If you are an aspiring marketer, a personal website is essential. There is no better way to exhibit your knowledge than fielding questions from the general public. Your readers expect to be able to ask marketing questions and receive thoughtful answers. Your marketing website is both a forum and an advertisement. There, you will establish your credentials as a marketing expert and, with any luck, generate requests for consultations and/or job offers.
Here are some steps you should take to establish a successful website:
- Buy an appropriate domain name, like www.askyourname.com. They usually only cost about $10 a year. There are plenty of Internet domain sellers that will supply you with a domain name. Prepay for at least a five-year ownership period – you’ll know by then whether marketing is working out for you. Also, some search engines penalize the search results for sites that have only a one- or two-year ownership.
- Hire a good webmaster. You will definitely want to set up a WordPress website, as these are the most versatile and popular blog sites. Specify for your webmaster what you would like to be included in your site design, and rely on his or her experience to deliver you a good product.
- Blog. Your life is brimming with an interesting mix of knowledge and opinion. Write about your experiences and how they were significant. No detail is too esoteric to write about if you have the courage to expose your ideas to the world. Remember, readers expect you to have an authoritative persona, and for you to offer good advice. If you need some help writing your blog, hire a freelance writer to ghostwrite your entries.
- Field questions. This is the main purpose of your website, and should lead to lively discussions on marketing topics.
- Check backlinks using an Internet tool. You need to know which other websites are linking to yours. First, these backlinks can boost your search engine results when marketing directors search Google for recruits. Second, you will get some perspective on who is talking about you and what is being said. If you wish, you can hire a search engine optimization (SEO) expert to help you increase the traffic drawn to your website by selling you well-structured backlinks.
Remember to continually post new content, as this tends to increase your site traffic. A well-executed website can have a positive impact on your marketing career, so make the effort to create an attractive site that invites the world to ask you questions.