This is a five minute presentation I gave at Ignite Sydney in October 2009, covering effective ways to promote yourself online without being evil. It is mostly applicable to the geek industry, but should be useful outside it as well.

1. Selling yourself online
Evangelism and promotion, not slavery OR mail-
order brides
Chris Mills, Opera Software

2. The Web is grrrreat!
<q>The web - helping ugly geeks pick up chicks since
1992!</q>

3. People conduct themselves
badly on the Web

4. There is a better way to get
people’s attention

5. Be nice!
Be courteous at all times
Give stuff away for free
Help people
Communicate clearly and appropriately

6. Communicate clearly...
Make sure your written communication is impeccable
Reflects on your integrity/professionalism

7. Appropriate language
Don’t use the word evangelism when evangelizing
Don’t leverage your synergies in public!
Don’t talk down to your audience

8. The WWW is worldwide...
Don’t resort to buzzwords and colloquialisms
Think about your international audience
Make language simple and clear

9. Get your audience excited
about your functionality, not
your brand

10. Get your developers excited
about making your
functionality better

11. Give cool stuff away for free

12. Help people!
On forums
On mailing lists
On Twitter
At public events

13. But be courteous, and keep
your cool at all times

14. <q>Incidental
marketing</q>

15. <q>Incidental
marketing</q>
<q>Wow, that Opera guy helped me again. I like him. I
might try their browser</q>

16. Get your facts straight

17. Respect your competition

18. Work with your competition

19. (Look what happened when
we didn’t work together)

20. Be honest; admit when you
screwed up

21. Example: Opera Web Fonts
bug
We reported it
Offered a temp workaround
Reporting on when it was fixed
in the final product