100 blog posts.

My professor and classmates recently returned from their New York expedition (the one I didn’t go on, but hey, I’m not bitter) and they brought back some neat tips to get an internship as a writer. Here’s what I want to mention today. When Jodi, a classmate, and other students spoke to a company about internships, the company asked to see their blogs. Jodi gave them the reference for the blog she maintained for a class. She was one of a few students had a blog. Obviously, this gave her an edge.

Here’s what my professor has to say about this: if you write a blog about technical writing or some other aspect of the industry, you can consider yourself an expert. So what should professional writing students do? Write. Write a blog and update it regularly. By the time you graduate, you’ll have built a blog and a reputation, and you’ll be very employable.

This means choosing a specific but deep topic for your blog. This deserves a post for itself, but for now, I’ll say to find something you’re interested in that has a lot of different aspects you could explore through blog posts.

This is one of those things I’d wish I’d started when I began working on my degree over 100 credit hours ago. If I had started then, I’d have over two years of blog experience and the associated street cred that goes with it.

I’ll talk more about building your reputation in my next post, but for right now, go write your blog.