Promote yourself well, or fail
You are your own brand. Young journalists need to understand this, and the sooner, the better.
Thursday I gave what I call the “wake-up call” lecture to the students in our Editing class, which is required of all print journalism majors. The gist is that if your name doesn’t Google well — if you don’t have a professional online presence to show — if you don’t know how to do online, digital stuff besides Facebook (and can show proof) — then you’re at a great disadvantage. Because if dozens of people apply for one job opening, some of them are sure to be online savvy and also good at journalism. If you’re not one of them, then you’re not in the running.
Ron Sylvester takes this idea one leap further in explaining how to pimp your work and your professional persona through social networks and micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter). It is not true that if you build it, they will come.
There are 112.8 million blogs listed at Technorati, so what excuse can a young journalist give for NOT having a professional blog? “I don’t have time for that”? What, you don’t have time to write 100 words or so a few times a week? You don’t have the imagination? You don’t know how to manage your time? Don’t know how to make a link, upload an image, write a headline for SEO? I surely do not want to hire you!
But more important, do you know how to put yourself out there with your blog? Do you link to and comment on other blogs? Do you use your RSS reader and Delicious links as tools to widen your personal sphere of contacts and influence? Ah. That’s what I’m talking about.
As a recent grad I agree with this completely and have blogged about it myself.
One slideshow I linked to on my blog is about promoting yourself as a brand.
It’s very insightful:
September 1, 2008 at 10:54 amhttp://www.slideshare.net/coolstuff/the-brand-gap
Wow, that’s a great slideshow, Tim! Thanks!
This seems to sum up the newspaper business:
“Bad brand extensions are those that chase short-term profits at the expense of long-term brand value.
“Good brand extensions grow the value of a brand by reinforcing its focus.”
Focus, focus, focus — makes sense.
September 1, 2008 at 2:05 pm[...] Promote yourself well, or fail [...]
September 1, 2008 at 2:20 pm[...] the same vein, you might also want to read Promote yourself well, or fail, a recent post by Mindy McAdams, who teaches (and blogs about) online journalism at the University [...]
September 1, 2008 at 4:25 pm[...] 1, 2008 · No Comments Here’s an excellent posting from a U of Florida journalism professor, Mindy McAdams. She pushes her students — future [...]
September 1, 2008 at 10:34 pmWell I have a good online presence (online portfolio, blog, good results in Google search, etc., thanks to your recommendations), but how can I make the employers take a look at my work? (Well I guess my problem is I don’t know how exactly I should look for online journalism jobs. I search but I don’t find the right positions. So it would be great if you write a post on that too.)
September 1, 2008 at 11:43 pm[...] of keeping an online record of my work as a journalist, inspired largely by articles such as this and hundreds of other journalistic gems hidden within the deepest corners of the world wide [...]
September 2, 2008 at 5:35 amGood idea, Sanam. I’ll work on it.
September 2, 2008 at 7:50 am[...] The second is about self-promotion. Do you have a quality, professional online presence? Let’s put ourselves out there people! [...]
September 3, 2008 at 7:40 am