This is the slide deck of "Personal Branding for Developers" talk by Edin Kapic at MVP OpenDay in Palma de Mallorca, March 13th 2015.

1. Personal Branding for
Developers
Edin Kapić

2. Edin Kapić
www.edinkapic.com
@ekapic
[ˈedin ˈka:pit͡ɕ ]

3. What Will You Learn Today?
• Why should you market yourself?
• Building a brand
• Your blog
• Using social networks
• Speaking
• Writing
• Summary

4. Why Should You Market
Yourself?

5. Marketing....A Nasty Word?
• I think that marketing is
bad
• I want my work to speak for
me
• I don’t want to brag about
what I do
• I don’t want to market
myself
• Marketing can be done
badly
• But we’re not a meritocracy
• But I don’t want to project a
wrong image either
• But I do, all the time

6. MARKETING
someone who NEEDS something
connecting
someone who PROVIDES something
with

7. You already market yourself
• With your CV
• In your interviews
• In your interactions with other people
• Every time you want to convince somebody to do something
• But, do you choose what do you project to other people?

9. Personal Branding
• Choosing the message you send
• Choosing the image you project
• Reaching more effectively and to
more people
• Making an impact

10. (and expose a subset of yourself)

11. Why should you invest
into a personal brand?
You can be the best developer in the world
but if nobody knows about you
you’ll never reach your true potential

12. Specialize your brand

13. Be a big fish in a small pond

14. But “I am not good
enough to
market myself”
“I am faking it”

15. Building a Brand

16. What is a Brand?
• A logo?
• A name?
• A color?
• A theme?
• A set of expectations about a product or a service
• Everything associated with a product, including its
symbolism and experiences

17. Examples of brands

18. Examples of developer personal brands

19. What makes up a brand?
Message
Visuals
Consistency
Exposure

20. Message
• What is your unique point of view?
• What are your values?
• Why are you different?
• What are you offering?
• Specialize, specialize, specialize
“I help and inspire companies and teams to deliver their projects and
optimize their work using SharePoint/Office 365 technology in an
effective way”

21. Visuals
• Logo
• Colours
• Fonts
• Style

22. Consistency
• Meeting the expectations,
every time
• Helps to keep your message
clear
• The most overlooked
component of personal
branding in developers

23. Exposure
• Repeated exposure is what
makes your brand stick
• You get exposure by using
different channels

24. The Brand Lifecycle
Build Plan
Expose
Measure
Repeat

25. How to build a brand?
Pick a niche
Pick a
message
Refine the
message into
tagline and
elevator pitch
Create your
visuals

26. How to spread your brand?
EXECUTE YOUR PLAN
Consistence Monitor your metrics
ACTION PLAN
Pick your channels
Make baseline
metrics
Establish deadlines
Establish
milestones
STRATEGY AND GOALS
Where do you want to be
in X years?
Which is your desired
situation?
What is your end objective
with your brand?

27. Example
• Niche: “C++ Windows driver development”
• Message: “I help companies shorten their driver
development time by mentoring their teams and
reviewing their code”
• Tagline: “Your driver problem solver”
• Elevator pitch: “Your company doesWindows drivers? I save you
on average 75.000 € in development cost by
mentoring your team and reviewing your code.”

28. Example
• Visuals:
• Channels
• Blog www.driversheriff.com
• Twitter @DriverSheriff
• YouTube DriverWild West Screencasts
• Mailing list Driver Sheriff Roundup
• Goals: Get 1000 subscribers in 6 months
Get 5 leads per month
Driver
Sherif
f

29. Your Blog

30. Your Blog
• It is the channel that you own and fully control
• You should provide useful content aligned with your message
• Think about SEO

31. Your Blog = Your Business Card
• Prospective recruiters can know you better
• Clients can find and reach you
• You can convert your visitors into customers

32. Secret Recipe for a Successful Blog

33. But “Nobody is
going to read it”
“I don’t know
what to write
about”

34. Using Social Networks

35. Social Networks
• Extra channels for your message
• Growing and nurturing your network
• Same principles apply:
• Add value
• Be consistent
• Apply branding

36. Which ones?
•Twitter
•LinkedIn
•StackOverflow
•SlideShare
•Facebook
•Pinterest
•Google+

37. Tools to Manage Social Networks

38. Speaking

39. Speaking? Really?
• Speaking is a very powerful, direct connection with your audience
• Builds your personal brand very quickly
Speaking Interaction Trust

41. How to start?
Local user
groups
• Meetings
• Code Camps
• Hackathons
Specialized
conferences
• Local
• International
Global
conferences
• International

42. But
“I am afraid of
speaking in
públic”

43. Writing

44. Writing
• “He/she wrote a book on that
subject”
• Writing gives us credibility as an
• Slow-paced, in-depth channel for
message

45. What to write?
Technical articles BooksWhitepapers

46. Additional considerations
• You’re not going to make (much) money out of publishing
• You can sell premium content such as videos

47. Summary

48. • “How do you want to be known”
• It’s not about selling, it’s about
communicating
• 4 key brand ingredients: message,
visuals, consistency, exposure
• Make a plan, keep it going
Personal Branding for Developers

49. Questions?
¿Preguntas?
Preguntes?
Perguntas?
Domande?Galdeak?
Fragen?