Creating a web presence

As Dan Waters points on his excellent blog post about working in the game industry, you have to be known to be hired.  If you are playing games on line, make sure to go for the badges and protect your gamertags.  You need to blog, and you need to blog in a disciplined manner, I didn't for the past three years, I just kind of goofed off at it, and now I have to compete with people like Dan, or Clint Rutkas, if I had been doing regular blogging I would have been in the same position as Alfred Thompson, who has a strong following.  Alfred Thompson shows up high in the Live Search (or that other search engine), proving that he is connected.

To lift my presence, as well as your own, you need to connect with a blog ring, using a consistent blog tool, my recommendation is to use https://home.services.spaces.live.com/ , get your live ID, and then create your first blog and reference this article by clicking on the headline (Creating a web presence) and copying the link.  Put it in your blog.  I will use Technorati, which I will discuss at a later time to find out where your blog is and I will reference your blog on a regular basis.  I will, that is, if you write about your game design, games you play, game stories and other things that you are doing with games, I don't really care about what you are doing with your personal life.  In fact you should use Live Spaces for creating a more professional basis for your web presence.  Facebook has issues with not being quite professional, LinkedIn is a little too professional and costs real money to use fully, Live Spaces exists in between the two systems.  Due to the excellent marketing Microsoft has done with Live Spaces, it is unlikely you have tried it, so you have a clean history on Live Spaces.  Use Live Spaces to clean up your web presence for the job market.

One of the best tools to use with Live Spaces, or any blog is Live Writer, this is an AMAZING TOOL and it is free. Download it by clicking here.

So here is the checklist that you need to do to get that web presence going:

  1. Create a blog and copy a reference to this article into your blog
  2. Request to be my friend on the site: https://xnagaming.spaces.live.com, this will connect us in the Live Spaces
  3. Play some games on Xbox 360, Xbox, Windows, PSP or wii, then write about your experience on your blog.  Use good grammar and perform a spell check.
  4. Place your gamer tag on the blog and make sure to read other people's blogs, link to their blogs and make comments
  5. Follow these blogs
  6. Expect to send an average of 30 minutes working on your blog a day, and about 15 minutes a day working on your Facebook, etc.
  7. If you are a student sign up for the Imagine Cup contest at https://www.imaginecup.com and participate, if you are 18 and over college student, including community colleges, you can participate.  This is an AWESOME contest.

Keep reading this blog and tell your friends.  We will be working through a simple Zune example, but for now you might want to leave a comment on what you would like to see in an example.  Thanks!