Professional networking using blogs is a relatively new idea and surrounded with much hype—when people get a new technology, they’ve got a shiny new hammer and everything starts to look like a nail. You have to be careful to assess what a tool’s real strengths and productive uses are.

In this case, I have found that professional networking using blogs works.

What Makes a Good Professional Networking Tool?

To establish whether or not (or why) a blog would work for professional networking, I’m going to outline the elements of a good professional networking tool as I see them. Good networking tools would be:

• Searchable

  If I am trying to find someone I know but have lost track of, I would like to simply “Google” their name.

• Persistent

  If I have found a resource associated with a contact and want to bookmark it, write it down, or keep the business card it was listed on, I had better be able to come back in several months or even years and find that resource again.

• Up to Date

  It’s always good to find information about my connections that reflects their current professional and life situation—I like to be able to start an intelligent conversation with my contacts about their current projects and goals. This also helps me to evaluate whether current projects or opportunities are right for them.

• Personal

  Many of my contacts have been made solely online—I have never met some of my contacts in real life. A networking tool that helps me to see what my contacts are like, how they think and feel, is very valuable.

• Connected

  Finally, a networking tool would be even more useful if I could see who my contacts trust and which contacts we have in common.

How to Use a Blog for Professional Networking

Blogs can be used for virtually all of the above criteria of a good networking tool. Blogs are searchable—they are publicly available and crawlable. A good blog is persistent and up to date, letting your readers know what you are working on and staying on the World Wide Web for more than a few months. By reading your posts, your contacts will gradually get a feeling for your personality. Blog rolls and cross linking connect your blog to the contacts, resources, and projects that are important to you.

There are other tools for networking that everyone should use and that produce benefits that blogs cannot, but blogs are so good at meeting important networking needs that they should be part of most professionals’ networking strategy.

Blogs Are Effective Professional Networking Tools

I know because my blog has recently increased my opportunities. Three times in one week. I’ve landed a new service contract through my blog, with another potential contract in the works. I also strengthened a relationship with a very good contact. The first contact found me by typing my name into Google. He found my blog, read my current profile, and sent me an email. We talked on the phone, and we are now helping each other with some of our individual and mutual goals.

The potential contract I have came through someone who found my name while looking for someone else—he found me because I was connected with the person he was looking for through my blog. Finally, one of my best contacts told me to keep posting on my blog because he reads it regularly—it was a good pat-on-the-back that can be hard to come by when blogging.

So there’s some more motivation for maintaining a blog. It can be really hard to be diligent about blogging, but the benefits really are worth it. Blog relentlessly—it will be good for your professional development.