You need to promote yourself, eight tips to get you started

In this episode, I wanna talk about firstly that you should promote yourself, why I think you should do that, and some suggestions day. Now there could be any number of reasons you want that to happen. 1 day. Now there could be any number of reasons you want that to happen. You maybe you don't in which case great, you should definitely not listen to this episode right now.

Come back next week. But the big picture here is you have to promote yourself. You you need to be discovered and you need to be the 1 to make that happen. Why does that matter? Yes.

You can hang out on lots of different places, and over time, you will build a reputation. In my case, and I suspect many others, certainly I know a lot of people, it really has been my reputation and being out there in public that has really progressed my career from 1 job to the next. Now, yes. Okay. I acknowledge there may be a certain amount of luck there.

But if I had not been out there promoting myself, and I don't mean in like, you know, promoting in some arrogant way. I mean promoting as if you were a product because at the end of the day you are your own product, right? Your skills are your product. Now, if I hadn't been out there doing it, it would have been a lot harder. I would have to have applied to a lot of job positions and all of those kind of things.

Because I'm here to tell you now, all the jobs that I've had and all the people that I've worked with has been because they came to me. Right? I think it has been maybe 20 years or so, something like that, since I last basically applied for a position without them coming to me first. Now, again, I don't mean that in some big headed way. I mean to use that to emphasize to you that because of a lot of the things that I put out there that I'm about to get into, a lot of the time either someone knew me and recommended me or they came across my work and wanted to at least start a conversation with me.

And these are the reasons that I think you need to go ahead and promote yourself because it's just very rare that you will just be discovered. I'm not gonna say it won't happen, but if nobody knows where to find you or you're not on the internet posting something somewhere. Hey, it's gonna be a lot harder. Okay? Now let's get into a few of the details here.

So first of all, you should network. I know we all stop and go, oh, gosh. Networking. But networking is so different these days than it used to be. Now let me say first of all, you cannot be the in person networking.

Right? That face to face where people get to see you, get to know you, they can pick up on your intention of the conversation. A lot of these things that don't come across online. So where possible, find yourself a group to join. I remember years ago, I went to a swift group for a couple of meetings and then they disbanded which was a real shame because they were really nice folks.

And it was just great to hang out somewhere, have a cup of coffee, talk about whatever anyone wanted to talk about, and it was just fantastic. So in person is the number 1 option. Of course, COVID has made that a lot more difficult in the past. Things are getting better, but you still have to be careful. Now if you cannot do it in person or you don't feel like that's the thing for you.

Okay. Remember online is the way to go. Right? There are so many fantastic places that you can go including creating your own places and I'll get into that a little later on when I talk about some creative ways to promote yourself. You have to accept that it's going to be very hard at first.

Okay? Especially if like a lot of developers you're kind of introverted. It's gonna be a problem. I guess the tough love there is the same tough love that I had to give to myself all those years ago, which is, well, you're gonna have to get over it. Right?

Now, regardless of what career you choose, technology or otherwise, you're gonna have to interact with people. At the end of the day, it's something you're gonna have to get used to. And especially in technology, there's a lot of this pair programming, a lot of work that's not solo work. So it's it really is something that you're gonna have to get used to and accept that it's gonna take you a while. The other thing is if you are just starting out and you don't have a history out there, that's gonna make it even harder.

That's something you can solve. Now, how do you solve that? Well, yes. There is no magic answer. You don't solve it overnight.

What you do to start solving it is you start doing what I'm suggesting now. Right? You start it today. You start it tomorrow. The sooner you start doing these things to promote yourself, the sooner it's out there and you start building that legacy.

Okay? That legacy, that history is what's gonna help you out. So of course, always remember, you're promoting you as if you're a product. Be polite to people even if they're not polite to you. Do not be 1 of those people on the internet, 1 of those haters.

That is, you might as well just quit now if that's what you're gonna do. Right? Because that reputation will follow you a lot quicker and a lot harder than the reputation for being helpful and good at what you do. So please remember, you're promoting you as a product. Okay?

So that's the quick tip there. Right? That's how you get started now and start building that history. Now for introverts, like I say, this is very hard And that was me for so many years. And I just basically 1 day said to myself, you know what?

I'm gonna have to do this. I'm gonna have to force myself to go through the pain. And, I'm here to tell you now, again with all the suggestions that I've got here, it's not as painful as you imagine it's gonna be. Remember, most folks out there are out there and they're gonna be nice to you and they're gonna wanna help you and they're gonna want to help promote you. Okay?

Just as much as you should for them. Right? Hey, folks. If you like what you're hearing in this podcast and you wanna help this podcast to continue going forward and having great guests and great conversations, I invite you to become a Patreon supporter. You can go to patreon.comforward/compileswift, where you will get ad free versions of the podcast along with other content.

That's another thing is be known for helping people. So, yes, it's a big scary thing. Right? But you'll get used to it and you'll realize it's not as bad as you think. Think of all the things you've done the first time and then you discover, well you know what I made that out to be a big deal and it wasn't.

Just get used to it. Accept that it might happen but go into it expecting a good result. 1 of the examples I'll talk about later on is with my live streaming experiences that absolutely terrified me before I did them. And then once I started I realized, hey, this is very cool and actually I look forward to it now. So that's something there.

Also, don't underestimate yourself, right? You probably know a lot more than you realize and there I guarantee you there are things you know that other people don't, and they would be interested in them. And by putting yourself out there and putting this content out there somewhere, that will again help your reputation and help you promote yourself and people will remember it you for it. Now this can lead to so many different things. I have seen this lead to things where people have invited like myself and other folks onto podcasts and things like that to talk about topics.

