From Eileen Gunn, Career Journal.
1. You spend a lot of time at work so finding a job you're going to like is more important than getting a bigger title or more money.
2. Ask your boss for lots of feedback on your work and recommendations for improvement
3. Text messaging is a fast, efficient means of business communication
4. Find out what all your friends think about everything on Instant Messenger.
5. Blog to build your brand.
Steven Rothberg, president of CollegeRecruiter.com in Minneapolis, thinks more baby boomers should be blogging. "You don't have to be an expert to start a blog, but having one will quickly make you an expert.... "You'll be more valuable than the 99.9% of your peers who aren't doing this," he says."
Steve, you're wrong. (Do you have any proof?)
Hat Tip: Future of Work
People who blog have more information and are more thoughtful about their jobs. It's simply not possible to blog for any amount of time and not be one of the most informed people in the room.
Seeing as it's my job to train people to do this, I'll back Steven up. Not that he needs it.
Bloggers become subject matter experts on the topic they're writing about, or they quit writing.
Posted by: Jim Durbin | August 27, 2007 at 09:26 AM
Jim Durbin ought to be right... bloggers should be more thoughtful and more informed. Writing should be an act of hygiene- purging, chastening, and motivating writers to get smarter. And I'll bet his clients are more thoughtful and informed.
But everyday I'm disappointed that the hygiene of writing appears to have so little effect on so very many bloggers. It appears to me that it is "very possible" to blog and still be a pontificating, ignorant, deceitful pantload.
Posted by: laurence haughton | August 27, 2007 at 04:10 PM
My proof is anecdotal but pretty darned solid. I started blogging a couple of years ago. Since that time, I've had a huge increase from journalists calling for my opinions and from conference organizers calling to ask if I'll present or keynote at their events. Both groups very often mention having found me from a blog article that I wrote or that they were referred to me, read a bunch of entries from my blog http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com/weblog , and then called me when they were satisfied that I would have the information they wanted and could present it in a way that they wanted.
I also have to echo what Jim Durbin wrote. I have acquired more expertise in my field because I write about it almost every day. It isn't the actual writing or publishing, but the research and thought that goes into it. If you need to write about a topic, you need to know something about it. I'm not saying that I'm the foremost expert on college recruiting. Far from it. But I am saying that blogging about college recruiting has made me more of an expert both in actuality and perception.
Posted by: Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com | August 28, 2007 at 09:54 AM
A bit of logic for all business thinking: "For example is not proof."
Posted by: laurence haughton | August 28, 2007 at 11:53 AM
That's a fair statement Lawrence - so perhaps the factual statement should be that people who are Steven Rothberg or those who are trained by Jim Durbin are thoughtful, more informed, better looking...:)
And Steven - you're too modest - so I'll say it - you're the foremost expert on college recruiting in the country.
Laurence - it's been a while - how have you been? Please let me know if you're doing something I can help with or promote.
Posted by: Jim Durbin | September 02, 2007 at 09:03 AM