Step Up Your Game – Offline Blogging

Most of the time, the story is always about improving your blog – leaving your blogging legacy as you go. How to make it more popular, how to give it more traffic/followers/subscribers, how to monetize it better etcetera. For now, forget about that. For once, I think you deserve the limelight, blogger.

I’m not a bit surprised why most of us tend to separate blogging from the ‘real world’. I’ve had my fair share of having a hard time properly talking about this to anyone in my circle, even my parents (I mean, I was just 15 back then). So the tendency is, we create this identity of ourselves that only activates once we’re in front of our monitors.

This is not me saying you should go out and tell everyone. It’s not even the point. My point is there doesn’t need to be a separation in the first place. You can, and should, use the things you’ve learned in blogging to step up in your own field (or whatever it is you’re doing).

Don’t know how? Here are some good ideas:

Blogging + Career = Standout Blogger.

You might know Perez Hilton, the famous celebrity/gossip writer. Scratch that, everyone knows Perez Hilton! But wait, aside from him, how many more celebrity/gossip writers do you know? Some of you might have a list, but as for me, zilch. Think of this, what if Perez never blogged? What if he stuck to writing to newspapers or magazines? Probably the best career he’ll ever land is to be part of team TMZ.

But the point is he started blogging. And now, he’s a celebrity in his own right not only making money through the stuff he posts, but also through the various sponsorships he has (not including the perks he gets from his celeb friends). He’s developed a daily blogging routine.

If Perez isn’t enough, then what about Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV or Hugh McLeod of the Gaping Void?

Look, if you practice your career on the real world, you are physically limited to where you practice it. Fine, maybe gossips are an exception. But the art of winery (Gary) or awesome cartooning (Hugh)? However great you can be, your ideas and expertise doesn’t spread as rapidly as you want to be. You need a medium. A blog. Ta dah!

If you have a business, even more reason to do so.

Blogging Skills + Real Life Activities = Edge.

So here’s a pretty ordinary example. Blogging gives you an edge in doing pretty much any routine activity. Like talking/communicating with people, or in my case, writing (since I badly need to write tons of paperwork in my course).

As bloggers, we communicate a lot. We interact with people. We learn how to write our ideas effectively. Sounds really useful, right? I’ve met a lot of bloggers for instance who’ve turned up these well learned skills into ventures (entrepreneurial ones) and it does prove to be an edge.

You can also be more pro-active by using it as a stepping stone to an even greater career. The possibilities are endless once you begin with a passion for it.

So what’s stopping you?

P.S. If you want to learn more about blogging, Check out Ann Smarty’s Free Blogging Ebook!