Growing your professional blog. Step 1: Starting

I would like to share some ideas on how to grow your professional blog. I currently somewhere along these steps, but I believe that I can contribute some information on what worked for me when I was writing a blog.

Ok so you have a want to post your thoughts about something in your field online. I’ve had that thought for a couple of years before I actually started writing this blog.

First of all, you should act. Don’t second-guess yourself and think about serious commitment yet, just go to a free blogging site either blogger or wordpress and just create a blog and post your first article. It’s really painless to do and you will feel better about yourself right after you do it.

Second - don’t expect any kind of hits on your blog right after you post. That’s the reality of it; your blog is not going to get any views for some time other than your friends and family if you tell them in person or on facebook. Frankly speaking I am still convinced that my blog is in the same boat, although the stats claim that I have over 2000 views in the last 2 years.

Third – try to educate yourself on how social engines work. Boolean search logic specifically is key to understanding how your page gets discovered, so you need to figure out how to tag your pages.

Fourth – keep posting. Like anything online it’s all content driven. Before you get any kind of exposure from your blog there needs to be enough content there to attract people. Which means that you are going to be filling your blog with posts and for a long while you will not see the kind of result you may have hoped for, other than for the odd mention every once in a while.

Fifth - don't be afraid to change gears. Personally I've had 3 blogs before I settled on this blog that you are reading. I've tried different hosting options and different topics. I decided that I would rather have a place to record my thoughts with a varying degree of relevance to human resources than to try to maintain different kinds of blogs. It's just a matter of committing to maintenance of the blog on some kind of reoccurring basis. Right now I try to do a post every week or two. And if I want to start writing more in the future, it will not be starting from scratch again, which is great. I could always adjust the topic of the blog and start delivering more content. I think that, since blogs are living websites, change is good for them.

Why do I write a Blog

I have recently read this book Rework that talks about the importance of writing in the business, as a main tool of communication which is clearly essential. Good writers have plenty of transferable skills like omission of irrelevant information, larger vocabulary and clear understanding of ideas that help them write well. These are great skills that I should try to improve in myself and hence it gives me the reason to write on my blog. Hopefully with time i will become interesting to read, but for now I keep on practicing.

Blogging is a great medium for this kind of sparring, as it opens your work up to the world and allow for people to discover your writing. The better you become at writing the more people you will attract It's really that simple, so all you should do is start writing an with time you shall see results.
I came across this little video that talks about blogging today and it highlights some of the benefits of blogging, specifically the process of explaining yourself.

Social media advice for job-seekers

Social media advice for job-seekers. I found this article through an e-mail I received from HRPAO. They always select worthy articles to read, even if I don't always read all of their links.
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2011/09/social_media_advice_for_job-se.html?utm_source=Exacttarget&utm_medium=Communications&utm_term=HRDaily&utm_content=Email&%20utm_campaign=hrdaily091211
Some of the things that I found in common is that most of the people encourage people to have their LinkedIn profile updated and include as much info as possible. They also highlight that professional or interest blogging is well received among the recruiters. I personally have witnessed how the author of one of my favorite blogs ended up getting a job that completely mirrors his interests and couldn't be any happier for him. This was a blog about pens and writing utensils, which was kind of an obsession of mine while in University. He had these frequent reviews of various products, which were always on point and fair. The job that he was offered was in a marketing department of the online store that sells pens, pencils and other related products. I imagine that it must be a great feeling.

My advice on this topic would be transparency. As a job-applicant chances are that the other party will do a search on your name either on LinkedIn or Google search engines. Once you have information on the internet it stays there, someone with sufficient motivation and tech savvy could tap into the wealth of information about any topic. Why not make it easier for them and provide links to the social networking sites that you are on in the application? Figuratively speaking this would open some doors in your house, which would encourage traffic in selected areas. Also this would encourage you to take control of the information and ensure that the privacy settings are appropriate for your profiles that you want to be seen or not seen.  

So I have decided to try provide an optional podcast to this post. It's pretty much me reading this post, so you can multitask and be efficient. 

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Get your resume graded

I came across this web tool today that automatically grades your resume. This is an interesting service as it appears to be based on an algorithm that is developed with the input from hiring managers. The great thing about this tool is that after you put your resume through the algorithm it gives you 1 tip to improve your resume. That's great for people that have been searching for a job and want to give a touch up to their resume before sending out another batch. It's a free service and it doesn't ask you for any information (you are already giving them a wealth of it), yet it is asking you if you want to be contacted. Overall a fun little tool that I would recommend people.

http://rezscore.com/

New Blogger Interface

Just opened up my dashboard and was prompted to try out the new interface. I see that they are trying to streamline all the Google products to have the similar design, and I love it. Google+ has influenced plenty of pleasant changes. Google Docs's interface is particularly spectacular. I have long been an early adopter of the Google products. I am excited to see the Google Reader update, which is screaming for an updating, knowing that there are plenty of other services that have better interfaces. El Goog!