Go LIVE please. pt 2.
So, now you've obtained your domain name and you've selected your host service provider what next? You could cheat like me and have a friend sort out your use of the latest craze – wordpress – or you could play with old fashioned html and code (because you have no friends). Before you get carried away lets not forget strategy in all of this. Students are great at strategic and tactical thinking but often fail to realize that these core activities are related as much to themselves as they are their clients. Some simple questions need to be answered and for once I'll move you away from the 5 questions (which also work exceedingly well for personal websites):
- Leave the computer and your new toys alone for one moment and go back to pen and paper. Take out your resume, which will naturally discuss things such as your career objectives, your profile, your current standing in academia and aspects of your uniqueness to a potential employer. Look at yourself long and hard in the mirror and ask the question – who am I and what am I looking to achieve outside of college.
- Think big picture – how does my resume, my cover letters, my email signature, my web site and my self presentation all sit together? Is there a convergence? Are they all saying the same thing and is that same thing the way in which I want to be recognized? Try themeing yourself. What key issues exist about you that you want people to know? Is it really that you can shoot 4 pints of beer down your throat in less then 5 seconds or something that says more about your ability to analyze problems (if so, start to change your myspace or facebook account accordingly – at least until you have your first dream job). Draw out these key themes and focus your efforts around these.
- NOW you can pick up a pencil and some fresh paper and start storyboarding your new site. You'll find you're a little more armed and dangerous having completed your analysis of the first two points. Sketch out key areas of your site. Don't re-invent the wheel here, benchmark best practice and get onto google and look for good examples. BEWARE – stay true to yourself at all times, if you're not an athlete but aspire towards being one – demonstrate that in terms of future goals. Pretending you're something you're not will only get you into trouble (for instance lying about your handicap on the golf course).
- Some specific tactics for you to consider about the nature of your site: identify top level headings that will form the basis of your site, contact information, hobbies / personal, career aspirations, a blog, multimedia, examples of work and so on. What do you need that will give you the differentiation you need against competition? What key skills are you trying to present? If they're strategic management or marketing skills your site had better make sense.
- If you're not a graphic design major do not attempt to look good with non vectorized graphics. If the last sentence makes absolutely no sense to you, please do not play with photoshop. Ask someone who knows what they're doing to help you out. Remember that in this day the new look is text. It spiders properly on search engines, it always looks good irrespective of browser and it's easy to change. My advice is to choose a wordpress template that someone has designed and use that.
- Don't forget to use every opportunity to promote a techniologically positive image – include RSS feeds, use the latest toys such as youtube.com, phone blogs, moblogs, include your skype contact details, use trillian to merge IM accounts and include all of your contact points on your site. Make it as easy and as simple as possible for people to connect with you.
- REALITY CHECK. Get someone who couldn't care less whether they offend you or not to offer an honest appraisal of your work. What image do they immediately see having perused your new wonderful site? Do they see a brilliant mind or a raving dork as a result of reading your blog?
- Allow yourself to become addicted to updating content, keep the site fresh and as appealing as possible. Let it become a hobby.
- Use every opportunity to promote your site using your full arsenal. Resumes, emails, cover letters and so on. Drive traffic that will ultimately allow people to see who you are in more detail then a CV could ever.
Dr Hair is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the E Philip Saunders College of Business at RIT.
© 2006, Dr Neil Hair. All rights reserved.
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its about targeted traffic. no one cares if a one eyed jack in Sumatra comes to my site.
its all about the right kind of traffic. which is why specifically targeted sites work and random ones dont.
Good point Gaurav…if you create a site that focuses on your quest to become an Account Exec at a big ad firm on Park Ave and KEEP IT FOCUSED on that topic – it is more likely to draw the right audience (the people who work on and hire for the big ad firms). Also, another point Neil – if your site has a blog component – promote the hell out of the RSS feed. Search spiders love RSS and there are tons of RSS directories and search engines now.
Dr. Hair, I would like to thank you very much as it is this blog post that got me motivated to redo my website in full. In addition to that, I took your advice and used WordPress to design the whole thing, and I must say it is much easier to edit content now (wherever I am for that matter, as long as I have access to the Internet and a browser).
I tried hard to find a professional looking theme for my site design, and the closest I was able to come to one, without having to use/copy the theme of your website, was a theme designed by the author of your theme. Interestingly enough, Nick Lin & I both came across the same theme within hours of each other.