How Blogging DOESN’T Help Your Career

(The Roundup Of This Series is here).

So I’ve just spent about three months writing about how blogging helps your career.  I hope it was informative, inspiring, and at let me try out using more metaphorical writing techniques.

But there’s also the question – when does blogging NOT help your career?  There may be times, ways, things, and mistakes you can make that are actually bad for you.  Based on my experiences, I want to share this with you in the interest of fairness.

This may not mean you shouldn’t blog – but it does mean you might want to take some precautions to avoid problems.  This may not mean you won’t blog, but may mean it’s not going to help your career.  You have to assess risks and results.

So when does blogging not help or can even damage your career?

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How Blogging Helps Your Career #12 – The Garden

(The roundup for the “How Blogging Helps Your Career Series” is here)

Last week I wrote about how you could use your blog as a rough draft for your work.  It’s a pretty great way to try things out and find out what works.

The flip side of this is in that many cases your blog already has a lot of great material.  This of course,is because your awesome, or at least because I assume you are, run with it.

Think of all the material you made as part of regular blogging.  Think of the posts, analyses, and charts.  Think of what you can do with that.  Think for a minute about how much you may have forgotten, or how much you did.

You’re out there planting seeds all the time, almost haphazardly.  Any one of those can grow into a book or a class.  A lot of them could be bundled together in a publication.

Your blog is a garden.

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How Blogging Helps Your Career #10 – The Trophy Case

(The roundup for the “How Blogging Helps Your Career Series” is here)

Ever been in an interview and wondered how you prove you know what you’re doing in that short time?

Ever tried to convince someone of your competence if, say, you’re trying to run a convention or help them with a project?

Ever wonder how, in the end, we can kind of ever prove in a few minutes that we’re good at things?  Because it seems way, way too much of our life involves that.  If you’ve ever been on the job search or tried to justify a promotion, you know what that’s like.

We have to show wins.  We have to show proof.  This is one reason I try and end every in-person interview by giving someone a copy of one of my books, because it’s hard to say “you can’t do project management” when I can self publish.*

The proof in many cases has to come quick, fast and solid.

That’s your blog.  Your blog is a trophy case.

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