6 Reasons Why Every Student Should Blog and How it Can Help In and Out of School

Students! Create or Get A Cushy Job using a Blog!

• Weather you’re in 1st year, 4th year, or within a Graduate Program, Why not Start building authority now.  Don’t wait until you’re finished school to start persuing opportunities.   By blogging about your industry or subject, you’re becoming far more involved than an above average person.   You’re showing your passion, initiative and drive.  This guide to building a better blog in 31 days could be looked at in a light that is related to your program – apply these ideas and steps to a blog or to your learning and you’ll be taking off!  What else is going to help you stand out right now? I am promoting one means of standing out here and I’m sure there are more.  Get over Facebook, start your own hosted blog with your own domain and build your online presence/brand. It’s the cheapest way to start. It takes time to build the authority so the sooner you start, the bigger benefit come graduation.

Capture Inspiration for your Field of Study

• Use all or part of your blog as a way to capture inspiration in your field of Study.  For example, if you’re studying photography or architecture, a blog would be a killer way to post images for inspiration to you and others interested in the subject.  Other classmates may start looking at what you’re up to and notice you as strong competition.  Of course, you need to be doing your school work as well.  It would be busy, but it’s very, very possible.  As you research and scratch for ideas, you are able to share.  This type of mentality is one of abundance instead of keeping things to yourself and a selfish mindset.  You may notice more classmates sharing interesting things they find with you to post on your blog.

Build Relationships Off and Online During School

• Build relationships on and offline while in school – become a Trust Agent for your class and subject.  People in your industry may stumble upon your blog, browse your blog at the time of application and see the time and work you put into everything.  This is something you cannot even begin to see from looking at a portfolio.  You may not even know who may be watching and listening to you until they contact you.

Any Arts or Design Students should Build Interest with a Blog

• Your blog can become your portfolio – I love this for Photography and Art.  As great as a simple portforlio with finalized projects can be, people love to see how you work and how your think.   Your blog would be a way to discuss thought processes, show progress images on projects.  While in school, you can build interest and early fans of your work.  You may even be able to earn extra cash while in school and help make it a more comfortable experience.

• Get opinions of others when you’ve received projects or reports back from grading.  Every student within an artistic program should be purchasing The Unconventional Guide to Art and Money.  This is information you may never learn from your old school professor.  A blog can be used as your virtual studio and everything you do online takes people towards your blog. Everything you do within any social media website can promote your brand and blog.  This is very important for 21st century success.  Imagine noting your blog analytics [traffic/impressions/alexa ranking/page rank] on your resume.

Improve Your Grades by Starting to Blog

• Improve your writing skills.  I am not the best writer; however, I am hoping to improve as this blog continues on.  I remember a radio station talking with an HR representitive, where the HR Rep was discussing one of the largest issues with applicants just out of school:  Horrible Spelling.  Writing within a blog is much different than writing instant messages.  You’re required to form sentences, write more, and improve.  This helps when it comes time to write your reports.  It also gets you into the habit of writing on a regular basis.
• You could use your blog as a way to write your reports.  I actually recommend using a GTD (get things done approach that Dragos Roua brought to my attention via his own blog – it involves Mac Journal).  You could set your report to be released on your blog on the due date.  Your report could be later sold as an ebook! This is very interesting and leads to my next point.

Use a Blog to Generate Income while In School

Monetization  of your blog while in school! There are so many ways to make an income online.  Hard work is involved, and since you’re working hard in school, all you need to do is translate just part of what you’re learning to a blog to gain traction.  These are a few ways you could start to possibly earn an income from a blog:

• Tutoring or Coaching – Students that are not confident in certain areas or students in years below you may come to you for tutoring or coaching sessions while in school.
• Ebooks – Write about your design process, how you get your creative juices flowing, publish your projects as bodies of work for interested people.  You don’t have to give away everything about you, but you’re becoming transparent and people can really appreciate someone that is such a team player and interested in building relationships.
• Membership – create a members only part of your blog or forum that is for the top people within your class.  Only open it up to a certain number of people or a cost per term.
• Services- Proof Reading service for reading over reports for students in years below you, or critiques the day before the due date or presentation date for other students.
• Art / Print Sales – list your art, prints, or jewelry on your blog as you create and move through school to earn that extra money.
• Adsense – add adsense to your blog and see what happens! There are a lot of people earning income from this and it could pay for an extra book or pay for a celebration after a project is done.

Are Students Blogging Already?

I have no doubt there are a great number of student bloggers. I used to blog (I guess it was called a journal) while in school, but there was a problem at that point for me.  I would mainly use my “journal” as a place to complain. A lot of people seemed to do that. Or the blog was used for trivial affairs, like how hungover I was that day or whatever.  It was not focused on a topic or dream.  If I was in school now, I would be blogging constantly around my subject.  I would probably be doing exactly what I’m doing right now, perhaps I’d be exposed to situations that would help create new ideas for titles though.  It’s interesting to think about what my schooling would have been like today.  Take advantage of how easy it is to start a blog and build your personal brand as early as possible.  If you want to start a blog but you’re unsure how to go about it, Caroline Middlebrook has an amazing resource for getting it all moving.   If you need me to start your blog and install Wordpress (a blogging software on your own domain) then visit my 1000 incubating blogs story.

Do you think this is possible for students? Is it too much and would blogging seriously impact studies in a negative way?  Or do you think there is something that could help them more?  Could blogging become the student part time job of the 21st century?

You tell me.