What people I know are doing:

• Teaching English in Korea
• Doing marketing for green-tech in Sweden
• Working at a top 5,000 web property
• Building a new start-up
• Building an existing start-up
• Leading dozens of university business students
• Working at a brewery
• Moving to a new country to find work
• Trying to find their passion after university
• Running a small business
• Trying to find work after university
• Working with web analytics at a non-profit
• Creating a new organization to help high school students
• Starting a career in one of the worlds biggest companies
• Starting new charities
• Learning web development

My question: How can blogging help these people?

Well one thing that blogging could do is provide exposure that would be very difficult to do any other way.

If you work at a brewery, the chance of developing a following are low. You would have to have amazing charisma, great looks and do the job amazingly. Those requirements are very strict and create a high barrier to getting that following. So this is what blogging can do.

Blogging can help give exposure to these people, without there having to be the absolute best, or without having to work an extra 20 hours a week. Not that blogging gives credit away for free to those who don’t deserve it, but I see it as almost a more efficient use of resources when trying to do these things like build reputation.

In university, to get a 80% grade in a course might take a student 60% work effort, and to get that last 20% might take that student’s 40% remaining effort. The more you move up the scale from 70->80->90->100, the more effort it takes to move up one more grade. If we assume that one way to get a good job after university is to get a 100% grade, then the student would have to use 100% of his available effort.

But if that same student was to go out and network, and meet people in the industry or have extra curricular activities, then that student might be able to get the same job by only using in total 80% of his available effort, with 20% remaining.

This is what blogging does for entry level workers. Through blogging and alternative means (and not just putting in 100% or more at the job itself), there’s the possibility to get the same sort of recognition, experience, and knowledge, without effort left to spare.

The best is that there’s even a lot than just blogging that these people could be doing, and there’s the potential to accomplish the equivalent of using %130-%150 (I’m purely conjecturing here). The only requirement to accomplish this would be to take a creative approach to your goals, and always keep your eyes open for better opportunities.

This is really my perspective on things like blogging and social meet-ups overall.