I’m preparing my monthly You Get It award post (I’ve found an excellent winner – you should see it this week) and wanted to share a couple of blogs that I’ve come across that are, in my opinion, excellent. Hopefully some of the ideas here can help you as you think about your own personal branding through simple blog technology.
First, Steve Wilson has a blog titled WayPoint (you can find it at https://stevewilson.wordpress.com). I’ll tell you right now, I’ve never been impressed by blogs that chart out a job search (I’m talking about the ones that say what you are doing daily, how many interviews you are doing, what the results are and speculation about companies or positions). Steve doesn’t really do this – Steve is the first in-transition blogger that I’ve found that blogs about career things on a higher level. Here are some of his excellent posts (when I read these I can tell they are coming from a thoughtful, wise thinker):
If I’m a hiring manager and I come across his blog I’m going to get a much better feel for what he thinks about, how he communicates, etc. I think this is great stuff – and shouldn’t be intimidating for you to think about doing yourself (although I’d suggest that you choose topics that you want to exemplify, with regard to your personal brand).
Second, Jane Greer is an e-mail friend that I met a couple of months ago, a professional editor who was not very comfortable with the idea of starting/maintaining a blog. Well, she started a blog called Terrierista. Each of her posts has a quality that is hard to find in the blogsphere … but don’t let that scare you from blogging. Here are some of the things that Jane does that I love:
- Her titles are clever
- Her writing is pristine – I would not expect anything less from her but its awesome to see an editor show her stuff
- Her preparation in each post is thoughtful – she chooses links and fonts with care to allow me to read easier and take me to great sites/blogs
- Her theme is really cool – she loves terriers (that’s why part of her title is “terrierista”) – actually, her very first post (that awkward first post!) was probably the coolest first post that I’ve ever read (update 3/24/07 – I just found it and linked back to it). You must know that I like dogs but don’t want a dog at my house (I have kids to clean up after, I don’t need something else to clean up after). Her style brings in characteristics of terriers but doesn’t feel like a doggy blog.
- She has excellent pictures to complement her posts.
I’ll stop here – I just wanted to share two different blogging styles that I think are really cool – in my quest to get you to quantify your personal brand with a blog 🙂
You were one of the people who help me make up my mind to blog, Jason, so this praise from you really makes my day! Thank you! (And thanks also for helping me figure out how to restore that lost first post.)