jeremyvaught

I started a group on Facebook last year called, “New Media.”  It has almost 11,000 members now and some very interesting things are discussed.  Recently a question was asked that I responded to, and I thought it interesting enough to post it here.  It applies to you if you ask yourself, “what should I do with my website to help me professionally” or more simply, “I have a website, now what?”  This is by no means an exhaustive answer, just some quick thoughts on how to get up and going quickly with a plan.  Please dispute anything.  I would love to hear your thoughts, either here or at the group on Facebook.

Terry Reith asked the question,

“I’m a television journalist in Canada and recently taught myself how to build a site. It’s clear to me that the future is online and these are the tools we’ll need to succeed. But aside from strictly being a vanity exercise how might people use their personal sites when they have nothing to sell? I do television and photography and quite happily give it away. My site is www.terryreith.tv. I’d be interested in seeing some examples of what other media people are doing as well.”

And my response:

“To easily update the content, I suggest setting up a blog. They are designed to update quickly, and are search engine friendly. There are many ways to go. My favorite is installing wordpress.org on my own site. But there are also hosted solutions like wordpress.com, blogger.com and typepad.com.

“Back to putting your content on your website. The advantages are displaying your work is to get credibility for it, become known outside of your initial influence, and then basically whatever you want it to do. :) There are many ways to raise the awareness of your blog. An effective one is to comment on blogs where your potential audience is reading. Don’t spam the comments with an advertisement for your site, but a valuable and useful response, with a simple link will bring visitors wanting to know more about you. Additionally, to bring trust to who you are and your message, it takes time. So don’t expect to drop in, make a comment or two, and magic will happen. Trust takes time. (this goes for your site as well, update as often as you can. No less than twice a month, but more than once every day or two can drive readers away)

“These are what I have for you just off the top of my head, hope this helps!
Jeremy Vaught
[A] King of New Media”