By Natalie Bock
Writing a blog has many benefits to you - the writer - in addition to maintaining an organization’s website. Writing a blog allows the author to share a message, practice tone of voice and improve writing skills. Most importantly, it allows you to build a portfolio of writing samples to submit for internship and job opportunities.
A blog allows you to share your message by providing a space for ideas to flow. You get to express your thoughts on a topic and add your “voice” to the writing. This allows readers to get to know and understand you, enriching the reading experience. This is incredibly useful when submitting writing samples to internship and job applications. The employer will not only get to see your writing skills, but get to know what you are passionate about and who you are as a person. The creative development of a blog gives employers insight into who they are interviewing and help them understand if you are a good fit for their company.
In addition, continuously writing blogs allows you to keep up on relevant writing conventions and become a consistent, confident writer. By doing so, you strengthen your voice and become quicker at catching errors you may not have seen before. A writer can have someone edit their paper and point out their mistakes. The writer can then look at and understand these errors to make sure that they don’t happen again. Having these editorial skills is crucial in a communications role. When writing captions for social media or press releases, employers want to be sure you can self-edit in a timely manner.
Finally, writing blogs allows a writer to continue to have updated writing samples to submit to job applications, allowing these pieces to reflect their current skills. Adding blogs to your portfolio gives you an abundance of samples that you can pick and choose from to ensure that your selected pieces match the requirements of the job and meet employers’ expectations.
In brief, a blog does more than keeping a website and social media platform updated. They help writers show their voice and display their writing skills. Your blogs can impress employers with writing samples that match the work you would be doing.