Do you market yourself?

Last Update: 03.07.2018. By Jens in Developers Life | Learning | Newsletter

I bet you do not. As most devs don’t do it. I didn’t do it too. At least not intentionally and outside of projects.

But I learned a few things in the last years. One of them is, marketing is important no matter what you do for a living. It’s also not only for companies. Also, marketing is not the sleazy shit we all hate. Nor the blink-blink flash ads or auto-playing videos with sound - ugh.

No, for me marketing is helping others and building relationships which might or might not lead to new work. Doesn’t matter. Even sales talks can be fun if you shift from being salesy to being curious and trying to figure out how you can help the other person. You don’t need to become a car salesman or sell insurances door to door…

Just genuine helping.

Helping your co-worker is marketing. Helping your business guys too.

So is helping other devs at meetups. Or writing tutorials. Or building cool things and showing it to others.

It doesn’t even matter if you are an expert or not. Most often, it’s much better to get help from someone just a few steps farther ahead. Why? Because they can remember how it was a few steps earlier. A master doesn’t remember that.

Just don’t expect immediate results. There are none, it is a long-time game. No magic bullets, hacks or whatever.

Don’t wait, start today :-)