Whether you own a small business, freelance, are looking for a new job, or think you might want to make an impact in the world; you should start a blog. Here is what a blog can do for you:
- Build a track record. Your blog will give potential customers, investors, or employers a place to go to learn more about you/your business. What if somebody important wanted to learn more about you or a customer wanted to dig deeper into your business? A blog is great to help people dig deeper.
- Create an outlet to add value. After blogging about your industry or whatever your expertise is in you will have your very own resources you can share with people. You can send people links to the posts you have already written to answer their questions. It helps you add value to your tribe of customers or contacts.
- Build a platform. Blogs are social. It may feel like you are talking to an empty room at first, but if you make your blog truly useful to your current contacts you will get visitors. You may not need this platform now, but you may find yourself wishing in the future that you had started earlier.
- Teach you. Nothing solidifies learning more than teaching. In every blog post you have the ability to teach and thus to learn more about your topic.
- Make you an expert. In the same way writing a book creates credibility a blog will give you that extra authority. For example, if two business students did equally well in school, but one takes the time to rewrite his business papers into a blog format and showcased some of his achievements publicly which of the two carries more credibility about business? If you were an employer or investor looking closely at both these students which would you pick?
Get started on blogger.com and write posts weekly. After a couple of months get a domain name and have a web nerd like me connect it to your blog. Spend more time blogging then move it over to your own self hosted wordpress blog (which you can learn how to do here).
