I have been for the past four months been a paid blogger for a Nurses blog.
This has been a great experience for me as it has been great to feed back information to my nursing colleagues about topical issues related to nursing.
Now that my 4 month tenure with the nurse's blog site is coming to an end I have been thinking about blogs and how they could apply to other professional groups.
A well set up and professionally mediated blog is a great way for a group of professionals to share information, research results, new ideas, even a bit of idle chit-chat that may boost the morale of your peers.
If your professional organisation or association doesn't already have its own blog or if you have one but you feel it does not represent the views of your profession then maybe this is an opportunity for you to start your very own blog that will help serve the needs of your colleagues.
A blog is a great way to help unite those that feel they are isolated from their professional colleagues.
With financial cut backs limiting the number who get to attend conferences or seminars, a blog is great way to be able to share the most up to date information with your peers.
You could obtain a copy of the conference programme and invite each of the speakers to post an article about their presentation.
You may think that its a big job to set up your own blog but in my experience that has not been the case at all.
A blog costs virtually nothing to set up and run...
just purchase a domain name and web site hosting and these combined cost as little as $140 pa Aus.
Once you have your hosting set up you may even be able to host many blogs on the one account for no extra hosting fees (check with your web host).
I know very little about WordPress but have found that it is quite user friendly if you just follow some simple steps and there are many instructional videos that you can easily find using a search engine on how to set up a basic blog.
If you are thinking of starting your own blog for the benefit of your profession don't be put off by thinking (like I did) that you won't have anything interesting or useful to write about.
You can invite your peers to submit articles as well.
Virtually everyone nowadays has an email account and most professional people have other members of the same profession listed in their email address book.
Take the first step and simply send out an email to your peers saying that you are thinking about starting up a blog to address some of the common issues or problems that your profession is presently dealing with and that a blog is a great way to come up with some collective ideas or possible solutions.
You may have one particular area of your profession that has the most challenges to deal with on a day to day basis.
You may want to just write to this section of your profession and such treat that select group as your niche.
If you can convince three or four others to also write a 400 word article for you each week that will help to spread the load and should ensure that you have a good supply of articles to post each week.
You need the articles to be on topic, not defamatory (no gossip or slander) for your organisation or your colleagues and to offer constructive advise or interesting thought provoking content.
You will need to market your blog in order to let others know that it exists.
A quick and easy way to do this is via a group email to all your peers.
If your blog is popular and has a lot of visitors you may even be able to make some money from your blog either by selling advertising space or by providing content that your colleagues would find valuable and would be prepared to pay for in a password protected "members area" on your blog.
It is also worthwhile considering adding a forum to your blog where visitors can post their ideas/concerns as "threads" so that other visitors can also add their comments to the thread.
I always believe that two heads are better than one when it comes to problem solving or brain storming, so why not get a whole heap of members of your profession together on-line and make use of the relatively inexpensive, user friendly, readily available internet technology that is nowadays it seems is in everyone's homes or work place and start your own blog.
This has been a great experience for me as it has been great to feed back information to my nursing colleagues about topical issues related to nursing.
Now that my 4 month tenure with the nurse's blog site is coming to an end I have been thinking about blogs and how they could apply to other professional groups.
A well set up and professionally mediated blog is a great way for a group of professionals to share information, research results, new ideas, even a bit of idle chit-chat that may boost the morale of your peers.
If your professional organisation or association doesn't already have its own blog or if you have one but you feel it does not represent the views of your profession then maybe this is an opportunity for you to start your very own blog that will help serve the needs of your colleagues.
A blog is a great way to help unite those that feel they are isolated from their professional colleagues.
With financial cut backs limiting the number who get to attend conferences or seminars, a blog is great way to be able to share the most up to date information with your peers.
You could obtain a copy of the conference programme and invite each of the speakers to post an article about their presentation.
You may think that its a big job to set up your own blog but in my experience that has not been the case at all.
A blog costs virtually nothing to set up and run...
just purchase a domain name and web site hosting and these combined cost as little as $140 pa Aus.
Once you have your hosting set up you may even be able to host many blogs on the one account for no extra hosting fees (check with your web host).
I know very little about WordPress but have found that it is quite user friendly if you just follow some simple steps and there are many instructional videos that you can easily find using a search engine on how to set up a basic blog.
If you are thinking of starting your own blog for the benefit of your profession don't be put off by thinking (like I did) that you won't have anything interesting or useful to write about.
You can invite your peers to submit articles as well.
Virtually everyone nowadays has an email account and most professional people have other members of the same profession listed in their email address book.
Take the first step and simply send out an email to your peers saying that you are thinking about starting up a blog to address some of the common issues or problems that your profession is presently dealing with and that a blog is a great way to come up with some collective ideas or possible solutions.
You may have one particular area of your profession that has the most challenges to deal with on a day to day basis.
You may want to just write to this section of your profession and such treat that select group as your niche.
If you can convince three or four others to also write a 400 word article for you each week that will help to spread the load and should ensure that you have a good supply of articles to post each week.
You need the articles to be on topic, not defamatory (no gossip or slander) for your organisation or your colleagues and to offer constructive advise or interesting thought provoking content.
You will need to market your blog in order to let others know that it exists.
A quick and easy way to do this is via a group email to all your peers.
If your blog is popular and has a lot of visitors you may even be able to make some money from your blog either by selling advertising space or by providing content that your colleagues would find valuable and would be prepared to pay for in a password protected "members area" on your blog.
It is also worthwhile considering adding a forum to your blog where visitors can post their ideas/concerns as "threads" so that other visitors can also add their comments to the thread.
I always believe that two heads are better than one when it comes to problem solving or brain storming, so why not get a whole heap of members of your profession together on-line and make use of the relatively inexpensive, user friendly, readily available internet technology that is nowadays it seems is in everyone's homes or work place and start your own blog.
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