Greetings readers,And how are we on this miserably overcast Summer's day? All I ask for is a few days of uninterrupted sunshine on this Godforsaken isle. Anyway, today I have decided to write about a somewhat atypical topic to my usual blog posts, but nonetheless relevant, and increasingly important to all of us in the modern electronic age: social networking (and using it to create a powerful brand).
The fact that you are reading this already indicates to me that you are reasonably technologically savvy, own a computer or laptop and are probably under the age of about 35. Right? In fact, I could probably deduce a lot more from you given the fact that you are very likely to be one of my "friends" or "connections" through Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or LinkedIn. Now I have to make it clear from the outset that I am certainly no expert in this field and do not want to take a didactic approach to this blog post. However, during the last few months I have spent a large amount of time developing my blog, and very recently have realised that I have been inadvertently building myself a brand. That's right, the Latif Brand.
So to put context to my ramblings. Well, currently I am working as a freelance writer, having managed to sign up to a couple of agencies where I can bid for work. This is as much to provide a means of income as it is to ensure that I continue to flex my intellectual and digit muscles as much possible. Indeed, as I have mentioned in previous posts I will be going back to university to study a Masters at the LSE in less than two months. And so onto my master plan: to continue to spread the word about my blog to as many people as possible, and create a distinct and powerful brand which people will start to associate with me. Of course, you may now be asking the question: yes, OK, but to what purpose are you doing this? Well, granted I will be the first to admit that I a little bit narcissistic, and have ambitions of power and recognition! However, the real end goal is to basically develop myself as an expert in the field of health care and more specifically health economics, WITHOUT a PhD/full-on academic credentials. At the very least I would love to establish myself as an outspoken, informed, intelligent and reasoned individual in the field who is quite simply, eminently employable. That's right, it's all about creating myself a brand in order to get my dream job (government/think tanks/consultancy - are you listening?).
Here are several steps that I have taken which have rapidly increased traffic to my blog:
1. Sync your blog/website to social networking sites. e.g. Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn.
2. If you have Facebook and Twitter, sync them to each other! Can you really be arsed to send a tweet/status update twice?!
3. To create a multimedia-rich experience, embed photos from sites like Flickr and YouTube into your blog. This proved to me much easier than I originally thought it would be and does not require any knowledge of HTML code.
4. Put your blog/website link into your email signature. Trust me, people who see this for the first time will not be able to resist clicking on this out of sheer curiosity! Well, that is the idea anyway.
5. Obviously send FB/Twitter updates when you have new content on your blog. Of course, if you are already synced you will not need to do this, but there's no harm in shouting this to your known world anyway.
6. Start following popular blogs and leave comments. This will invariably create a trail back to yours.
7. Write authoritative blog pieces like this one! If useful and written well, people will (hopefully!) keep coming back...
8. Write interesting content, and update it regularly. As to how often you update is entirely up to you as long as you are fairly frequent and consistent. Otherwise people will simply forget about you and your blog!
9. Enjoy what you write - do not write on topics of which you are ill informed upon. People will clearly see through this. Ideally you should write on something that you are passionate and well informed on, whatever it is. Someone out there will find it interesting.
10. Give your blog personality! Use pictures, photos, videos, logos, graphics and plugins wherever appropriate. However, most importantly, write well! If you do, readers will take you much more seriously, and will likely come back for more!
11. Add your blog to Technorati, a real-time search engine for blogs. Although there were well over 110 million blogs registered to Technorati at the last count, this also means that in theory, you have 110 million other blogs to link to! I have just joined, and understand that a good way to increase your "blog authority" (number of links from other blogs made to your blog) is to link to the most popular ones, like the Huffington Post (see what I just did).
The salient point here is to create something that is distinctive and represents you. Once you have done this, you should create and integrate your social networks to maximum effect, driving traffic into your blog. This will eventually lead to a powerful brand, and fame/recognition/money/jobs/sex [delete as appropriate].
Personally I plan to continue developing my blog whilst a student (and where better to meet people and spread your message?) with a view to hopefully landing a dream job by September 2010. However, if this plan doesn't come to fruition I can honestly say that I absolutely love writing, so I guess the moral of the story is nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Just to be blatantly nepotistic for a second, I would like to plug my good friend Ben Slater's new artistic project, Glass Magazine, and his portfolio, here.
Currently listening to Peter Van Hoesen's recent mix from "Get The Curse", and can honestly say this is one of the best mixes I have listened to in ages. Driving, deep, moody, atmospheric and very epic. Quite reminiscent of Slam at their peak so if you like epic synth stabs, chord progressions, Detroit and Chicago sounds, you're in for a treat...
As always, thank you for reading.
Peace,
F.
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