Serial entrepreneur and software engineer Poornima Vijayashanker started her current project, Femgineer, as a blog and gradually built it into an education company that offers online courses in product development, entrepreneurship, and leadership. A blogger since 2006, Vijayashanker told theCUBE during IBM Edge2015 that being an early adopter helped her build a brand and an audience.

“It helped me decide what to focus on and pull the audience into the companies that I build or advise,” she said.

Building your brand

Vijayashanker offers a few tips to help would-be bloggers stand out when they happen to work for a large company:

• Find common themes. “You don’t necessarily have to talk about IBM’s new cutting-edge flash technology, for example. Instead, you can focus on your expertise in flash or Cloud storage without getting into details.”

• Focus on general problems. “Getting teams together, keeping them motivated, shipping products, appealing to customers … these are all general themes, but you might have some specific experiences that you can share with your readers.”

• Start small. “When I started, I was probably writing one post a month. Over time, you start to develop a position as a thought leader, and people reach out to you. Even internally within your company, people will recognize the work that you’re doing, and you might not always get that if you’re just heads down.”

For Vijayashanker’s take on women in tech and the state of Silicon Valley, watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Edge2015.