These days, social media offers a plethora of ways to connect with new people in your industry – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and countless others. Within this ever-growing landscape of online networks, many people are lamenting the “death of blogging,” which is interesting to me, since we seem to have this discussion every.single.year. But blogging hasn’t died. It hasn’t even slowed down. If anything, blogging has grown steadily since 2004 and will continue to do so.
So what does that mean for jobseekers, emerging leaders, small business owners and those who are looking for innovative ways to climb the career ladder? This is the exciting part, my dear readers. Blogging offers an easy entry point for anyone who wants to gain greater visibility in their industry – whether it be nonprofit, business, academia, etc. The possibilities are endless for the reputation you can create for yourself online. I’ve written before on 10 Reasons Why Every Young Professional Should Have a Blog, but here I want to offer my thoughts on why I think blogging is the very best social media tool to use in building your personal brand (versus social networks like Twitter and Facebook). If you don’t have a blog yet, here are a few more reasons why you should!
Blog Content is Forever
Whereas tweets and Facebook updates have a short shelf life, blog posts tend to stick around and get read on a longer-term basis. Look, I can link you to the very first blog post I wrote in 2007, but I’d be hard-pressed to find my first tweet from two years ago. And no matter how profound that tweet might have been, no one else is gonna be trying to look it up either. The other benefit of a blog is that you can always showcase specific posts that highlight your expertise to potential employers, customers or clients.
You Control Your Voice
Even if you’re in a very limited role at your 9 to 5, you have the ability to control the content on your blog. I was talking with a social media manager at a nonprofit a few weeks ago and something she said really stuck with me: “No one knows that I’m the person behind the tweets.” Even if you’re in charge of marketing or communications for your organization, it’s still not YOUR voice that people are hearing. It’s the institution’s voice. With a blog, you can differentiate yourself from your organization and begin to develop a professional identity outside of your job that people can connect with.
Google Juice
Have you Googled yourself yet? If not, go ahead and do it now. I’ll wait. Chances are, if you have a blog, it’s very likely to come up in the first page of results when you search for your name. Why? Because Google LOVES blogs. Google loves blogs so much that it even has a special blog search function. The way it works is that the more content you publish online, the more often it’s indexed by Google. Since blogging requires you to publish frequent content, it makes your name “stick” in the search results. Neat, huh?
Obviously, there are a lot of reasons why every young professional should have a blog (hell, every professional!) but one of the biggest benefits to having a blog is that even if you’re not a bigshot CEO of your company, blogging can allow you to become well-known in your field.
Need Help Getting Started?
Check out my FREE ebook, The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Blog, a 37-page resource to help you get you up and blogging in no time. Geared toward newbie bloggers, this easy-to-read guide will take you from soup to nuts in terms of your blog concept, software, design, content, promotion and analytics.
Or, if you want to go deeper, purchase your copy of my popular 90-minute webinar training, Personal Branding 101: How to Use Social Media to Accelerate Your Career.
What do you think of these ideas? Has blogging worked for you in marketing yourself in your career field? What challenges do you face in building a successful blog?
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