There is so much more to finding employment and creating a career today than many people realize at the get go. While many people no doubt find positions by sending out their resumes and custom tailoring their cover letters, today’s tech centric-society lends itself well to new and more appropriate forms of self-promotion. Blogging has become a hobby, career, and tool for thousands and thousands of individuals around the world. Using a personal blog to essentially brand yourself and market your skills to the professional world has fast become the approach in today’s harsh job market. Follow these four blogging tips and self-marketing basics to create a personal blog that sells your best professional qualities and helps potential employers gain special insight into your abilities.

Simplicity and Clarity

The key to a successful website of any sort is simplicity and clarity. This is true for most things, including marketing. You want to be clear and direct with your intent and purpose. With your personal blog, you should create something that carefully communicates what you wish to tell. Your writing style should be clear and to the point. Tell your readers up front what your interests are, what the purpose of your blog is, what your accomplishments are, and what you wish to gain from them reading your material. There’s no point in using fluff language or fillers. Just tell people exactly who you are and what you are doing and see how they respond. Of course, I mean all of this directness to be done in a professional manner. You must sell yourself through your blog. Be clear and simple in your intent.  Continue reading

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What I think you shouldn’t have missed last week…

This week’s edition is short and sweet. Not because I didn’t find enough interesting articles (there were about 9), but yoursturly has yet to learn that leaving 60 tabs open in Firefox is not the safest way to keep said interesting articles and not lose them if FF was to, say, crash…

So I give you the three articles I actually saved in this post’s draft

You might have already seen this one, I’ve certainly ran into it a few times, but just in case: John Jantsch entry on how to raise the price of free. Must read, so use your bookmarks, learn from my mistakes

If you’re interested in learning more about search engine marketing, Josh Klein’s entry on process and framework is also a must read. It will help you better understand what SEM it’s all about and build your very first strategy.

With the jobs market in a full recession, here are some findings that might help: what recent hires recommend to job seekers. This is only a part of a larger survey published on Web Strategy, find out more on Jeremiah Owyang’s full list of posts.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this weeks short version of the monday roundup. As I did miss a lot, please share your interesting reads in the comment box

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