Hi, my name is West Kraemer and I’m here to show you the very basics of building a digital brand for yourself during your job hunt.
Start With A Website
The first thing you want is a website. You’ll publish your tent pole, or “pillar” material there. That kind of content usually breaks down along the lines of “audio” (podcast), “written” (blog post), or “visual” (video).
So, if you’re making a podcast, you’ll publish your podcast on your website and send it out to the streaming services from there. If you’re writing a blog, you’ll publish your blog posts there. And if you’re making videos, you’ll use YouTube to host them (because YouTube is free), and embed them onto your website from YouTube.
You’ll build this project on WordPress, which is free. Your website will be “hosted” on Bluehost.(“hosting” means the website’s files will be located there. You’ve got to pay for that. It’s about $80 a year, give or take depending on how much data you use.).
Posting Schedule
Once you’ve got your website and pillar content going, you’re going to start posting it on social media. You’re going to want to post a piece of pillar content once every 4-5 days. In between posting, you’re writing new pillar content, and posting small snippets of information from your previous “pillar” post.
This in-between period is also a great time to post content documenting your process. Overcoming struggle is a compelling narrative, so if you’re frustrated with a process and want to Tweet/IG/LinkedIn about how you overcame that challenge, go for it.
Between these posts of snippets, documentation, and pillar content, try to post at least once a day.
Next Steps
Now, with these tools in your belt, you’re almost ready to start building your brand online so that employers can see why they should hire you.
But, what are you going to post about for all of this? In Part 2 of this series “West Kraemer On:“, I’m going to write about how you first establish your values, a mission statement, and a slogan, then use those values to shape your message and ensure you always have something to write about.