In December 2020 I wrote a blog about “how becoming a VMware vExpert changed my life“. Let me give you an update and proof that I still experience and achieve the same positive results. In summary, I mentioned these changes or benefits:
1. Visibility. Sure, it always depends on what you write about, if you optimized your blog for search engines, set the right keyword(s), or post your article on the right day and time. In general, if you are a vExpert, the vExpert team will share your blog on Twitter and maybe VMware will even share your content on their social media channels.
"VMware Aria and The Next Era of Multi-Cloud Management" by @_michaelrebmann https://t.co/wn5Z4BaiCW
β VMware vExpert (@vExpert) December 6, 2022
2. Global Reach. If someone else finds or shares your content, this could be the vExpert social media team, VMware’s official social media team, other vExperts, or VMware partners, you did something right. This means you reach more people now and can have an impact on other people’s daily life. This is a LinkedIn post from April 2022:
3. CMTY Podcast. I had been invited to the CMTY Podcast in March 2021, because my Carbon Black Cloud Workload blog was trending on the vExpert content-sharing platform. I believe I was one of the first globally who created content about Carbon Black, what it is, and how it can be deployed in your environment or home lab.
A year later in June 2022, I had the pleasure again to join the CMTY Podcast to talk about my trending “VMware Cloud Foundation β A Technical Overview” article. I figured out that there was no one-pager about VMware Cloud Foundation and decided to fix that.
The same article had then been published as a guest article on VMware’s “Cloud Platform Tech Zone” as well.
4. Impact on others. I receive feedback via e-mail, on social media, or even internally via Slack. People appreciate your content and if you can make their lives easier, better, or less complex, whatever it is, means impact. In my case, some people know me because I summarize the VMworld or VMware Explore Announcements:
- VMworld 2021 β Summary of VMware Projects
- VMware Explore US 2022 β Summary of Day 1 Announcements
- VMware Explore Europe 2022 Major Announcements
5. Confidence. When you start creating content you believe that nobody sees you, and that nobody finds your content. This may be true at the beginning. Be patient. It took me a while to figure out what I am good at and what the readers are looking for.
In 2019, when I was blogging about end-user computing (EUC) related topics only, I had around 23’000 unique visitors. When I changed my role at VMware in 2020 and started to blog about multi-cloud and application modernization, I reached almost 52’000 unique visitors. Where am I now? Probably not the highest numbers, but it shows growth and gives me confidence – together with the social media posts. Maybe I can reach 60k by the end of the year. π
6. VMware Social Media Advocacy. As a vExpert, you can submit your content on advocacy.vmware.com, which then can be shared by VMware employees, partners, and evangelists as well! It gives you some nice stats as well.
Sometimes I write content that does not trend on the advocacy platform but still got shared by VMware on LinkedIn and Twitter. Keep in mind that stats are not everything and sometimes you need to post something at the right time with the right title:
Note: I did not list the VMC on AWS blog post in this table, because almost nobody shared it (advocacy stats below):
But don’t forget that I reached a lot of people with more than 630 likes and almost 50 shares on LinkedIn – with VMware’s first post. They posted it again and it got more than 500 likes and was shared more than 40 times.
What is your superpower?
You need to figure out what your superpower is. With my current role at VMware, I cannot go technically very deep anymore. It is not needed and I just do not have the time anymore. But I found a niche and my superpower: Simplify things and make complex topics easier to digest
I love to share my knowledge, experience, and opinion. Everyone is special, even you.
Join the VMware vExpert Program
If you want to know more about the VMware vExpert program, follow this link. If you need help with your application, do not hesitate to contact me. π
Applications will close on January 13th. The announcement will be on February 10th 2023 or before.