Sherlock Holmes

… or what happened to ShaiDorsai?

Following a personal branding/social media engagement post on Richard’s blog, I thought “Yes, fair, I ought to make it plainer who I am, and take more open ownership of my opinions”.

Another guy whose blog I read (actually, I take an RSS feed but that’s another matter), and whose posts I admire is Chris Brogan. He’s written a whole series of post, including Elements of a Personal Brand:

Build a Destination

This comes first in giving people a way to reach you, to see you, to know what you’re about. In this case, I mean giving people a website (preferably a blog), a phone number, an email account, a twitter account, a LinkedIN profile, and a Facebook profile. At minimum.

Now, I had the last 3 in my name, so it seemed churlish not to provide a recognisable blog and email address…

Get your blog a domain name

Now, I started *this blog* on WordPress.com, as it was easy – but the wordpress.com suffix takes away from my identity…

I use 1and1.co.uk, amongst others, for domain names and I ordered steveellwood.com from there. It’s about £11 a year. Initially, I just had a frame forward to my blog, but then decided I’d rather do it *properly*. I followed the instructions at the WordPress FAQ – after a moment’s hesitation, as you can’t pay for the domain upgrade until you have pointed your domain at the WordPress nameservers. That came at a cost of $10 a year.

Sort out your email

In line with WordPress’s suggestion, I used Google Apps for Your Domain to sort this out, again there are easy Google Mail configuration instructions. [It’s probably easier if you don’t already use GoogleApps – but if you do, you can find your configuration code at https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/YourDomainName/VerifyOwnership]

So, I can now be contacted at my domain, too. Currently I forward mail to another account, but can always find it through Google Apps email.

Why not self-host?

I have another blog (at http://shaidorsai.co.uk) which I self hosted, so I could learn about WordPress, and I may even do that at sometime.

Until then, it’s easy to use WordPress.com, and since *I* own the domain this blog now sits under I could easily point it to a self-host if I want – and WordPress.com makes it easy to export your blog to ease the transition…

Image Credit: gregwake

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2 thoughts on “Personal branding and blogging

  1. Ah yes, it seems the day has come (and gone) when personal brand is so much more then word of mouth reputation. it has become a marketing battle with blogs, micro blogs and social networking etc.

    This has some great benefits, allowing talanted individuals to rise above his immediate social or professional circles, often to great benefit. However there is a downside, it provides a larger stage for the “all mouth and no trousers” brigade.

    Then add to the mix, tha fact that really good, innovative techies often lack the ability to market themselves effectively..

  2. Shel Israeltalks about personal branding saying “I do not consider good branding–personal, product or corporate to be noise. I do not believe personal branding is the act of talking about one’s self.”

    I think you’re right about some techies not marketing themselves effectively; but how do we address that?

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