Can a Blog Accelerate Your Career?

The bloggers on Healthcare IT Today are great role models for career management and most of us contribute to multiple blogs.  Why do so many professionals and businesses now find it critical to have an active blog built into their websites?  If you are blogging as part of your career plan, then you likely are not publishing posts just for your own satisfaction or to make your mom proud when you show it off over Thanksgiving (although making Mom proud is never a bad thing).  You want to receive some meaningful benefit in return for the time and thought you put into your creation.  The question then becomes–is having a blog a good way to accelerate your career?

Lindsey Pollak, who is a career expert for the “Y” generation, has her own blog and asserts the idea that blogging can help your career . . . if done correctly.  She offers several tips to make sure you are using your own blog as a tool in getting the job that you desire.

Among her tips are, first, to write about the career you want.  This runs along the same lines as dressing for the job you want.  Think about what you know and what you want to learn about your chosen career and then write posts on those topics.  Stay focused.

Also, you must post regularly.  If visitors to your site like what you write, they will come back regularly in search of your new material.  If you decide to quit writing for your blog, shut it down.  How many of us have been to blogs and noticed the last post was written a year and a half ago?  That does not reflect well on the blog’s owner.

Please check out Lindsey’s entire article.  It’s a piece filled with great information!

What about you?  Do you integrate a blog into your personal branding?  Is a blog an important part of your company’s website?  Let us know what role blogging, if any, has had on your career.

About the author

Joe Lavelle

Joe Lavelle is the Co-Founder of intrepidNow. Prior to that Joe was an accomplished healthcare IT executive and career coach with a record of successfully meeting the business and technology challenges of diverse organizations including health plans, health delivery networks, health care companies, and several Fortune 500 companies.

Joe is also the author of Act As If It Were Impossible To Fail, available on Amazon.

1 Comment

  • Hello Joe,
    Great post and in response a definite yes! But …. I’ve been blogging since 04/2006 and have not given up the day job: community mental health nursing – nursing home liaison. I do believe that gives me an edge in terms of being at the coal face.
    A blog could of course be detrimental to one’s career if you are not professional and have nothing to say. Break confidentiality and your job is at risk as a blogging clinician. I blogged about this just recently and linked to NMC (regulation) guidelines on social media.
    With a small but global readership – I post pretty often 😉 I can’t stop writing, enjoy it but don’t know where I am heading…. I do plan a new site and will continue to weave three threads nursing ((global) health), informatics and education.
    Kind regards,
    Peter J.
    Lancashire
    UK
    http://hodges-model.blogspot.com/
    Hodges Health Career – Care Domains – Model
    http://www.p-jones.demon.co.uk/
    h2cm: help 2C more – help 2 listen – help 2 care
    http://twitter.com/h2cm

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