As a professional and an authority in your field, branding is important, whether you have your own solo business or work for someone else. You may not like the idea of marketing yourself, but personal branding can set you apart and above your competitors. A personal WordPress website hosted on a domain that you own is a smart tool for networking and for promoting yourself.
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Your personal website is your online hub.
Use your WordPress site to connect with customers, clients or prospective employers — to keep your career alive, and keep the cash flowing. As your online platform develops, you have more control over your current income and future opportunities. (Thinking of employers as customers is a good way to ease into an empowered entrepreneurial mindset if you’re an employee.)
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With your own domain, you’re a publisher with editorial power.
On your own website, you have control over the editorial guidelines and the content you publish. On LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, you play by their rules. Free blogs on domains that someone else owns, like Blogger, Google+, or even WordPress.com, are not the best places to develop and store a portfolio of professional content. They usually have terms of service that give them rights to use any content you publish. Instead, host your own WordPress site on your own domain, using the free downloadable file from WordPress.org. (Read about the WordPress.com vs WordPress.org differences.)
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Developing and distributing content online can create an inbound flow of new career opportunities.
When you strategically develop content in your field of expertise, and consistently distribute it to places where your customers gather online, new career opportunities can find you. Inbound marketing, or content marketing, starts with researching the social media sites that your prospects use. Pay attention to the content that gets the most votes, shares, or likes. Look for opportunities to enter those conversations with your own blog posts or videos — and remember to add links to your website so people can visit.
If you keep your WordPress website updated as your career develops, you’ll have an interactive online resume reflecting your career growth and accomplishments. Set non-public pages to no-index and publish them to private status. You can password-protect pages you may want to share with select individuals.
When it’s time to change jobs or careers, direct people to the content you want to showcase by sharing specific links or the passwords your created for special pages. As webmaster, the choice of what to share is yours.