Securing a job in conventional media before the age of 24 is wishful thinking for a huge number of wannabe journalists, but having a blog could help ensure that you turn those dreams into a reality. Searching for a job as a journalism student in the traditional way in this industry is time consuming and you face a lot of competition. Also whilst recruitment agencies can help often you need something extra to find your first position.
A few young journalists can now happily credit their blogs as being key to their success. A journalist that one of our Campaign Managers interviewed last month said “The most important thing I did at university, including my degree, was to blog and get online. That’s what got me my first job.” “There is no possible way that I would have been able to go into a Television newsroom on the basis of my degree, or the basis of my freelance cuttings or the basis of my student newspaper. ” he said. You can definitely blog your way into a new job!
Here are some tips to help you secure your first journalism job:
Build a brand
Utilising your blog to promote yourself in the right way is imperative. It is hugely important to be yourself and market yourself in a way that is likeable. In essence you never know what part of your personal branding will bear the most fruit so you have to do it all.
Talk, link and network
Linking in to your brand building you must ensure that you have current and relevant dialogue with as many people as possible to create a committed following. Part of this includes hooking up with people who blog about similar topics so that you can initiate and maintain a mutually beneficial relationship. However, never forget that it’s a two-way street. So don’t just force yourself, relationships – especially ones within the journalistic field – shouldn’t develop in an artificial way they should grow organically. Use the internet’s networks appropriately.
Patience
You definitely won’t leap from 10 to 6,000 twitter followers overnight. Nurturing a twitter following and growing a community takes a lot of time, so don’t get too caught up with this. Make content the driver behind your website or blog and the followers will appear.
Niche
With an increasing number of people entering the blogging world standing out is more difficult than ever before, but what could really help is finding a topic that nobody else or very few people are writing about. Niche blogs work.
Advertise
Increasing traffic to your blog site is a difficult thing to achieve – networking and conversing with the right people is definitely the way to increase your popularity.
Good luck with your blogging – it might just land you a job!!
