This is a great question. I've been spending a lot of time recently building a personal landing page, getting more established on public social media, etc. It's incredibly time consuming and I feel really torn - I'd much rather be learning new tools and languages. However, I've definitely gotten the impression that if I can't somehow advertise the tools and languages that I already know, I may as well not bother. Offline presence is also really important - but I recently turned up to a meetup without any business cards to swap and won't ever make that mistake again.

I moved from an academic background in the UK to the startup world in California, so I feel like I've been born naked into a new world. I didn't even use my Twitter account until recently. I'd like to hear from some "veterans" about this - who has gotten a real impact as a result of their self-marketing efforts?