A Social Media Guide for Programmers

Today’s digital marketplace has made it easier than ever for programmers to find work. Our article ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Being a Codepreneur’ emphasizes that every business needs web development to access enormous opportunities for success. While this presents a flourishing landscape for programmer job opportunities, marketing remains vital. No matter how excellent and reliable your services are, you will need to entice clients into working with you by advertising how you can meet their needs.

Fortunately for you, social media can be an accessible and cheap avenue to connect you with a broad client base, provided you know what you’re doing. With Pew Research Center stating that 7 out of 10 Americans are on social media to connect with one another, accessing that network can make or break it for your success as a programmer. Here’s what you need to know about social media for marketing.

Create engaging content

Creating engaging content not only attracts followers who want to know more about your work, but also educates potential clients about why they might need your expertise. This is particularly important, as many of the clients you’ll work with might not be aware of the complexities and value of programming to their business. The book ‘One Million Followers’ by entrepreneur Brendan Kane points out that when creating content, you should focus on asking what will be educational for your audience and demonstrate that you’re a thought leader in your field. When you post insightful material that satisfy the answers to these questions, then your posts are set apart from the noise. This also helps you reach a broader audience, expanding your following and potential client base, as people are more likely to share your content or find you through others’ profiles.

Let your audience know they can trust you

To turn your followers into customers, you must present yourself as someone they can trust. In ‘Building a Storybrand’, New York Times bestselling author Donald Miller emphasizes the importance of creating a persona that your audience can relate to. One of the best ways to do this is by identifying your customer’s problems. Miller explains that the more you talk about the difficulties your followers experience, the more interest they will have in your brand. So when it comes to creating content, pinpoint the problems that clients commonly recruit programmers for. Are they worried about business security? Are they concerned about customer experience? Do they want to expand scalability? Talking about how these problems are commonly tackled will impress upon your audience that these are issues you have experience solving.

Track and adjust

Tracking your progress will let you know how effective your posts are. But to do this, you will first need to set goals and metrics. Are you looking for broader reach, greater engagement, or more traffic to your audience? Once you’ve set your goals, you should use social analytics tools that measure these elements on your posts. Seeing how well or poorly your posts are doing can help you evaluate and track what factors could be affecting their success rate. These could be due to the time posted, the medium, or even who is sharing it. It could even be about the content or wording — is your post filled with too much programming jargon that can be off-putting for your readers? Once you note these elements, you can adjust your strategy according to what would work best.

Marketing yourself as a programmer can be a daunting task. But with these three tips, you can build a follower and client base that can help you grow as a professional.

Article written by Regina James

Exclusively submitted to JG.

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