Data Scientist’s Guide to Effective Self-Promotion: Boost your online presence with simple Strategies.
Before you skip over this article, thinking it will pressure you to work harder or longer, please bear with me for a moment. Unfortunately, self-promotion has become a daunting task, often associated with hustle culture, as something you need to do on the side and requiring significant effort. However, as a data scientist, I have found that showcasing my work is not only a way to establish my brand or expertise but also a means of improving my concepts and experimenting with new tools and technologies that I might not encounter during my typical workday. Furthermore, sharing my work — whether it be a couple of lines of code I optimized at work or a new feature I discovered out of curiosity, such as a cool VS Code extension — not only inspires me but also allows me to collaborate with like-minded individuals and start discussions.
In today’s world, self-promotion has become more accessible than ever, and we should not let it intimidate us any longer. With the right tools and mindset, it can be a fulfilling and rewarding aspect of your daily workflow as a data scientist.
In one of my previous posts, I discussed the idea of self-promotion and how its easy for everyone to show their work in this day and age of the Internet. Please excuse my aggressive writing style from a couple of years ago!
In this post I share my experiences with self-promotion as a data scientist. By outlining these few basic steps, my intention is to help you and to start you off on this amazing journey of sharing great work with the world!
Get yourself a free website! :
As a problem solver, this is the ideal way to present your projects to a wider audience. Luckily, there are several options available for getting started with your own shiny new website. For all the fellow developers out there, GitHub offers a simple and completely free route through their GitHub Pages feature. I must repeat that it is completely free of cost, enabling you to show off your cool projects using any static webpage i.e. your HTML, CSS and JavaScript file bundle straight from your code repository. Additionally, it supports libraries and frameworks like React and Electron, with an option to even run files through a build process! With this functionality, you can easily demonstrate the awesomeness of your projects or even create a website for yourself on the github.io domain.
For more information, see “Creating a GitHub Pages site”
GitHub’s Special Repository:
This hidden gem is a clever Easter egg that GitHub has included as a way to celebrate the most important resource on their platform: you, the developer. It was interesting to read about this on reddit due to the way people stumbled upon it. By simply creating a new repository with the same name as your GitHub username, you can have your special repository’s README.md displayed on your GitHub landing page for all to see. With the freedom to use your markdown skills to their fullest, you have the opportunity to create a truly unique and personalized landing page that showcases your personality, your projects, and your passion for data and development. It’s a shame to miss out on this low-cost, low-effort opportunity to stand out from the crowd and leave a lasting impression on anyone who visits your GitHub profile.
Write, Share, Write:
This is a habit that can become almost effortless but takes some initial work to develop. The idea is straightforward: organise your workspace in a way that allows you to share bits and pieces of your work without requiring extensive editing effort. You can choose any medium that suits you, such as a blog, a response to an online question, or a new addition to your portfolio basically anything that lets you share! For example, as a developer, I usually make use of Git for version control, and maintaining a supporting document that explains the use-case of my project such as an up-to-date README file makes it instantly way more readable and accessible to others — it could lead to new connections, opportunities, and insights that you never would have discovered otherwise.
Give your code repositories a makeover:
While Jupyter Notebooks divide opinion when it comes to their suitability for entire data-science project pipelines, they can be a fantastic tool for showcasing your work by offering live, out-of-the-box demos for your code. This scientific reporting tool user-friendly and is well supported by … wait-for-it… GitHub! With GitHub, you can effortlessly upload Jupyter Notebooks as a part of your repository, providing visitors with the opportunity to immerse themselves in your work by executing a piece of code on the fly. It’s a pretty cool feature, isn’t it?
Notably, there are many other tools for scientific reporting as well like weave.jl which is a part of the JuliaLang project.
Conclusion
Self-promotion as a data scientist can seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be! By taking a few simple steps and establishing certain workflows, you can showcase your work and cultivate your brand without a lot of extra effort. For instance, in writing this very article, I used ChatGPT to suggest different ways of phrasing sentences and to check for grammatical errors. I do feel like it can help you refine your writing style and choose better words to communicate your ideas effectively!
By leveraging technology to enhance your content, you can become a better communicator and a more effective self-promoter… and it saves time and effort! So don’t be afraid to embrace self-promotion as a means of establishing your brand and showcasing your work to the world.
I hope you found this article useful! Following are some links I used for inspiration:
