How to create a blog to establish your personal brand, build your network and benefit your career.
You’ve updated your resume, tweaked your LinkedIn profile and combed over your cover letter. But you still might be missing out on a powerful career booster: Blogging. Writing on an ongoing basis is another tool in your job search toolkit. Here are tips for how to create a blog to get the most out of this format.
Start writing on Medium or LinkedIn
In the past, you had to know at least something about technology and design to create a blog on Wordpress, Blogger or a similar service. Today, the website Medium.com lets you sign up and start writing with a few clicks. Then you can share your posts on LinkedIn, Twitter or your other social networks. LinkedIn also provides users with the option to post directly through the platform - providing a great opportunity to amplify your expertise to other professionals in your network.
Organize your thoughts
When you’ve been in the same job for awhile, it’s all too easy to fall into the same routines and go through the motions. Blogging helps you break out of that complacency by forcing you to brainstorm blog topics, pay attention to trends, and organize your thoughts through writing. It creates a free professional development opportunity. When you start blogging, create a publishing schedule and stick to it to stay fresh.
Comment on current events
Blogging gives you the opportunity to make yourself relevant every time there are headlines in your industry. If you are an expert on a topic that’s in the news, writing your own take can make you visible to colleagues in your network and people searching for this topic on Google. Resumes stay the same for long periods of time, but blogging helps you be more dynamic.
Use blogging as networking
Having a blog doesn’t mean you need to do all the writing. Invite a colleague to write a guest post on your blog to help strengthen your connections. You can also ask to be a guest writer on other people’s blogs, which will help expand your visibility inside more networks.
Expand into book publishing
After you’ve built up a body of blogging work, you can take the next step by compiling your work into book or booklet-length content. To become a published author, there’s no need to have contacts in the book publishing industry anymore. You can self-publish with tools such as iBooks or Amazon Kindle Direct. Whether you sell this content or give it away for free, having a book or eBook can elevate your credibility and open up new opportunities like business speaking, consulting or promotions.