This post follows the last on purpose. LinkedIn.com, Facebook.com and Twitter can all assist in establishing you as an online subject matter expert. What I want to address more in this article is blogging and article submissions as a means to make you more marketable by establishing yourself as an online subject matter expert.
Google “Clay C. Scroggin” or “CompareHRIS.com” to see the results of this article.
I read one time, and I don’t remember where, that if you do something for 5 years you become an expert. Before taking on CompareHRIS.com, I worked for 15 years selling, implementing, and supporting a number of HRIS companies and Human Resources Management System software applications. Five of those years were spent working for Sage Abra Software and ten were spent as the owner of HR Pay ‘n’ Time, Inc. a reseller business for a number of HRMS systems on the market. The gentleman who handled most of my implementations has over 20 years of experience. Okay, after that experience, we, according to the above statement, were experts in the HRMS software industry. I think most, if not all, of our prior clients would agree.
The problem was that we were not effectively marketing that expertise. When we sat down for a demo, we would provide brief bios for the prospects so they understood that we were qualified for the project we were pitching. Those looking for HR Information Systems solutions that were not referred to us, or had heard of us, would not have known about our expertise.
My recommendations
Create a blog
Think of a blog as a portfolio of your subject matter expertise. Obviously, this could be extremely helpful if you find yourself interviewing for a new job. Over time, with consistent posting and a few simple SEO tactics, you will gain a following of people interested in what you have to say. We have only had our blog live for three months and are already seeing close to a thousand visits a month. I would expect that number to triple or more by year end. For the simple SEO tactics, I recommend reading “SEO for Dummies.”
Tying your blog or website to Twitter.com, Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com, and others, can assist with pumping out your message and expertise to the online world.
Submit articles to article submission sites
There are thousands of sites that take outside article submissions including CompareHRIS.com. You want to make sure that the sites you submit to have categories related to your subject matter expertise. Most, if not all, of these sites will allow an ‘About author section’, where you can create text links back to your blog.
I’m a big fan of article submission sites and it’s highly likely you have seen one of my online articles. We have distributed dozens of articles to hundreds of sites. From these we receive traffic, high quality links, and the added benefit of establishing myself and CompareHRIS.com as online subject matter experts. Other blogs and websites are always searching for good content to their sites, as well. They use these article submission sites to add content. That content includes your ‘About the author’ bio section and links back to your website or blog. Submitting one good article could easily be picked up by a dozen or more sites.
Send out a few press releases
I use PRweb.com. The cost for a simple press release is less than $200. The benefit of press releases is very similar to the article submissions. The press releases include links to your site, others may pick up the press release for content on their site, and again it all goes toward establishing yourself as an online subject matter expert.
Closing
I wrote this post and the last because I have seen too many of my friends lose their jobs in this economy. Setting up your professional online network and establishing yourself as an online subject matter expert will make you far more marketable. The problem is it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time. If you lose your job today, it’s unlikely these tactics will land you a job. If, however, you lose your job in six months or a year, at that time you will be far more marketable than you are without establishing your online expertise.
Email me if you have any questions or if you would like to submit an article to CompareHRIS.com.