Advice to a Young ERP Consultant Part 9:
Build a Blog
99% of you Young ERP Consultants won't follow this advice.
If you're in the 1% that do, cool.
You're my people. Shoot me a message. Let's connect.
Advice Part 9: Build a Blog
If you are following the advice of this series:
You have a Personal Information System to capture your learnings.
You have a habit of creating whitepapers to Share Your Knowledge from learnings with your colleagues.
?
Profit? ...No. Step 3 is to build a blog and share your knowledge with the world.
I know what you're thinking: build a blog? What year is it? Nobody does that anymore. And that's one reason why you should - you'll stand out.
Warning: Don't Build A Blog For Fame and Fortune
Your ERP blog will attract 1's, and later (if you're lucky) 10's of site visitors.
So why build a blog?
A digital calling card:
It's nice to have a place on the internet to call your own.
Proof of work:
Like sharing a Whitepaper with a manager, you are letting all of the internet know you know things (this is good).
Orient your thoughts:
Having a blog attunes you to interesting learnings. As you learn things you think "Aha! I should blog about that!"
Structure your thoughts:
Writing about what you learn for an audience forces you to think about how to teach what you've learned to someone else.
Participate in a community:
Remember when I said your ERP blog will reach 1's to 10's of people? Most of those will be other bloggers also passionate about your ERP. You will find they are generous friends, and (mostly) kind. Good people to know.
Is blogging worth it?
You have to decide if blogging is worth it to you. If you enjoy working in your ERP, you'll likely enjoy blogging about ERP. If you don't enjoy working in ERP, I'd recommend you look into another industry.
(I can't imagine the pain of being an ERP consultant and not liking working in ERP...the job can be painful enough on its own.)