Why a personal Blog?
Finally I’ve put my a into g and setup a personal blog, keeping it up to date will be the challenge. But why a personal blog? Isn’t it a bit… self serving, narcissistic even? Initially I thought it a bit wankeresk, but having recently ready Gary Vaynerchuck’s book, Crush It! while on holiday in Eden, NSW, to me it reinforced the importance of investing in and developing a personal brand.
Many of us maintain social media profiles, be it Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr … the list could go on … and on … so having a place for them all to live, a home base if you will, seemed logical to me. Also maintaining ownership of this space was also important. The domain name is mine and I host it myself. Not to say the other blog services out there aren’t good enough. I’m a big WordPress fan and their paid blog services is great, but being a bit of a web dev geek I wanted full control (don’t we all?).
Many people are yet to learn that developing a social network and concurrently, a personal brand, will give them leverage long term. What do I mean by leverage? Leverage can mean anything from getting a foot in the door on a new job, generating buzz around a new product you’re marketing, or just crowd sourcing help on a particular problem you’re having.
An example: a friend of mine wanted to find an iPhone app that would update his Twitter feed and Facebook feed at the same time. I myself had been looking for something similar, but after trying 3 different iPhone apps and Googleing a solution, I’d drawn a blank. I Twittered the question out: “Is there an iPhone app that will update Twitter AND Facebok?”. Within half an hour I had 2 solutions – I’m now using TweetDeck. It’s a very simple example of the power of social networks but it’s scalable.
Is it time you started paying your personal brand a little attention? It doesn’t mean you have to setup and maintain a personal blog, although I would recommend you register your names as a domain name. From a professional point of view, make sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date, then consider setting up Facebook and Twitter accounts.
If you want to go the whole hog there’s a cool social media profile registration service called KnowEm.com. KnowEm will let you check to see if your profile is available on 340 popular social media services and for a small fee, register your profile on each.
Welcome aboard Luke. I always liked Darren Rowse’s post on the importance of having a home base:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/10/06/social-media-home-bases-and-outposts/
I use this one often to describe why it’s important to have a home base, whether it’s a blog or some other platform. In the end, it’s not the platform that’s important. It’s the concept of having a hub that you own and build.
Welcome Luke and happy bday. We ate your cake for you. Good luck with the blog.
Inspired me to get my “A into G” and get http://www.jamescaldwell.info up and running.
It really does make sense to consolidate all these feeds to one online locale. Integration with Twitter, FB, Linkedin et al is all soo easy with WordPress.
It is so easy everyone should have a personal site.
Hi Luke,
Following your timely advice from your clever, funny and oh-so-popular iTunes podcast, I am now slowly extracting my finger and getting my own A into G.
Thought I’d just pop over and check yours out… personal blog that is.
Rebecca Mavin
Hi,just observed your web-site when i google something and wonder what webhosting do you use for your website,the speed is more faster than my wordpress, i really want to know it.will back to check it out,i appreciate it!
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