Fan To Pro - The Blog of Professional Geekery

Promoting Professional Geekery #4: Start The Damn Blog!

Well it's quite a good week to be focusing on one of my favorite subjects - promoting professional geekery, the idea that people can (and in many cases) should turn what they love into a career.  It's "Speak Out With Your Geek Out" and let me focus on #4: Starting The Damn Blog.

Why not just Starting The Blog?  Because you (and others) have thought about a blog so often that it's not just "the blog I want to start" it's "the damn blog I should get to."

So, start it.

How to Tumblr

Hello, everyone.  Today we’re going to talk about Tumblr, and how it can be used to promote your creative project or personal brand.  Here’s the short answer: you can’t... but someone else can.

The thing about Tumblr (and for that matter, Twitter, Facebook, and all other forms of social media) is that your page is obviously created by you.  Therefore, when you promote your own brand, your efforts have a clear bias to them.  If you’ve already got a following and you’d like to keep them updated, then Tumblr is a good way to do it for a couple of reasons.

Launch or Be Lunch, Day 17 - Originality is SO Original, Part 2: Composition is Not a Crime

Aaaaaaand we're back.  Yesterday, we talked about the concepts of originality vs. unoriginality, and why unoriginality isn't rated high enough or that originality is overrated; in the end, it's how you treate the unoiriginality in an unoriginal manner.  In a sense, it's like the concept of Fair Use in copyright: it's the transformative and new meaning to the source that counts.

And now it's time to get into that little shibboleth. Hang on to your pens and pencils, boys and girls, because what I'm about to say is probably going to turn a few heads at best and floor people at worst.  Also, because I could go forever on the subject and all its different permutations, I'm only going to stick to how it related to manga and comics; I'll acknowledge that it happens all too often in other media and others can cover that better than I can.  

So with that, let's get started.

Interview with Smultron of Hawaii Kawaii

Smultron Rydstedt, the creator of Hawaii Kawaii , talks about how to make and market an image-based blog.

Launch or Be Lunch, Day 29 - Building a Better Yin-Feng, Part 1

Building a character is always a proud endeavor of any creator.  You breathe life into the creation, give it wings, give them a place in the greater universe of your works.  Sometimes it makes for happy campers.  Sometimes it makes for thrilling engagement with your fans.  Sometimes...well, let's not get into those ones, those are creepy enough. ^_^;;;

But there's one thing that you can often count on: you'll have to, sooner or later, modify your character.  Such as it is with two of our characters.  Today, I'll detail the headaches we've had working the fun for Yim-Fong Yim-Feng Yin-Feng.

The Benefits of Blogging: Learning Again

I've been blogging here for going on three years (man, has it been that long?) and it's been been pretty informative. So, since I'm in a bit of a nostalgic mood as the third anniversary approaches, I wanted to share some of my insights on blogging with my fellow progeeks.

I often advise people to try blogging – sure it's not for everyone, but I find it's very useful to pursue, because if it is for you, you'll gain a lot of benefits. So, don't take this as pressuring you towards blogging, but I want to share an interesting professional benefit about blogging as I do–on careers and so forth.

One of the benefits of blogging is that you learn something twice.

Usage Based Billing is an Unfair Bad Bargain

And now, News from the North* with regard to Usage Based Billing and the coverage thereof.  First, a long and boring intro for those who are unfamiliar with the situation.

All of the radio, TV, Internet, etc in Canada is run by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC.  That is, if it involves using electricity to send information a long distance, it’s the CRTC who manages the connections.  Why is it set up like that?  The same reason that everything in Canada is set up as a Crown Corporation and not a bunch of small competitive businesses.  Because, in the early days when Canada was just getting itself together, there was this massively powerful emerging country to the south whose competitive businesses could easily stamp out our own.  Therefore, Canada stuck whatever resources it had all together, so we would have something that would survive and remain Canadian.  The fact that we use our Canadian media to tune into American content anyway is one for the Irony Files. 

Fear not that I have painted a picture of Soviet Canuckistan as a socialist wasteland.  It is required, by law, that our big ISPs (Bell, Rogers, and Shaw) must lease some of the infrastructure to smaller companies.  Even though it’s the big guys who built our infrastructure, they have to allow for some competition.  Now, these little guys often offered better deals and lower prices, until one day...

Dun dun dunnnnn.

Rage Against the Dying Of The Site

I was doing another round of link research for the blog (you'll see some new resources soon), and once again Bonnie and I ran into another round of dead sites.  You've heard me rant about this before - there's so many blogs and sites out there they would be awesome, interesting, and progeeky if they were actually updated.

In ranting to a friend, he simply said, "Oh, like Geocities?"  That stopped me in my mental tracks.

Five Reasons to Write a Blog

1. It’s impressive.
Blogs are still a new enough item that not everyone has one and people still find them to be a novelty.  Saying you have a blog today is like saying you have a website fifteen years ago.



2. It’s good for skill development.
It’s good writing practice, since blogging means you have to write something on a regular basis.  Writing skills are useful pretty much anywhere.  In addition to which, blogging means that you have to do your research on your topic(s) and keep an eye out for new information.  True, if you like the topic enough to start a blog on it, you’re probably already on top of it, but having that extra accountability forces you to reach even further.  Blogging broadens your horizons.

3. It helps you build a fanbase.
Depending on your preferred format of progeekery, you might have to promote your work or personal brand.  A blog is a great way to show off your creations and/or the cool things you get up to.

4. It introduces you to likeminded people.
Putting some high quality writing out there is a great way for other geeks to take notice.  Start a blog, promote it well, and you will likely meet people.  Sometimes this will happen via folks leaving comments, but more likely you’ll meet people while actively promoting your blog. You probably wouldn’t frequent certain websites quite as often if you weren’t going there to post links.  However it happens, it’s good to meet new people.  This can help you with business connections and/or forming a geeky support network.  It could also offer up some candidates for fansourcing. 


5. It builds a web presence that looks good to potential employers.
You know how they say you should keep your Facebook page clear of anything you don’t want people to see, because when you apply for a job, they’ll Google search you?  Use that to your advantage.  Get a blog out there under your name.  Not only will the search turn up that you’re a fine upstanding citizen, but you also take the time and effort to keep a blog going.  It can also be helpful to direct your potential employer to your blog if it demonstrates your knowledge of the subject.  For example, if you’re applying for a programming job, it helps that you also write tutorials for how to use ___[language that is most relevant to said job]____.  Similarly, if you’re applying for a writing job, it helps to link to your blog in addition to those three writing samples they’ll ask you for.

Thank you, and happy blogging.

-Tamara Hecht

Blogging, Bundling, and Brainstorming

Awhile ago you all witnessed me mitigate my disagreement with the "everyone must blog" feeling that seems to percolate around the internet, especially in the career-sphere.  I admit that I still think not everyone needs to blog, but agree that blog involvement done right IS a good idea - it gets your name outs there, teaches discipline, builds connections, and informs people.

The problem is that a blog requires content otherwise it's really just a placeholder with an index attached to it.  I've been doing this blog with Bonnie for over a year, and as our early readers noticed, we began adding more and more content over the last few months.  So I'd thought I'd share just how I do non-news content.

First and foremost, let me reiterate what I've said before - don't blog about something if you dont have a reason to.  In fact, these techniques won't help much if you don't have any real reason to write.