When we talk about “Branding”, often we thought about sales & marketing.Yes, nothing wrong here! In fact, many developers/geeks doesn’t know that it is important to them too.

I’m here just to share a little bit of my personal experience.

My little story begin

This was started in year 2011, that was my intership program. My supervisor, Mr Ang (drop me an email if you interest to know him) advice me to sign up an GitHub account.
Yes, I do follow, by that time I didn’t know what is this for. After a couple of months before I leave the company, he then suggest me to create an open source project, at first I have no idea what project I can create, also didn’t know the purpose…

Blogging

Until I got my first job as a Cold Fusion programmer, this language was new to me, thus I have a lot to learn. From here, I started to blog in Octopress platform (I love markdown, also I can use my favourite editor, ViM to write).
My intention was to jot down the learning so that I can refer anytime. But up until this point, I realized that my blog has helps a lot of developers out there to solve their problems.

2 years+ later, my website just grown up. Refer Alexa rank & Google Analytics below.

Alexa rank

Alexa rank for jslim.net

Google Analytics

Google Analytics for jslim.net

In March 2015, I received an email from Packt publishing, offer me to review a book Mastering Laravel
. I think they get my email from my blog, you can see how a normal software developer can reach to the world.

GitHub

Aside from blogging, GitHub also a platform for us as a developer to show case our skills & passion.

Back in 2013, I had been assigned an in-house project which was to create an iOS app that can decrypt encrypted-QR-code.
From here, the first thing I did was to google about the keywords “RSA decryption in iOS”, of course, after few days of searching without getting any solution!

Some time bad thing can unleash our potention! Because I’m the “most senior” other than boss, I have to find a way to get it works! At the end I think of using C language to decrypt it, since Objective-C can mix with C code.

After sometime, I modified the messy code and publish in my GitHub account. Until now, it has 40 stars & 21 forks, although it may not be a very great number, but I believe it has already helps many other developers.

Stackoverflow

If you’re a developer, I’m 100% sure that you know about this platform. Have you ever post any questions? Have you ever answer any questions?

There are some users in Stackoverflow I always see their name, which has high reputation as well. Often the questions they post, or the answers they post are very helpful to us.

If you never post anything here, I suggest you start posting, it helps others, also helps you!

Write books

I never write any book before. Previously I attended an event about publish books, I’ve learned that write a book can actually build up your name quickly.

Imagine that you write a book, and publish for free (eBook may be a good choice here), even though you may not see any tangible profit, but how many people in this world download your book? From here, you’re making tons of intangible profit.

Summary

Of course, there are many more like give a technical talk, etc. also helps in building up your name.
In current century, we’re talking about portfolio, not a degree certificate, not a fancy resume!

I highly recommend you to start a blog if you haven’t.

If you’re a most expert programmer in the world, but nobody knows you, then you’re just a nobody.