And it can also lead to the possibility that people will pay you for what you know because you have demonstrated what you know and they may pay you to come and do it for them. Right? So again, multiple payoffs here. So what are the some of the creative ways to start promoting yourself? So I've got a few here that I'm gonna talk about and I think these are some great ways to get started.

First of all, number 1, blog posts. Right? Believe it or not, contrary to what the Internet wants you to think, blog posts are still a thing and they're still very good and we all use them for in our research. Right? It's not just a case of something being out there on some social network, 30 second attention span.

Okay. Yeah. But that's not gonna help you solve your technical problems and people are not looking for that. Right? So blog posts, that's number 1 thing.

Now, you can either do it on your own blog, which I absolutely recommend without question. You should have a blog. Right? Think of it as like I do. A developer journal.

Right? I share what I know. I share what I'm learning. I share my failures. Put it out there.

Let people get to know you. This is a huge deal. Right? Again, people will get to know you. Yeah.

They're gonna be some people that don't care for the things that you say. Okay. You know what? Those are not the folks for you And there's gonna be other people who will come to you for advice and comment on your posts and everything else. Those are the ones you should be interested in.

Right? Those are the folks that you can help and they can help you. The other option of course, be a guest blog post writer on someone else's blog site. That's happened to me. I've been invited to to write on other people's sites and other people have approached me to write on my sites.

Now, the other option here is something like dev2, dev.t0, which is a great platform. You can write blog posts. It's got a whole ton of stuff in there to work with other developers and communicate with them. And 1 of the things I like about it is it's all about positive attitude. There's a no tolerance for negativity there and you will come across so many wonderful people.

I love reading the articles on there and posting some stuff myself. So dev to dv.t0. Other places you can go to hang out, of course, Discord, Slack. Right? There are so many of them now.

I'll put a link in the show notes. There's a Discord dev club that I have created with some friends of mine and we're having a blast in there. Again, it's all about positive attitude. There's no judgment of how good someone is or isn't, or beaten down on someone, or making fun of them. We have a 0 tolerance policy for that.

Thankfully, we've never had to invoke it. There are some folks, myself being 1 of them, people will lightheartedly make fun of some of my things and I got no problem with that because I know that they're just doing it in a light hearted way and I do the same back to them. So you get a feel for people and people will get a feel for you. Right? And so I'll put a link in the show notes for that.

Like I say, it's dev club on Discord. Of course, like I say, Slack is another 1 and so many other platforms like that. Right? If you are a Facebook user, there are so many groups out there you can join of course. So think about all these things.

Yes. They all take time. I think it's important that you put time aside to do these things because it is so imperative that people get to know you in these communities and don't just take from these communities or any of these things that I'm mentioning here. Give back. 1 of the big things for me, as you've heard me say in other episodes and all over my content, is giving back to all the communities and all the folks that helped me establish my career and help help me keep moving forward and I absolutely believe in wanting to help other folks regardless of what stage they are in their career.

So another option, of course, is get yourself on a podcast. Right? We can make that happen. Any development topics, you are more than welcome. Reach out to me at petawhidham.com, and just let me know.

I I would absolutely dearly love to have folks on here. I love talking development with people. And then the last 1 is an example that I do once a week. Try to do it every week on a regular schedule, and that's do a live stream. I have a live stream on Twitch, has a wonderful chat room of folks.

Again, reputation over time. Right? And there's other streamers in there and we just have a blast. And yes, it was terrifying when I first started because you're sitting there and you're thinking, oh my gosh. Everybody is judging what I'm doing and I'm doing a terrible job.

But you know what? After a while, you realize that's actually not what this is about. If I was to base the success of my streaming on how much good code and a good work I've got done, it would be a failure. But the important part is when you realize it's about the community. It's about the folks in the chat room, the folks watching.

And at first, you're not gonna have anyone watch. That's fine. That is the way it starts for everybody. What you do is you conduct yourself, you act as if people are watching. So, yes, it's weird to talk to a camera when you know there's no 1 watching.

Do it anyway because eventually there will be folks. Right? Because remember, they can go back and see the replay. So there will be what people watching eventually in a replay and they will join you live and they will be in the chat room. And when they're in your chat room, interact with them.

I I see lots of streams are really good streams, but the streamer themselves, I I lose interest in them very quickly when they don't interact with their chat room, especially when people are asking questions. The whole point of the livestream is not only to put out the stream, but to interact with people in real time. That's what I love. We have such a great laugh in my my chat room. On the whatever your your streaming platform of choice, interact with folks.

Watch other people's streams. Get involved in their chat rooms. Be a part of the community. I cannot stress how much being a part of these communities is an important factor in this. So, I hope this has been helpful.

I really wanted to give you some ideas today to, like I say, promote yourself, promote what you do, and to also give back to to the communities out there. Trust me on this. It is so rewarding. I'm not kidding you. Every time I get a message, thank you for my livestream.

Thank you for this podcast episode. Thank you for this blog post. It really helped me out. Comment on a video that, you know, hey, this was a perfect explanation. Every single 1 of those is such a morale booster on those days when you feel like you'll get going nowhere.

And it's just worth every second of the effort. I hope this inspires you. Be inspired to go do this. Give it a try. If you do any of these things, reach out to me.

I would love to come and watch your streams and whatever it may be. Podcast, read your blog posts. Let me know. Hook up with me on devtee. You'll find me on there, Peter Widom.

And there's a link on my website and for so many of these things. So get back to me. Right? Let me know. Peterwitham.competerwitham.com.

So that's it for this episode. I hope I really do hope this has been helpful and inspires you because I want you to be inspired. I want you to do so many great things that I know that you can do. If this episode has been helpful, please, you know what to do. Do the follow, the leave a review.

It it really, again, helps as a motivation booster for me to know that I'm helping folks out there. Take care of yourselves. I will speak to you in the next episode.