In an ideal world, your performance in a job role should be the only factor that impacts your progress on the corporate ladder.
Unfortunately, things don’t work that way in the real world.
How your manager and colleagues perceive you, is equally important. You need to know the art of selling yourself effectively.
People with successful corporate careers are not only experts in their key job responsibilities, but also know how to market themselves as potential future leaders.
Fortunately, this has become much easier now with the advent of social media websites and other forms of technology.
Here are 5 ways you can boost your career growth with the smart use of technology.
1. Use Blogging to Share Your Knowledge
One of the best ways of enhancing your reputation within your organization is to demonstrate knowledge and expertise in key areas of your industry on the most credible forums and platforms.
You can do that by starting your own blog and sharing your knowledge through detailed posts on the most relevant and complex topics of your industry.
If your posts have real value for the readers, people from all over the world, that belong to your industry, will start reading your blog and sharing your content online.
And you never know, your boss might end up being one of them as well.
2. Write for the Leading Industry Blogs
Once you have a few posts on your blog, add guest blogging to your strategy and expand your reach. Shortlist the most influential blogs of your industry, and approach them with high quality posts as a guest author.
These blogs are followed by the top executives of your industry and you’re most likely to get noticed by them if your posts are published on any of these blogs.
Almost all major blogs accept guest posts and allow you to share a small introduction of yourself at the end of the post.
This is where you need to sell yourself.
Write a few lines that describe you as an expert professional from your industry and add a back link to your blog.
Once you’re featured on even a couple of top blogs, your reputation will sky rocket within your industry.
3. Curate the Best online Content
You don’t always have to write content in order to build your reputation. A lot of the times, the type of articles and blogs you read, also say a lot about the level of understanding you have about your industry.
This is where you can use the strength of content curation.
Follow the most influential professionals of your industry and regularly share their posts and articles on your blog and social media profiles.
When you curate content on your own blog, make sure you clearly mention its source to avoid any plagiarism charges.
4. Get Active on All Major Social Networks
The top professionals in your industry are extremely busy people. So it’s not always possible to meet them personally.
However, with all the social networking websites, there’s no limit to who you can approach.
Get in touch with all the big players of your industry and start following their profiles. Interact with them online whenever possible and occasionally share your blog posts with them.
In my personal experience, participating in LinkedIn groups is also one of the most effective ways to build your reputation with industry experts.
These groups are full of influencers and even a small compliment from them can do wonders for your reputation, and ultimately your career growth.
5. Market Yourself Aggressively
This might sound a little awkward, but you have to market yourself aggressively, sometimes even shamelessly, to get noticed.
Every time you write a new blog post or get featured on a major industry blog, make sure everyone around you knows about it.
Send the links of your posts regularly to your manager and the most influential people in your company.
Even if they don’t read your posts, they would always know that you’re someone who thinks about the different aspects of his industry and knows his job functions very well.
Conclusion
Your career growth is directly related to how the most influential people in your company and industry perceive you. Be aggressive in demonstrating your knowledge and make use of all the possible platforms to market your expertise. You’ll be surprised how far these small activities will go in boosting your reputation and accelerating your career growth.