Ben Cotton started a blog in his final year at Leeds Metropolitan University and recently landed an award from the European Public Relations Education and Research Association – and a job in the digital team at Edelman. Here’s his view on the benefits of blogging for communication students.
“I started blogging in 2007 during my final year at Leeds Met. However, in Oct 2009 I wanted to change tact and produce something more social media orientated, in order to try and land a social media agency role. I’m a firm believer that having a sound grasp and recorded opinion on industry issues is a great way to differentiate yourself when job hunting.”
“I also wanted a fresh start using WordPress and to get away from the student angst posts e.g. will I get a PR job and focus more on wider industry issues. It has proven to be a wonderful place to collect my thoughts as was initially hoped, however one of the unintended consequences is that it has been an absolutely brilliant networking and personal PR tool.”
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I would strongly recommend to any PR student or person wanting to break into the industry to start a blog. Not only is it an effective way to document your thoughts on the industry and improve your writing, but it can be a great networking tool and will score highly on search.
As i’ve said previously being able to demonstrate a firm grasp of wider industry issues at an interview is a brilliant way to stand out. I would also recommend making full use of tags by tagging (appropriately) key words and your name within the blog, as this improve search further.