Jobhop Jobhop's blog : Get A Blog And Get A Job
You don’t have to be a professional writer to get started on a blog, however if you have a natural flair for writing, all the better.
Over time, like anything else, practise makes perfect, or somewhere near to perfect.
Knowing that by writing a blog could get you a job it's a worthwhile commitment.
By regularly writing good content about your industry or the industry you want to get into, you’ll quickly build an audience of readers, one of those readers could be a potential employer. Perhaps you’re a physiotherapist who wants to break into the football world, then start blogging about footballers injuries, particular footballers accidents and even footballers who kick around over the park, the types of aches and sprains they sometimes suffer from. If you’re a designer, you could blog about what interiors or fashion works, what doesn’t, cool colours and future trends. Remember you’re speaking to your audience, within that audience could be your future employer,think about why they might be reading your blog,are they looking for a solution? Are you giving them a solution? How can they contact you? How can they find out more about you?
Setting up a blog is easy, sites like wordpress.com and Blogger make it effortless for you.
If you’re willing to be a bit more adventurous you could buy your own domain name and create your own blog.
Once you start to blog don’t stop after the first couple of posts because you think that no one is reading, many people are spectators, they will not want to leave a comment, they will not share it they just want to read it. Never start a blog then just leave it, your audience will leave it too and wont come back.
Make sure your blog is easy to share, have social share buttons at the top of your blog and at the bottom, that way your reader doesn’t have to scroll back up again to share it. Sharing gets your blog out to a wider audience and remember you want it to reach your future employer, so make sure your readers can tweet it, post to Facebook, share on Linkedin, bookmark it , G+ and pin it!
Be visual and insert a picture into the post. This will welcome the eye onto the page & make it more appealing. A good picture becomes pinnable on Pinterest which leads people back to your blog and to you.
Look out for trends which you could write about. If there’s some talk about a new widget being developed that would create a solution within your industry and everyone is excited about it, make it your job to keep people in the loop about it. Because people are curious about this new widget they will search for more information across the internet and if you’re smart you’ll have them coming to your blog to read all about it. Become the “GOTO” person in your industry for up to date knowledge and news, doing this will soon get you known to employers.
Acknowledge others within your industry. This can be very powerful, by acknowledging other thought leaders within your industry with a reference link back to their site, a write up about them, or perhaps recommending a course you done of theirs, will help you in the long run. It’s always an honour to be acknowledged and you’ll be surprised to how much help you’ll get back in return. Acknowledging others in your blog can open doors to opportunity for you.
Keep your blog up to date, there’s nothing worse than an employer or a recruiter doing their research on you and them finding your non active blog
Do not click publish until you do a spelling and grammar check. You’re hoping for potential employers to be looking at your posts and they will not be impressed if it’s full of spelling mistakes.
Remember to include a call to action at the end of your post telling the reader what you’d like them to do now. If you’d like them to get in touch then tell them and signpost them to your contact details, if you want them to share your post then again, tell them. I would even go as far as saying who you’d like to work for and say please share this blog post with them ..Remember the old saying “If you don’t ask you don’t get”
Writing a blog takes commitment however if you do it well it could potentially open many doors for you
JOIN Jobhop and spread the word.
Julie Bishop Jobhop.co.uk
In:
- Social media