So it’s that time of year again. Call for papers is open for a few of the large conferences including the Scrum Gathering and Agile Alliance for 2014 conferences. Have you ever wondered how to get your submission accepted? It’s a great way to enhance your personal brand, build credibility, and work on your speaking skills. There are some simple tips that have helped me to get proposals accepted and I will share them in this post.
So this LinkedIn and Google+ post is long overdue, I know. I’m excited to say that I got to work with my good friend Jake Calabrese on it when I saw him a few weeks ago in Denver. Jake has been doing some interesting branding work as well with the launch of his new site www.vimstreet.com. He also had some great information to share, including this, which makes me feel better about this delayed post: “Above all – you should not be stressed about social media. If you are, you need to slow down or back off. You should be learning, sharing, helping, contributing at a pace that is comfortable. You CAN’T read every tweet or linked blog – it’s not possible. Read a few, share some things, move on to other items.” -J.C.
And the personal branding saga continues with something very near and dear to my heart, Twitter. Twitter is one of those technologies that many people just don’t understand. But once understood it has tremendous branding and communication power. There are tons of articles and posts about how to use Twitter and since you’re smart people I’m sure you can find them or figure it out; this is just my personal experience about how I tripled my follower count in five months.
I’ve mentioned blogging as an important part of your personal brand numerous times. If you’ve been following my earlier posts, I talk about blogger’s block, and securing your domain for a blog. But what does a good blog look like? How should you make your blog stand out to gain readership? I have a few ideas and I also reached out to my good friend and successful Agile blogger, Jesse Fewell, (@jessefewell) to get his thoughts.
I’ve been alluding to a series on personal branding and following my last post regarding why to personal brand, here is the next in the series. Consider this Personal Branding 101 – the introductory course, how to get started. In subsequent posts I will dive deeper into various outlets in which to enhance your personal brand, and get contributions from others within the Agile community, but this is the basics. Keep in mind, none of this information is super prescriptive – simply lessons learned from experience and simple research.
