewhere more in line with my goals. Offline presence is important, too, but
there's not much opportunity for that here outside of the 3 or 4 possible
programmer workplaces.

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jhuckestein
IMO your offline presence is more important than your online presence, but
maybe I'm just old fashioned :)

~~~
spiralganglion
Old fashioned? I'll say! Startups these days don't often have offices, and at
this rate they won't even have humans for much longer! Get your head into the
clouds.</teasing>

In reply to the main topic: promoting myself (as a person distinct from but
representing my startup) is an opportunity I'm weighing carefully. Given that
we're a rather small shop, we have the luxury of exposing the personality of
every member of the team, given they've got something charming to expose. I
see this as a great way to differentiate ourselves from the larger corps in
our industry. As I see it, ever member of our team has the occasion to be a
hero, someone our fans could be interested in as an individual. Especially so,
if a connection can be made between their personality and their contributions
to our product. In a larger company, most employees won't ever get the
opportunity to say, publicly, "That! I made that!" and have customers respond,
"Yeah! That makes sense, because you really love ______ and it's always
reflected in your work."

For example, every hardcore Apple fan knows Jony Ive's aesthetic, and Jobs'
sense of perfectionism. They're the heros of Apple, and Apple has a bit of a
"hero" culture, but they're too big to make everyone a hero. In a startup, you
have the unique opportunity to make everyone a hero, if your products are good
enough to win hearts.

I see well-considered self-promotion online and offline as a great way to
expose the heroic qualities of each team member. It's a risk, of course, but
taking on such challenges is why we're starting a company in such a
competitive industry.

