At a conference I attended several years ago, one of the speakers talked about needing to hire someone to step in and substitute for another designer who had fallen quite ill. The speaker found his new designer from reading their blog. Because that designer wrote and shared his thoughts on the web, he got a job.
I went home from that conference and started writing. I started a blog with a basic WordPress theme that I got for free. I shared my thoughts and ideas. I can say, without a doubt, writing has led to many wonderful things.
It was through writing that I connected virtually with many of the people in the industry that I’ve gone on to meet in-person at conferences. It all started by taking notes at a Mobile Portland meeting and publishing them on my site. I continued to think more about mobile and shared my thoughts on my blog. Those posts were the beginning for me, they were how I realized that I had a voice, that my thoughts mattered, and that sharing them was a way to start a conversation with others who were thinking about the same topics.
Through writing, I solidified my ideas on style guides. When I went to write up a rough post for the company blog about how I created the style guide we were using, it pushed me to think about how I define these tools. That rough post never ended up on the company blog, but it did get published as an A List Apart article. As I worked with an editor to shape that piece, my thoughts on style guides morphed and changed until I knew what I wanted to say about them.
The publication of that article led to speaking about style guides at conferences, giving me some amazing (and nerve wracking) opportunities to talk about them more.
As I’ve continued to write, on my own site and others, it’s led to more opportunities. I believe it was through my writing that I got to work with an amazing team, at an amazing startup that is no longer. As I wrote quick pieces on my site, some of them grew and went on to become more somewhere else, such as my article on CSS audits here on A List Apart.
It can be hard and intimidating to put yourself out there, but you should write. You should take the ideas that you get, and see what happens with them. Submit to publications you think may be interested in your topic (hint, hint) and see what they think. Writing can lead to more than you can imagine.
Often, the pieces I have the most doubts about turn out to be the words that people read and relate to most. So in those moments where you wonder if you should share something, I say do it, publish it. Treat your blog like your drafts folder. When I’ve done that, great things have happened.
via planetweb
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