Today we have a guest editorial from Grant Fritchey as Steve is away on his sabbatical.

One way to begin to take your career to a new level is to publish online what you know, what you’re learning, and all the cool things you do. This may be blogging, recording videos, tweeting, Instagram, who knows. The sky is the limit when it comes to all the various types of social media and the means of sharing information online. Yet, building an online persona from scratch is a lot more difficult than it looks like from the inside.

I’ve been building out my persona since 2008. Actually, it started even earlier when I began writing articles for various web sites before finding a home at SQL Server Central. Things slowly expanded, and I started Tweeting. I set up a Facebook page. I started coordinating and automating all of that stuff together. Now, I have a unified online message, but it grew over the years.

Now, I’m just starting to help my local ham radio group set up its social media presence as a way to promote the organization and ham radio better. You know what, it’s a daunting task doing this for the first time. Suddenly, I can see why so many people just don’t bother. It’s a crazy amount of work to get all the different social media configured, with a common message, a common image. This is not easy.

So, here’s my advice to you. If you’re considering this, take it one step at a time. If you want to get a full-blown online persona, you can get there. However, it’s going to be work. Further, it’s going to be work you do in the evenings, on weekends, after you put the kids to bed or deal with that production outage. Don’t get discouraged. Don’t give up. Just take one step at a time. Know that getting yourself out there is worth the time and effort that it takes.