Gen-Y: Why Should You Blog?
The job market is tough so it is important to stand out from the crowd in any way possible. One extremely effective way to create a name for yourself and increase your personal brand is creating a website and frequently posting about news and insight on your industry.
So how can a blog help you find a job, get a better job or enhance you skill set? Here is how:
Create A Personal Brand: What do people think of when they hear the name Michael Jordan, Steve Jobs or Donald Trump? They immediately know who the person is, what they have accomplished and recognize the person as a brand. A website or blog can be a tool for you to introduce people to your brand.
If you work in SEO or internet marketing you can simply blog about your successes and failures with current projects and keep a record of tactics that have worked and those that haven’t. Sooner or later you stumble upon something magnificent and could get quite a bit of recognition from it within your industry.
This can work in a multitude of industries, not just SEM. Whether you work in a restaurant and blog about the best sandwiches in your city or work in HR and blog about how you deal with certain situations, if done correctly it can help you advance your career.
Develop Your Skills: If you happen to work in web design, SEO or another web related field then creating a website is a perfect way to hone your skills. If you have complete control of your website you can easily change the structure, content, URLs and everything else to run tests on your site.
Want to see if your SEO skills are good enough to rank for a high traffic term? Optimize your site for that term. Want see if your theory on conversions works? Run some split testing to see if conversions drop or skyrocket. Your site can be your personal playground to test theories and learn new skills.
Network: If you are promoting your website and blog posts via social media (and are an interactive user) you will begin to build network within your niche industry. By interacting with others in your industry, commenting on their posts and becoming a professional contact to them you will build your network within your industry and begin to make yourself more visible to potential employers and other big wigs within your industry. You can build your brand as an expert in your field and be looked to as a resource from your network.
Promote Your Business: If you are doing any type of freelance work or have recently launched a business a blog can be a great way for you to get the word out about your business. Sure people may be able to learn about your business on Twitter or Facebook but for serious customers you need a solid foundation of information that explains your product or showcases your work.
You can also reap some SEO benefits from blogging that may drive some long tailed keywords traffic to your site. With constant updates to your blog the frequency of crawls may increase as well.
Bulk Up Your Resume: Your website or blog is a great resource to add to your resume it may be the factor that makes you stick out over the competition. Normally the first impression a potential employer sees of you is a word document showcasing your prior work history. But if a link to your website is provided and the potential employer is viewing an electronic version of your resume chances are they will click over to learn more about you.
If you have a well designed website that showcases your talent and knowledge of you industry – your website may be the ticket to getting your foot in the door.
As someone who is a part of “Generation Y,” I would advise you not to call it Generation Y. It sounds kind of like a buzz word for older people who are out of the loop. It’s almost as bad as “Web 2.0″
I too am a member of Generation Y or Gen-Y but chose not to disclose that in my post. I chose that term over using the term millennial which I find to be the buzz word most of the baby-boomer age uses.
Of the top of my head I cannot think of a better term that represents the age group I was specifically referring to. Any ideas?