“ Developing a blog and social media presence can help you build high-quality in-demand skills without having to spend a fortune on tuition. Although blogging can be demanding with your time it can also be highly rewarding with low financial risk.”
Key Takeaways:
The importance of investing in yourself.
Understanding why you should blog.
Develop the skills doing what you want to write about.
By: Allan R Kirby
Why Invest in yourself by blogging?
Living frugally should always include how to wisely spend money to invest in yourself. This means finding ways to acquire knowledge and skillsets that help keep you relevant in today's job market. Additionally obtaining newly acquired skills can help you stay more competitive, possibly even allowing you to find a better job and obtain higher earnings. In fact, having new diversified skills could provide you with new and exciting opportunities with your current employer.
“Keep yourself skilled and competitive by learning new skills, you could be missing out on opportunities or unprepared when job loss occurs. ”
Unfortunately, many people do not take the time to keep their skills up to date and relevant in today's fast-paced environment. So when job loss does occur many are caught unprepared when they need to find a new job. But spending big bucks going to an expensive university or private college to update your skills is not always the answer either. So what can you do to help build relevant marketable skills, provide more employment opportunities that do not entail high tuition costs? Blogging!
“Blogging is an inexpensive way to gain in demand skill sets that can help you with career opportunities within your organization or a new opportunity. ”
Why Blog?
In recent months we have witnessed how COVID-19 has impacted every sector of the economy and accelerated the digitization of businesses. Businesses are shifting in order to develop new ways to work with their customers online. This shift includes digital marketing strategies to create or improve on their blogs and social media.
For example, businesses are finding they can use blogs and social media as an inexpensive but powerful tool in order to;
1. Drive traffic to their web and physical sites.
2. Attract customers by showing expertise.
3. Enhance B2B and B2C branding and marketing.
As a result demand for bloggers and social media experts has increased dramatically over the last number of years. In fact, competition is increasing to not only build an online social media and blogging presence but to also ensure success with these online investments.
Businesses are therefore not just looking for educated professionals but also people who have the experience to help them achieve their goals. These experiences will include the following which luckily most bloggers will obtain while blogging, such as:
1. Digital marketing.
2. SEO.
3. Content development.
4. Customer relations, community outreach
5. Social media management.
This is resulting in bloggers having excellent employment opportunities and larger numbers of people are being drawn to this profession. Also, it does not hurt that blogging can be taken up as a part-time career or even become a home business.
The good news is Blogging does not have a high barrier to entry. You can start blogging in just a matter of minutes with free online blogging platforms. Although blogging is becoming saturated in some areas, many bloggers are still finding success in niche areas of the economy. Especially niches that help businesses and consumers navigate through the changes that have occurred as a result of COVID-19.
“New Bloggers often focus on making money and not realizing blogging will help you develop a number of marketable skills. ”
Starting to Blog - Focus on developing your skills
We now understand that investing in blogging is a good and inexpensive way to develop great in-demand skills, so what do you need to focus on?
First and foremost make sure you start a blog that you will enjoy writing about. Also never fret if it's in a highly competitive field, focus on your writing and building up your audience and over time you will find your niche.
Secondly, it's a very common error for many bloggers to focus on making money instead of focusing on developing their skills and knowledge blogging. Blogging takes time and patience but as you work on your blog and social media you will start to develop skills such as;
Knowing how to create high-quality written and visual content.
Understanding how to develop podcast and video production.
How to build a social media presence.
Understanding how to build brand awareness
Learning how to Manage online communities to ensure respectful and appropriate engagement.
The ways to Respond to and deal with the good and bad comments.
Learning about customer service and engagement via social media.
Learning how to analyze data to determine whether social media and articles are achieving their objectives.
But that is not all, if fact blogging also allows you to build relevant skills for remote working that employers are looking for, these skills include:
Time Management.
Organizational skills.
Communications.
Competent with Technology.
“Today employers are looking for employees capable of remote working, So having the skills and experience to remote work will set you up for success. ”
Employers are now looking at remote working as part of their permanent solution due to COVID -19. However, in order for remote working to be successful, employers need employees who have exceptional time management and organizational skills. You really need to be organized and that's what blogging teaches you. Plus having the ability to communicate and be comfortable using technology is absolutely necessary for a remote worker to be successful. It doesn't serve the employer well to hire employees who are not able to understand new software tools quickly and easily. Most bloggers are always testing new apps and various other software to help improve their blogs. As a blogger, you just naturally end up being very comfortable with new technologies.
“Never get sloppy with your work, quality is key. ”
Finally, you do need to ensure that if you do decide to develop a blog not only for enjoyment but for skills development you still have to be professional about it. Cutting corners and being sloppy can have a negative effect on you. We all make mistakes when we blog, we are only human after all, but you still need to ensure quality.
“Developing new skills as well as improving others will not only keep you marketable it illustrates your commitment to improvement”
Building a blog does not need to be expensive
Generally speaking, I find that you can build a relatively good blog for as little as $100 or less a year. You can even build a blog for free along with your social media but web hosting, having your own domain name and full control over your blog does cost a little. So getting started and building a blog can be done relatively inexpensively and if done right it can provide a high ROI (Return on Investment).
As you blog and develop your highly marketable skills but you may also find success which is a bonus. Why? because this could lead you to make good money over the long term. Many successful bloggers never start out to just make money, they focused on what they wanted to do "Writing what they love to write about" but staying focused, learning, and being patient could result in you making a career out of blogging.
“Not sure about blogging, you can take an intro course or find a free course online if required, but never spend big money”
Finally, if you are not sure about blogging there is an incredible number of free resources online to help learn about blogging. You can take an intro course if you like but it's usually not necessary. Most successful bloggers just start blogging and learn as they go. The main reason is that most software used to build a professional blog is free or relatively inexpensive. You can create highly professional and visually appealing video and social media graphics with no experience using software such as Canva and Renderforest. You would be better served to spend money on the software
Best Visual content for social media: Canva (free and paid version).
Best Video Production: Renderforest (free and paid version).
“Avoid the temptation of using marketers and seo specialists, you need to learn yourself. ”
Good Luck
Investing in yourself through blogging is an inexpensive way to obtain highly marketable skills and network, all of which can be handy when looking for new opportunities within your company's organization or even a new job/career. Remember to focus on what you want to write about, stay professional, and keep track of the skills you develop. In fact, it never hurts to check out job sites to see what organizations are looking for with respect to social media and blogging experts. You may be surprised you have the skills even for more senior positions. Also when you create your blog you are investing your time in learning all aspects of blogging, resist the temptation of using marketers and SEO specialists. You need to learn yourself. Over time you will find it's not that difficult to understand.
Blogging is a great way to inexpensively build up marketable skill sets while also being smart with your money and career. Good luck and start your blog today.
Frugal Living is a segment of the MySmallBank.com blog written by Allan R Kirby, who writes and produces Personal Finance articles and videos. #blog #blogging #job #jobs #learning