SEOenthusiast

Starting a blog has been one of the single-smartest things I’ve ever done in my life. However, when I started it I had no clue that it would ever be worth anything whatsoever – let alone a place that has helped me along with a lot of my career goals.

Then – and even now to some extent – its inherent value was only as an “idea” or a representation of who I am personally and professionally. That “idea” is something that nobody can take away from me, and the personal and professional representation of myself is something that I truly consider to be a long-term investment.

I don’t make any money off my blog, and I don’t really intend to right now. However, I perceive its value to be priceless, and many of the positive things that have happened as a result of my blogging are things that can’t be measured right away or by money.

Full disclosure:

In one instance, a business entity (who will go nameless) tried to have me shut my blog down as they perceived it as threatening and undermining. I adamantly refused to shut it down and would have rather been fired or quit.In other instances, I’ve had prospective employers express concern over my blog as they feared it would detract from my dedication to them. I would have flat turned them down for job offers in order to keep my blog up and running. Luckily it never came to that, and lucky for me that my current employer has a very progressive mindset about my blogging.

Photo Credit: www.pinartarhan.com

So without further adieu, here are the 21 major benefits to blogging according to me (in no particular order):

Helps you build a trusted following.Affords you the opportunity to connect with others whom you may not have connected with otherwise.Helps you grow your following (ex: RSS, Email Subscriptions, and especially word-of-mouth).Over time, your subscriber-base will begin to read and share most of what you write.Gives you the opportunity to create a brand around your personality.Gives you an opportunity to show off your personality and what sets you apart from others.Helps to build brand trust around you or your company.Helps to establish or solidify your expertise in your industry.Build and manage your reputation within your industry.Over time, it can become your personal portfolio.Gives you an opportunity to help or teach others.Gives you a chance to promote others and their content (links, guest posts, positive mentions, etc).Can help you build and solidify online (and potentially offline) relationships with your following.Builds long-term SEO equity within search engines.Allows you to target keywords that you may not normally be able to target with your website.Allows your “expertise” to live on forever in search engines (ex: I wrote some posts 2 years ago that still pull significant traffic).Build SEO equity through inbound links back to your root domain (if your blog resides in a subdirectory off that root).Gives you the opportunity to scratch creative itches (for me it’s my web design itch).Allows you to leverage cross-promotional opportunities (ex: social media, promotional posts, etc).Interact with your readers through blog comments.If you’re good enough, eventually you may begin to be included in discussions mentioning and involving your top industry peers (in my case, being mentioned in the same breath as a Rand Fishkin, Danny Sullivan, or Aaron Wall would be a goal that I strive for).

I’m sure there are more, but this is my list. Feel free to add to it below in the comments section.

I started blogging 5 years ago – and started the Agent SEO blog almost 3 years ago. I have never made any money off of it, but for me (due to many of the reasons above) it has been far more valuable than anything a job or money can give me.

And I realize that is kind of odd that I say that in a post that talks about how these things could get you money eventually.

The way I see it, my blog has helped me build respect among my peers (which I am absolutely grateful for), as well as many new friendships. Those are things that are priceless, but in the long-run through the connections you’ll be sure to develop, the respect you may stand to gain, and the experiences blogging will help you build are sure to lead to a better job, a nice contract, or other things that involve money.

The key is getting in there and being real, which is what really matters – the money can come later. So start a blog today. I highly recommend it!

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