One of the most effective ways to build your digital footprint is to publish your expertise. It helps you further enhance your digital presence and differentiate you from others.

Providing value to readers of your content will raise your profile as a contributor to the members of the community. This will pay benefits in the form of increased credibility.

IBM encourages you to publish your expertise through blogging, sharing files, or simply commenting or replying to questions in your area of expertise, not just within IBM but externally, as well. Benefits of publishing Let's take a look at some of the benefits of publishing.

For the IBM employee:

Increased visibility and a growing reputation can result in career advancement.
Content that offers a fresh perspective will pique interest from your reader base and followers.
Unique content brings new and interesting perspective to the reader, building credibility and trust.
Fresh content is interesting to other web sites. Incoming links will boost your search rankings.
Publishing sets you apart from the competition, and your site will be visited more often.

For IBM:

The IBM brand is best experienced through the communications and interactions of the IBMer.
Expertise is made available to everyone in IBM, thus providing assistance and solutions.
Publishing externally demonstrates IBM technical leadership. This provides a competitive edge for IBM.
Publishing helps clients and business partners through access to IBM intellectual capital.
Peer reviewed articles, commentaries on blogs, and reusable templates reduce workload on IBM's support and technical teams.

Publishing modules The modules in this section will introduce you to the concepts, tools and resources you will need to publish your expertise effectively.

Guidelines Review some basic guidelines on publishing content as an IBMer. Start

Publishing platforms Discover various web-publishing platforms. Start

Publishing resources Join the conversation and see what your colleagues are talking about. Start

Video

Best practices for social computing Short URL: http://bit.ly/eew6bu

Resources

Read IBM's Social Computing Guidelines

Best practices for social computing Short URL: http://bit.ly/eew6bu

Benefits of URL shortening tools

IBM Expert Locator

The IBM Expert Locator is a new web-based service designed to aid in the search and discovery of IBM experts. Our goal for this service is bring to the surface the right experts for the right engagement at the right time, across all possible venues where purposeful interaction can take place. The enrollment process takes just a few minutes: Define your areas of expertise, choose the types of activities you wish to perform and indicate how others may engage with you. Enroll today

Did you know?

In the spring of 2005, IBMers used a wiki to create a set of guidelines for all IBMers who wanted to blog. These guidelines aimed to provide helpful, practical advice to protect both IBM bloggers and IBM. In 2008 and again in 2010 IBM turned to employees to re-examine guidelines in light of ever-evolving technologies and online social tools to ensure they remain current to the needs of employees and the company.

Tip

Most blog platforms are mobile friendly so you can read and write on the go.