The concept of a ‘digital home’ was introduced to me by Mark Smith during the 90 Day Mentoring Challenge I participated in during 2020. As Mark explained to us, we typically could be creating and curating a lot of online content across a number of digital platforms, from our social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, or by blogging, broadcasting podcasts or creating YouTube videos.
In order to bring all of this content together into one place, so that it is easier for our audience to find and so that it helps to establish or enhance our personal brand, Mark suggested that we create our own websites as a central ‘hub’ to signpost and link out to our different information sources.
Marks ‘nz365guy‘ website is a great example of an awesome digital home, clearly and consistently supporting what the nz365guy brand represents. While Mark is really active across many platforms, his website brings everything together in one place, and as a follower, or a customer of nz365guy, we know exactly what to expect.
As someone who’d never created a website before, it was a bit tricky to know where to start. Mark gave us some basic information but left this as a ‘research’ project for us to implement in our own time. By luck, or maybe great search skills, I came across a guy called Tyler Moore on YouTube who claimed to be able to teach a complete novice how to create a website in 27 easy to follow steps!
As part of our ‘personal brand’ exercise I had already secured a domain name. Aiming for consistency across all platforms, and as I believe I am possibly the only person in the world with my name (I am certainly the only sheryl netley on Facebook) I decided I would use that as it immediately uniquely identifies me across all platforms. I had purchased sherylnetley.com domain name some weeks before, so I then set out to create the site behind the domain!
While it took Tyler only a couple of hours to create his website, it took me around 4 days of on and off effort, mainly as I had not decided in advance how I wanted to structure the site. So after around 4 days I had the bare bones of my site, but no content! I spent the next 3 weeks or so adding bits of content here and there, and during this time I kept the site firmly under wraps as I believed it wasn’t ‘ready’.
One morning I got up, and decided to just ‘switch it on’ as I had realised it would never be ready! And here it is! While it will always be a work in progress, I figure there are some things on here that may help others, and hopefully the more content I create the better I will get at creating content.
If you are thinking of creating your own digital home, please reach out if I can be of any help. Definitely take a look at Tyler Moore on YouTube if you are considering a WordPress site. And remember, in the world of online content as in so many other places, done beats ‘perfect’ every time.