I was talking with a friend of mine recently about his job search. We were talking about different ways employers ask you to demonstrate your skills while interviewing. Some make you take tests, some want code examples, and some just expect you to sell yourself.
My number one way to demonstrate my skills is through my blog. It not only is a quick way to demonstrate my skills to prospective employers, it also attracts employers that I do not apply to.kinlane-productions2kinlane-productions2
My friend
Delray is highly skilled and was able to setup his blog on his own, what I wanted to do was give him a few bullet points regarding the operations and business of his blog. Here are a few things you should consider for your blog:
- Google Analytics - Make sure and get Google analytics setup for your blog. You have to track traffic from day one. You can use the Google Analyticator Wordpress plugin to get the code on your site quickly.
- Google Webmaster Tools - Google Webmaster Tools gives you an wide variety of tools to help understand drive traffic to your site. If you want to be found in Google Search, make sure and use the tools @ Google Webmaster Tools.
- Google Feedburner - The way to grow your blog is through RSS subscribers. Right away you need to add the Google Feedburner RSS analytics to your blog so you can track who subscribes to your RSS. You can add this quickly to your blog using FD Feedburner Plugin for WordPress.
- AddToAny - Empowering users to share your blog posts is key to the growth of your blog. You need to provide tools for sharing to all major social networking and social bookmarking sites. The quick way to do this is using AddToAny.
These are my getting started recommendations for a new blog owner. There are many other tools you can use to manage, track, and grow your blog, you need to start with these. I will share more later.
My most important advice I can give regarding blogging is
do it often. Do it for yourself. Don't do it for others and for traffic or praise. Record ideas and thoughts using your blog, and explore and develop your ideas there.
Good luck to you with your new blog
Delray, I wish you the best.
