Many smart people have already written how often you should post on various portals and social media. I'm not here to do so, especially since I'm from the Quality over quantity team. In my book, post what you deem worthy, not because you want to fill a void. Instead, let's focus on WHERE you should post. To make matters clear, I decided to divide the portals into four categories:
The heart of every software house - let's talk about code and projects
Obviously, there are no software houses without web development - after all, programming is what we're best at! So why shouldn't we talk about it? The first place on the Internet where you can talk about code is GitHub.
We’re supporting a community where more than 27 million people learn, share, and work together to build software.
- GitHub's "About" section
If you are a programmer, GitHub is the place to be. There you can display the code you are proud of, submit bug fixes, propose changes, as well as browse through the code published by other developers. GitHub allows its users for setting both private repositories and free accounts which are used to host open-source software projects. But why software house should use GitHub? Well, first of all, to show off their hard work!
The second must is the ever so popular Awwwards, a web design and development competition body that focuses on recognising and promoting the best of innovative web design.
A meeting point, where digital design professionals from across the globe find inspiration, impart knowledge and experience, connect, and share constructive, respectful critiques. “Always questioning”, “always evolving”.
- Awwwards "About us" section
You can not only treat like your portfolio for the best, most innovative projects you've worked on, but also make your work seen through a variety of certificates, such as Honorable Mention, Site of the Day, Tribe Mention, Developer Award, Site of the Month, and the most prestigious Site of the Year. Awwwards is commonly used as a place of inspiration for many Developers, Designers, and entrepreneurs that are planning their project - there's no reason for you not to be there!
But that's not all! Another profile worth setting is the one on StackShare, where you can display your stack in a neat and precise way. Also, my colleagues urged me to mention Quora, Stack Overflow, and Reddit when listing places where programmers talk about their work - while you may not need to set the corporate profile there, it's a good idea to be aware of the activities on those websites.
Where to showcase you best web design
Work of Web Developers is the easiest thing to share on the Internet - regardless whether you are a specialist or a complete novice, you can appreciate a job well done. Of course, professionals can do so in a more nuanced wa and see whether the project is created with the latest trends in mind or based on Grid.
Answering the title of this section of the article, among the best places to display your work well done are Dribble and Behance. Similar to Awwwards, those websites are the best of the best - no mediocre projects allowed!
Dribbble is on a mission to build the world’s best platform for designers and creative professionals to gain inspiration, feedback, education, community, and job opportunities.
- Dribbble's "About" section
As you can see, Dribbble is all about creating a community. It's not yet another simple online portfolio, therefore your published works can be liked or commented by viewers, among whom are both professional Designers and people looking for Designers to work with.
Another profile worth setting up if you want to showcase your design skills is on Behance. As they claim on their website, their mission is to empower the creative world to make ideas happen. It's similar to Dribble in its usage - viewers can browse through your projects and show their appreciation to what you've created. With taking care of proper tagging of each entry, you can ensure the visibility of the efforts you put into the designing process.
Knowledge is power, so why not share it?
I'm assuming you put a lot of effort into recruiting the best of the best and hired people with a vast knowledge and expertise in their respective fields. Use it to your advantage by letting them share it! I don't think that I have to convince you that maintaining a corporate blog is a great idea - after all, you are reading one.
You can, however, do more than just share knowledge on your blog! First of all, search for sites to cooperate with - we love working with for instance Mam Startup, a Polish website for startup entrepreneurs, and Dzone, one of the world’s largest online communities and leading publisher of knowledge resources for software developers. Find sources that suit your expertise and propose cooperation - if your content is well written, I don't see why you couldn't work together! We've also had the pleasure to work with the previously mentioned Awwwards - check out the ebook written by our Graphic Designer Paweł! Also, remember about promoting your articles on social media, you can also consider republishing them on Medium - after all, the author put effort into writing it, so it's best that people will be able to easily find it!
But sharing your knowledge is not only about articles. You are part of a very active IT community, therefore you must be aware of its focus on networking, conferences, and meetups. Those events need presentations, which you can conduct. But your job doesn't end with the last slide - what stops you from sharing in on the Internet? All of the presentations we could share can be found of Slideshare, LinkedIn's presentation-sharing website that at the moment is one of the top 100 most-visited sites in the world. Not only viewers can like, share, or download your presentations, but you can also keep your finger on a pulse with the use of the free analytics tool Slideshare provides.
Social media - communication with clients, future employees, and followers
Here are the profiles you probably already know about. After all, all of them are made for personal usage, but that's exactly why they should be included in my list! When run properly, they should be engaging and informative for followers. To ensure that, you should have a strategy - know what kind of content you want to publish. The most important rule should be to post stuff that your followers will find interesting - your profile can't be treated as a bulletin board!
First of all, let's talk about the king of ads, Facebook. With its current policy you can't forget about paid posts, but don't create them willy-nilly - read tutorials on how to do it effectively to avoid spamming users ten times a day or wasting the money you dedicated for promotion. You probably follow many companies on Facebook - think about how they are run and which aspects of it you like, and which you find annoying. Remember, your content competes not only with the one created by other companies but also with the posts of user's friends - as I've mentioned before, it's all about quality over quantity!
Twitter is commonly used all over the world, even is it may not yet be extremely popular in Poland. However, it's a great place to engage with users in a quick, easygoing matter! With the limited number of words, you are forced to be precise and specific within you messages - no long essays allowed! Twitter itself wrote a list of directions for companies on how they can communicate with followers - among their pieces of advice are, for instance, using hashtags (there's no Twitter without hashtags!) and retweeting. But remember about researching the activities of our industry on this platform and making a clear plan of what you post - even with the casual atmosphere of Twitter, you can't create chaos.
LinkedIn seems to get more and more active by the minute - if you use it, you can clearly see that many users don't treat it as an online CV, which was the case not a long time ago. Now the conversation on LinkedIN is flourishing, so why not join it! It's The platform is clearly ready to react to this popularity by creating specific hashtags (for instance #WhenIWas15) and encouraging people to post. Apart from creating your social media presence there (once again, research and plan it!), think who from your company should also be active there. The first thought that comes to mind is obviously a Sales team, but that doesn't stop others from sharing published articles and taking part in the conversation.
This wouldn't be my article without talking about Instagram - after all, I wrote pieces on how to use Instagram in Employer Branding and why web development industry should embrace Instagram. So if you want to read more about this platform, I encourage you to check them out! But to summarize, in my opinion, Instagram, being a perfect EB tool, is where you can let loose and show the life of your company - what's the atmosphere, relations between employees, and what kind of activities you do together after hours. If you take part in any conferences or meetups, why not share it? Personally, I'm a big opponent of maintaining a facade and posting pitch-perfect pictures with overly curated captions (well, maybe not in the beauty industry, but that not us!). I believe that truth is better when you want to encourage people to send their CVs.
What's more?
The platforms I've talked about here are, in my opinion, essential if you want to be seen online. After all, the World Wide Web truly spreads all over the world and you need to put an effort to distinguish yourself. There are many more places where you can post - to keep this article short, I've decided to list them below.
Do you agree with my picks? Maybe you think I've omitted a website you deep essential when talking online about web development - let me know!