How To Get The Exposure You’re Looking For

You have the equivalent of a quantum-powered Gutenberg press at your fingertips, yet you ignore it. And by ignoring it, you’re missing opportunities to make money and advance your career.

That’s why you must blog. There are no excuses.

Are you writing on LinkedIn or Medium? You should be. It’s never been this easy to tell the world what you think. Instead of convincing editors to share your work, you have a megaphone with massive reach. You can become your own media company, complete with a dedicated audience and community.

Think of the leaders of your industry. Like Dr. John Sullivan and Marc Cenedella in recruiting. And Fred Wilson in tech. Or Tim Ferriss in lifehacking. How’d they get recognized? By blogging.

Why blog? And how do you write effectively?

The Benefits of Thought Leadership

Yes, it’s a buzzword but it’s based on truth. You have experience. Far more than you realize. You have opinions, informed by years of work. You have problems you’ve solved, problems that others are facing. But most people don’t blog about it. You will.

Twitter followers and Facebook likes are bullshit.

You want:

• Exposure
• Deep connections with people in your network
• An expanded network

Writing is one of the best tools to achieve it.

Exposure puts you in front of the people you care about, increasing the odds that an exciting opportunity will come your way. Become the expert that people reference on a particular topic.

Influence the conversation. Share your knowledge. Receive invitations to conferences, podcasts, interviews, and more.

Hire Easily, Close Deals Faster

You’re trying to hire engineers. What career management tips are they missing? Is your potential business development partner overlooking a massive opportunity that could help their business? What have you learned that makes your sales prospect more efficient?

You’ve been around the block, so you know the answers. You can help people without selling your product. By helping your readers, you’re top of mind the next time they’re looking to switch jobs, partner up, or allocate their budget.

Generate Social Proof

You can point people towards articles you’ve written. Your writing adds authority and credibility to your profile.

But it’s more than that. It’s therapeutic. Writing is a forcing function that causes you to come to grips with your opinions. You develop an even more nuanced view. People can respond to it, and then you’ll learn from them. You can reflect back to see how your opinions have evolved.

But to gain exposure and achieve your goals, you need great content.

How To Blog Better Than Anybody Else

Content is king. And great content is table stakes if you want exposure. Here’s how to create a great blog post (and blogging strategy).

• Determine Your Niche & Audience

What do only you know? What have you learned that others need to know? Get specific. Have a narrow topic then hit it from different angles. You have a greater chance to build community around your writing if you cover the same issues consistently.

Don’t forget: your writing isn’t an artistic exercise.

Who should read it? Who do you want to engage? Keep them in mind. If an idea fits into your niche topic but doesn’t matter to your audience, why would you write it?

• Structure Your Writing

Some people can just write, but I think most of us benefit from some structure. Create an outline.

What is the main idea of your post in one sentence? What’s the argument that supports your central thought? In this article, I hope that you’ll learn why and how blogging can change your career. For my argument, I’ve included information about why blogging is important, how to write well, and how to distribute your content (coming up soon).

Pretty meta, right?

• Execute

Ideas and outlines are less useful if your output sucks.

• Write your post, understanding the first draft will need work. Revise it.
• Make sure your grammar is flawless. Use Grammarly to check.
• Send it to others to hear their opinions.
• Include a catchy headline and beautiful image to draw people to it.

Now that you’ve got a great piece of writing...

Here’s How To Get Readers

If content is king, distribution is queen. You’ve identified your audience and you’re writing something they’ll enjoy. It’s your responsibility to get your work in front of your readers.

How do you engage your audience?

First, publish to your networks. Put it on LinkedIn and Medium. You likely have hundreds of LinkedIn Connections and Twitter followers (which Medium uses). You may also have a company or personal blog.

Put it where your audience hangs out and you’ve got direct access to them.

Then, get your writing picked up. LinkedIn and Medium have built-in mechanisms for discoverability. If your post catches, both platforms can share it with hundreds of thousands. Medium also has publications that live on its platform that are searching for fresh content. They may pick you up. And don’t forget to submit your post to relevant link aggregators, like Hacker News or Reddit.

Lastly, you can guest blog. Find publications that cater to your audience and get them to publish (or re-publish) your work. This is hard. And it’s complicated.

Rather than try to explain it, I’ll link to the best guide I know on guest posting.

Summary

Blogging is powerful. In my own life, I’ve used it to land speaking opportunities, increase my network, and even successfully launch my comic Ella the Engineer. Ella has even been optioned by Brave New Media as part of their original content strategy.

While I might have been able to do this without writing, it would have been much more challenging. The exposure made it relatively easy.

And again, I’m not the only one.

Look at Ben Evans, who wrote extensively about mobile before VC titans Andreessen Horowitz invited him to join their fund.

Think about Product Hunt. It started as an email newsletter where founder Ryan Hoover wrote about cool tech products. Now, it’s a Silicon Valley powerhouse.

Countless lives have been built on top of writing. You have the same opportunity ahead of you. Will you take advantage of it?

Yes, it’s hard. Yes, it takes time. But it’s worth it.

But if you don’t have time to do it or aren’t convinced you can execute, shoot me a message. I might have some ideas for you.