Personal branding 101 for developers {part 1}

Disclaimer: I will focus on twitter in this article. In a future post, I will cover linkedin.

Introduction

I decided to write a simple and practical guide about personal branding for developers. I will talk about what I am doing right now to create and improve my personal brand as an Android developer. I hope you will find something useful in this article.

What is personal brand ?

A personal brand is the reflection of your identity, it is the intersection between reality, perception and you.

Your identity is about your true WHY and your core values.

You need to be consistent and congruent about your message, your why.

What do you believe ?

My answer:

I believes that one experience, one blog, one book, one speech, one sentence or one word can change life forever.

Let me tell you one story.

In 2011, I accepted the challenge to graduate while working full time. It was interesting, I got in the zone by creating a blog to document my journey. But after 2 years of hard studying and sacrifice, I had some doubts about finishing my master degree. I actually had burnout and mental depression. I try to search motivation to get up again and continue my challenge. I found inspiration from my virtual mentors (Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk Tim Ferriss and Eric Thomas). I created a strategy and I began to study smart instead of hard. I was back in the game. Finally in 2017 I graduated and I am really happy.

One of the reason I succeed is this:

My manifesto

Why do you need a personal brand as a developer ?

They are a lot of reasons to have a personal brand. I will give four that are really important for me.

1. Build your reputation
2. Share your skills and passion
3. Become visible on the map
4. Engage with people in your industry

Step 1: Follow your mentors

The first thing to do is create the list of people you admire and you want to connect with. I call them mentors because they are the best at what they do. If you are like me, you want to become better by following the path of the best.

Let’s create a list of the best android developers in the world who use twitter.

This is my list:

@ewilly1/Droid_Mentors on Twittertwitter.com

Step 2: Define your brand

The second step is choosing your topics. 1 to 3 topics is enough to begin. You will focus on your topics for enough time to build a reputation. My topics are Android development and Firebase.

Step 3: Craft your profile

1-Profile foto

Choose a beautiful foto of you or choose an illustration of you.

From old profile foto to new profile foto

2-cover foto

You can put some photo of you when you’re doing interesting stuff (coding at work, speaking at conference …)

Example from Rebecca Franks

You can put something related to your blog

Example from @valokafor ‏

You can promote something you have done (book, android apps …)

Example from Andrew Orobator

This is what I did

from old cover to new cover

3-bio

Your bio has to be original. Describe yourself using these elements :

• job (what do you do?)
• accomplishments
• lifestyle or mantra
• hobbies
• hashtag

This is what I did:

Senior Android Engineer and public speaker. Born in Africa, living in Europe. Work hard, play hard, rest hard #Firebase learner #CoffeeLover and #TvShow addict

Step 4: Engage daily

The next step is commit to participate to the conversation in twitter. this means tweet daily, retweet a lot, follow and answer.

Example:

• One of my tweets:

• One of my retweets

• One of my answers

• One tweet I loved

Bonus: My Worflow on twitter.

I use feedly to read android related blog post and then I tweet the best posts on my twitter account.

If you have some tips to improve personal brand on twitter, you can write it in a comment below.

Conclusion

I think developing a personal brand is a long journey and I just began mine. I will make experiments, I will sometimes make mistakes and I will learn along the way.

This is not a blueprint, it is my process. If you don’t have a personal brand, I invite you to create one following my example.

See you for the {part 2}, until then may the {code} be with you my friend!

Documenting My Android Adventure ← BEFORE

NEXT → Personal branding 101 for developers {part 2}

A big thanks to everyone involved in proofreading this post!

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Resources:

42 Expert Tips on How to Grow Your Twitter Profile_There are as many different strategies for growing a Twitter profile as there are Twitter marketers out there. What do…_follows.com

How To Grow Your Personal Brand On Twitter In Only 10 Minutes A Day_Here's the situation. You're trying to grow your personal brand, and Twitter is a necessary part of that for digital…_marketingland.com

Twitter Bio Ideas to Increase Your Follower Count_Ah, Twitter: Everyone's favorite character-count taskmaster. If you've been using this most confining of social…_blog.hootsuite.com