Blogging about professional topics was the headline that my employer Solita asked me to speak about in an internal event.

So I decided to share my thoughts in yet another blog post!

You don’t need to be the best subject expert to write a blog

Many professionals are refrained from public writing, because they are afraid of the critics of other experts.

You shouldn’t be.

You can always choose the level that aligns with your skills. If you are a rookie, write how you learned something totally new. You are not loosing your expert status because you didn’t know everything already.

Personally I often have no idea about the topic when I start a blog post. For me, the blog is a place to share learnings, experiences, findings and ideas.

That’s something nobody can do wrong.

How do I choose my topics to blog about?

I don’t really plan it. I just come up with an idea and usually get way too excited not to write a blog post about it. The idea might be either a personal or work related.

Sometimes I write down my individual ideas to a note app. If it’s weekend, I just start writing. At the moment I have 10+ drafts waiting for refinement and publishing in my Wordpress account.

Personal blog or employer’s blog?

Division between employer’s blog and personal blog depends a lot from the company’s brand and culture. I have these guidelines for my blogging.

Publish on employer’s blog, if the writing is about:

Use your personal blog, if you write about:

I create a short summary to my personal blog about the posts I publish in employer’s blog. This article about text analytics is a good example.

In Solita we have some time allocated to personal competence development. I often use my hours to projects like this stock market data analysis. I only afterwards decide whether I publish it in my personal blog or Solita’s blog .

Benefits of blogging about professional topics

The benefits of blogging about professional topics in my opinion are:

  • People trust you more
  • People recognize your name and face
  • People recognize your areas of expertise
  • Writing about professional topics forces you learn the subject
  • Personally I make some side income with my website and blog

Choose your channel for professional influencing

I have tried doing regular social media updates. You know, posting pictures from vacations and sharing every thought I come up with.

That’s absolutely not for me.

I like to develop frameworks in my head during long periods of time. For me, the blog is a place to publish the refined thoughts. It keeps my mind clean and organized.

Then there are professionals who use company’s intranet or Slack as their main channel to participate discussion. Those are equally valid channels to influence.

Everybody should choose the most comfortable channel for them.

Blogging about professional topics is personal inbound marketing

It is surprising how much people recognize your blog posts once shared in social media.

Social media followers remember the headlines whether they actually read the writing or not. Social media is good for visibility even though you wouldn’t get that much likes.

The more people know about you, the easier it becomes for “weak connections” to approach you. Often people start the conversation by referring to one of my blog posts. That applies to both known and unknown persons.

Most often these conversation are thoughtful and worth the time.

You underestimate Google as a traffic source for your professional content

From 45 000 annual visitors in my personal blog almost 85% come from Google. That’s a lot of people.

Search engines have the power and you should take advantage of that. My estimate is that most of the professional blogging topics fit very well to search engine optimization.

Whenever possible I build my blog posts around a chosen keyword. This keeps the blog content focused and easy to read. Google and other search engines love well structured content as well.

Conclusion - Blogging about professional topics

Blogging about professional topics should be primarily fun. If it’s not, try different view points or some other mediums to bring up your talent.

More visitors makes the hobby more rewarding, but it shouldn’t be the top priority. Write, because it is fun or beneficial for you.