Black MBA - Winter 2007/2008 - (Page 66) CAREER Brand You YouBrand Stepping Outside the Cubicle Box and Into Business for Yourself as a Blogger By Rashida S. Restaino BULLET POINTS ON your résumé can be more than just personal accomplishments you dangle before a new employer. These could become your new source of secondary income. In today’s self-focused age, “self-branding” can turn a savvy white-collar American into the Beyoncé of banking or the Martha Stewart of corporate communications. The objective is to take stock of the expertise you possess and market yourself as a multi-layered business entity. The days are gone when an MBA graduated, found a job instantly and kept it long enough to collect a gold watch. Not far behind on the endangered list is moving from company to company and hunting for more money and less stress. Rather than spending your lunch break Internetsearching for “grass-is-greener” job opportunities, you could be working productively online – updating your blog, drafting design ideas for your next project and text-messaging with a peer or consultant. The difference between this and working is that this is all about building your online presence, growing your expertise and spreading the word – about you. USE YOUR EXPERTISE Setting yourself up as an expert to dispense insight and advice to others in your field requires not just information and intelligence, but the ability to let people know you’re there, and to share your tips for best business practices with thousands of people. Today, the online world makes this possible. All you need is a blog. Julie Griffith, creator of OurDailyBlast. BlogSpot.com, is passionate about blogs. She insists that blogs are the quickest, easiest way to make additional income around a subject on which you’re already an expert. “Let’s say you are an attorney that specializes in family law,” said Griffith, the principal and founder of j.griffith Public Relations in Houston, Tex. “You could offer a weekly blog commenting on the most recent family cases in the news, or tips on going through the court system. What that does is affirm or establish you as an expert in your field.” Griffith said that if you tailor your site to meet the concerns of a specific market, your blog becomes attractive to advertisers wanting to reach your target audience. For example, in the case of a familylaw attorney, advertising might come from law schools, legal publications and a wide variety of businesses hoping to attract attorneys’ disposable income. Advertisers would pay for access to the audience identified and served by the blogging lawyer. Under the nom de plume “Jules G.,” Griffith runs OurDailyBlast, a blog on news and entertainment. The site is completely separate from her PR business, though she discusses online many topics that she deals with every day. She updates the site three or four times a week to service her subscribers, who are primarily in Houston but are spreading through a growing base that extends to cities including Chicago and Atlanta. LUCKY OCCURRENCES A blog needn’t be confined to your work life. Business executives who are in need of a creative outlet can blog about their travel experiences, too. “There is a group that can relate and will receive your perspective,” Griffith said. In the age of iPods loaded to play only your favorite songs, gourmet coffee shops that offer six pumps of foam and day spas for your dog, there also is a market for your hidden talents that get neglected from 9 to 5. 66 BlackMBA • Winter 2007/2008 • www.nbmbaa.org ©AlistairCotton l Dreamstime.com http://www.nbmbaa.org
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.