What Blogging Can Do for You and Your Career

Blogging can change your life and make you free

A blog is a platform

There are many possible platforms in life. A first-class education is one. A trust fund left for you by your rich dad is another one. A business you inherited is one as well.

If you are like me and have none of those, don’t worry.

A good blog can become a platform in the sense that it will open new opportunities for you. Experts say that we live in the ‘attention economy’ — everything wants your attention. In this world, blogging is the aggregator of that attention.

But let’s get rid of the term ‘attention’ in favor of ‘trust’. I believe that blogging is a way to build trust with your audience that would provide you with opportunities later on. And to build trust, you’ve got to show up with something new and insightful every day, like you would want other people to show up for you.

It Can Get You Hired

People who make resumes, don’t like making them. People who read resumes, don’t like reading them. Nobody likes resumes.

And it never stops amazing me: if you can make your LinkedIn or resume anything you want, what’s the point of even making one?

I have a blog in Russia as a Telegram Channel. It’s where I write about content marketing and give advice on how to promote yourself through blogs. I don’t have a lot of subscribers, but I have enough to get me and my company hired.

Resumes were invented by the same people who invented white-collar office jobs and the outdated education system. It’s obsolete.

The new resume — is your portfolio. It’s your projects. It’s what you’ve actually done. Or it can be an insightful blog that people can’t resist but subscribe to. And if it’s good enough, you’ll be hired just based on the expertise that you transmit.

A good blog can be so much better than any polished resume you come up with.

You Can Attend Events For Free

I recently attended a marketing event in London that cost $1000 per ticket. I attended it for free (they even gave me a premium ticket) because I said that I’ll write about it in my blog. I went as press.

The same applies to any kind of networking or business event. You can leverage the attention you’ve got in multiple ways.

You Can Build a Business With 0 Marketing

More and more brands realize that the best way to communicate their marketing message is to build a loyal online audience. When you have a blog, you can build anything on top of it.

You have the audience and you have the attention. You don’t need a TV ad, you have your own network.

• You can teach and sell webinars, online courses and build a ‘blog business’
• You can promote other people’s products and services
• You can build your own content or product businesses on top of your blog

There is a big blogger in Russian Instagram and she has 1M+ followers. She comes from a small city somewhere in Siberia. At 18 years old she just started blogging, talking about her life and family struggles. Now she runs multiple businesses, all thanks to her Instagram profile and makes millions of dollars in revenue per year.

And that’s considering that she posts content in Russian. Imagine how big she would be if she posted in English, where the reach is the whole world.

It Allows You To Learn All Your Life

With the education system becoming more and more obsolete, the question comes up: How do you keep learning? The best way to keep learning is to blog.

Whenever I have something I want to dive into, I start writing about. I start learning and teaching others immediately. Having someone to blog to motivates you to keep going, learning and reflecting. Having someone to teach makes you structure your thoughts in a way that’s easy to remember and understand.

In many ways, the best way to learn is to teach others.

The important thing here is, to be honest about your journey and not position yourself as an expert. But who knows, maybe after a couple of years of blogging, you’ll actually become one.

In many ways, the best way to learn is to teach others. Blogging allows you to do that.

It Makes You a Better Human

Seth Godin said:

Everyone should blog. Having something to write about the next day, noticing something every day that’s worth sharing — makes you a better human on many different levels.

When you are in the ‘blogging mode’, you can’t help but look at things differently. Suddenly, everything becomes interesting. Every discussion becomes educational. Every struggle and setback becomes a story to tell.

You become a student of life. And by teaching what you’ve learned through your blog, you become a better human.

It Can Make You Free

When I asked Tim Draper what’s the definition of a business, he told me:

It’s anything that has money coming in, and money coming out.

If you think about it, when you’re a blogger — you’re a business. There are people who want to pay you for talking about their stuff. And then there is money you can use to grow your blog. By Tim’s definition, a blog is a business.

It’s a business of you.

You don’t need to be in any certain place at any certain tie. You don’t need to wear a tie. You can make money on YouTube, Medium, coaching, sponsorships and be wherever you want. You can literally live on Bali and blog all day. (And a lot of people do that!).

And besides money, you have an instrument to broadcast any idea or message you want. It’s leverage like no other. In many ways, I think it’s more important today than money.

There are many different reasons why you should blog, but I believe this one to be the most important of all.

Blogging can make you free.