Blogging 101 For Your Job Search
How can you demonstrate your skills, experience, expertise and individuality to recruiters and hiring managers and bring your resume or LinkedIn profile alive? One word.. Blogging.
About 900,000 blog posts are created every 24 hours and more than 350,000,0000 people read blogs globally. So- yep, blogging is very popular. (Source: Technorati, State of the Blogosphere)
Do You Have To Blog?
Do you have to set up a blog to bolster your job search efforts? The answer is definitely no. It depends on your career goals, profession, industry, writing skills and even how much time you have available to do the blog writing. There are also some alternatives to blogging such as article writing, commenting on other blogs and tweeting, which are described in a recent guest post on the NEJS Blog.
Benefits of Blogging To Your Job Search
If you decide to blog, I see three primary benefits from a job search perspective.
- Blogs provide an opportunity for you to demonstrate your skills, experiences, expertise and thought leadership. They can help to bring your resume or LinkedIn profile alive. And, your expertise can help other job seekers.
- If you are in a profession that requires outstanding writing skills, blogging is a way to demonstrate your writing skills.
- Blogs can help with your online visibility and search engine optimization(SEO). Said another way, if someone Googles your name, your blog posts should come up in search results. This helps recruiters and hiring managers find out more about you. (To boost your blog SEO benefits, consider naming the blog with your first and last name. Ex. www.marcireynolds.wordpress.com)
Your Blog Content Strategy
After you decide that you want to blog, you need to determine your blog content strategy; what specific topics you want to blog about. If the main purpose of your blog is to assist with your job search, I recommend that you choose a topic that’s business related AND ties to your profession and industry.
For example, if your expertise is in email marketing and you want to get a job in email marketing, you could focus your blog around best practices related to list management, email appends, email list quality or CanSpam regulations.
If you are a Sales Leader looking for your next sales leadership position, you could gear your blog around different parts of the sales cycle from lead generation to closing deals- and include your perspectives on best practices.
Another consideration when creating blog content is differentiation. In addition to producing interesting, relevant content, you also want your blog to stand out from the crowd. Is there a unique spin on the topic you can bring that no-one else is already providing? How can you weave your personality into the writing? Check out other bloggers who also write about your topic of choice. Technorati.com and Google Blog Search are great tools to find them.
Before launching your blog, I recommend that you take the time to plan out your first 4-5 blog posts and how often you plan to publish them. Most bloggers plan to publish new content at least once per week.
For more ideas on what specific topics you should blog about, check out my post on “Building a Tweet Content Strategy For Your Job Search”. Many of the same techniques apply to blogging.
Don’t Forget To Promote Your Blog
Once your blog is established and you have published several high quality posts, start to promote it by including a link on your resume, in your email signature and on your online profiles. You may also want to announce new posts in your LinkedIn status updates, in your favorite LinkedIn groups and in Tweets. And, you should learn how to use social bookmarking sites like Digg and Delicious. Don’t wait for someone to stumble upon your wonderful new blog… drive readers there.
Blogging Platforms
The last tip that I want to share is which blog platform to use. There are many out there including WordPress, Blogger and TypePad. From personal experience, I have found that wordpress.com is the most user friendly and it’s free – a great combination. For more information on blog platforms, check out this article: “Choosing a Blogging Platform” on the Blogging Basics Blog.
Copyright October 2009, Marci Reynolds, All Rights Reserved
Richard K. Berger, President – Berkent Legal Services, P.C.
Great Article on starting and marketing your blog. As a person who is just starting mine I found this to be a great resource.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Bruton – better known as jabby recruiter and author of the http://www.thejobawfultruth.wordpress.com
Jennifer,
Thanks for commenting on the post “Blogging 101 For Your Job Search”. Glad it was a helpful resource!
Marci Reynolds
GReat article, very insightful. Made me realize that the game for finding a job has really changed, and I think I need to catch up!
What are your thoughts on Job boards like mOnster or Career Builder vs. Social networking for finding a job?
Kim,
I think job seekers should exhaust all methods to find a new job, which includes the use of traditional job boards like Monster and Careerbuilder.
One thing that can be very powerful is to combine the use of the job boards with social media. For example.. after finding a job on Monster, you can do research about the company using both LinkedIn and Twitter. Then incorporate your learnings in your cover letter content.. then in an interview.
Good luck!
- Marci Reynolds
Hi Marci,
I’m blogging as an outlet for my frustration and creativity during my prolonged unemployment. I am careful to keep it separate from my job hunt (although I did have it on my LinkedIn profile for a short time, I’ve since removed it). My posts do not use names of family, colleagues, companies, or places. The litmus test I use is this: would I readily invite an interested prospective employer to read it as an example of my writing skills?
My thought is to use it for the purposes mentioned above, and to experiment with SEO marketing. Just as I keep Facebook for personal use and LinkedIn for professional use, do you think it is possible to keep the blog out of the job search? In other words, if I’m careful to keep my full name out of it do you think I have enough control over it?
Hi Melissa.. Good questions.
As a test, I Googled your name and your personal blog came up as number 7 on page 1. It looks like when you registered your blog, you used your first and last name- which is what Google indexed. Bottom line- your blog can be easily found by anyone who Googles your name.
You may want to look at the settings to see what you can change to get Google off your trail.
Good luck!
- Marci