photo: Kathleen Murtagh

BOOST YOUR ONLINE PROFILEFOR DEVELOPERS

@blairwadman

ABOUT ME

• 8 years’ Drupal experience

• Wrote Master Drupal 7 Module Development

• Been building my own profile on BeFused.com (now mostly about Drupal) for 8 years

• Contracting in London for the last 5 years

• Focusing on remote freelancing & consulting and selling products

@blairwadman

18k

5.5k

2014 Traff ic Growth - BeFused.com

Bui lding an onl ine prof i le is extra work

photo: Dave C

WHY DO IT?

Building an onl ine profi le

• Give back and help others

• Sell a product

• Position yourself as an expert

• Generate quality leads

2007 to present

2013 to present

2015

2007 to present

The story of 2 developers & a cl ient

• 2 developers: Bob & Alice

• 1 client: Tim

Based on a true story

no developers were harmed in the

making of this story

Bob & Alice• Both have 8 years’ Drupal experience and worked on

some high profile projects

• Both are experts at backend Drupal development

• Drupal dev is just a job

• Doesn’t share his knowledge publicly

• Shares her knowledge by blogging

• Google loves her content

• People know her name because they read her stuff

• They have trust in her knowledge & expertise

Bob Alice

Tim

• Tim is building a complex Drupal site for a client

• Tim has a problem he can’t solve and needs a hardcore backend Drupal developer

• He doesn’t know anyone directly, but has read Alice’s content before and likes it

Tim’s world

• Bob does not exist

• Alice does & already trusts her expertise

• Tim contacts Alice & convinces her to help him

Posit ioning & Authority

• Alice has positioned herself as an expert via education based marketing.

• The client approaches her in a totally different light

Positioning: how you are perceived

Education based marketing:Tool to build authority & attracts prospects to you without needing to reach out to them

18k

5.5k

@blairwadman

How did I increase my profi le?

• Mountain of knowledge stored

• Solve problems & learn new things all day long

• Teach those things regularly

TEACH WHAT I KNOW

photo: Ben Russell

Mix of long & short tutorials

• What is a Drupal developer? (1376 words)

• 11 tips to keep Drupal up to date with security releases (943 words)

• Rolling back a Drupal site following Drupalgeddon (1030 words)

• Improve Drupal email delivery rates by using Mandrill (599 words)

• How to backup your Drupal database to Amazon S3 (889 words)

• How to (almost) eliminate comment spam with Drupal (643 words)

• My top 10 Drush commands (584 words)

• Essential Drupal development tools (2118 words)

• How to structure your modules directory (1366 words)

• Automate Drupal site updates with a deployment module (1913 words)

• How Drupal returns a page request (800 words)

My guidel ines

• Don’t overwhelm readers or assume too much

• Explain steps clearly

• Illustrate with graphics

• Use a proof reader (use draftin.com)

• Write daily. Publish weekly

• Include some evergreen content

• Mix of long in-depth posts & short posts

Pil lar posts

• Long in-depth posts (1000-3000 words)

• Tutorials, how-to’s, guides, video tutorials, cheat sheets

• Tend to convert well, get shared the most & attract the most traffic from Google

• Can take a long time to write

Smaller posts

• 200 to 1000 words

• Code snippets, quick tips, short tutorials

• Do this on a regular basis

TRAFFIC

photo: J P

People focus on

• SEO

• Keyword research, link building, competitor research

• Advertising

• Adwords, Facebook

• Social media strategy

• LinkedIn profile

Instead, focus on

• High quality content for a single audience

• Publish regularly

• Create awareness

don’t overwhelm readers explain steps clearlyillustrate with graphicsproof reader

editorial calendar

Q&A sites Forumssocial mediaconferences

planet drupalguest postspodcastsdirect outreach

photo: Alfred Hermida photo: miss insomnia tulip

Cat reads article Cat gets distracted

Cat never returns to your website

Capture Email & offer more value

• Email frequently

• Start and build relationship with your audience

• Ask them questions to understand their problems

• Helps build trust

Call to actions

BeFused Funnel

tutorials snippets articles

newsletter free course

premium book

consulting/ freelancing

Anonymousvisitors

Email subscribers

Premiumcontent

Premiumservice

Caveats

• This is a long-term game

• Need other client sources

• It’s more about giving back than getting clients

• Clients don’t necessarily care about technical posts!

QUESTIONS

BeFused.com

BlairWadman.com

@blairwadman