To Blog, or Not to Blog:That is The Question

I had a wonderful opportunity to present a tele-seminar to career coaches at major universities recently. One of the seasoned career counselors listening in asked how important it was to blog and who should be doing it.

I started blogging about a year ago with a very clear goal of building a foundation and a community for my then forthcoming book. It was an opportunity to share my career & professional development advice and strategies as well as the inspiring stories of women who went through a career reinvention. It did help me build a readership for my book, which was published this fall, and a loyal following of blog readers who still tune in weekly.

While there are a myriad of blogs out there, I truly believe that if you have something significant and worthwhile to say the citizen journalism genre is a great way to do so. The nationally recognized Huffington Post gained serious attention when founder, Arianna Huffington embraced the idea of people from beyond the traditional media sharing their expertise in the form of blogging.

If you are a job seeker, or potential career changer, a blog is a great way for you to go public with your writing. You can share your wisdom and attract attention to yourself as a specialist or expert in your field. I have worked with many clients that wanted to ramp up their writing opportunities and use blogging as a way to be more prolific.

I frequent a variety of blogs every week from friends who are sharing personal updates and photos to industry bloggers and news sites with the latest scoop. Here are a few thoughts to keep in mind if you want to use your blog as a professional vehicle to get yourself noticed and to distinguish your strengths in the public arena:

• Few people blog with enough regularity to get noticed. If you are using your blog as a professional tool –establish a regular schedule and stick to it so your readers know when to expect new content. I update on Mondays and Wednesdays every week.
• Promote your blog so it gets you noticed. Use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites to push your blog content to larger networks.
• Look to seasoned bloggers for best practices about content and layout. Your site must be visually appealing and your content should be pithy, succinct, and well written. Readers have a sound bite attention span and want information in small chunks that are easily digestible.
• Seek out experts and interviews. To cross promote and add to your professional visibility, seek out experienced bloggers, authors and specialists in your field and interview them on your blog. This cross pollination will expand your network immediately.
• Develop a focus. The best professional blogs have a clear mission and stay the course on a topic or subject area that the author knows well. If you want to share a message of your personal brand and professional strengths it is best to stay focused than to blog about too many subject areas. If you are seeking a new career opportunity, you must position yourself well to benefit an organization and differentiate yourself from other job seekers.
• Bottom line – your blog should clearly illustrate your special sauce!