How I leveraged volunteer blogging to get my first guest post on one of the most heavily trafficked blogs

When I woke up this morning, I honestly didn’t have the first clue what to write about. That rarely happens to me, especially since I’ve learned to put my automatic success mechanism to work so I can come up with an endless stream of ideas for blog posts.  But, when I checked email I was delighted to find that my volunteer efforts for The Quality of Life Project had resulted in a featured article on Dumb Little Man. Needless to say, I was thrilled by this considering it was my first guest post, and it was on one of the largest personal development blogs.

I had been thinking about writing a post on how to leverage volunteer work for professional growth, but was looking for the right opportunity to incorporate it. It was only when I came across Brian Tracy’s book, The Luck Factor, I started coming up with ideas for volunteer work that could help me grow my professional network. Let me share an example from that book with you. When Brian Tracy was younger, he joined the chamber of commerce in his city and started to volunteer. Eventually this lead to him leading committees and eventually planning events. As a result, his network of contacts grew really fast.  What was even more amazing is that his opportunities and income grew with the network. Every time the number of people he knew doubled, his income doubled. This also all happened in the span of about 6 months. Needless to say that was enough for me to start exploring various volunteer opportunities.

Due to my employment situation, I figured there was no better time to start really exploring these ideas.  The major problem with volunteer work is that we tend to associate it with soup kitchens, homeless people, and those kinds of things. But, we can really leverage volunteer work to help us in our area of professional interest. My first foray into this started with working the door at an event called Digital LA, a digital media organization here in LA. As a result I met tons of people because I checked them in at the door. So, when I was done working the door I already knew many people. I even landed a job interview because I checked the hiring manager in at the door.  This is something I’ll continue even after I’m employed because I can keep meeting more people and even make some new friends. Last Saturday when I was surfing, I met another surfer who was doing some volunteer work for an organization that taught kids how to surf. While I’m not super advanced at surfing, I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve had some friends ask me to teach them. I also know that teaching somebody else is something improves your skills tremendously at anything. So, I was thrilled to find out that I could do volunteer work and surf at the same time.

About 2 months back, I came across a job listing for a social media intern at the Quality of Life Project. Up until that point I had walked away from any unpaid internship opportunities. However, this happened to be for an organization that was focused on personal development, so when the founder told me it was unpaid, I told him that I was still interested because I was passionate about the cause of the organization.  As a part of my volunteer effort, one of the things I would eventually be able to do was some writing for the organization and possibly eventually be a part of planning some events.  I’m really grateful that I’ve been given this opportunity and it’s just a testament to the fact the volunteer work can help you grow professionally.

Tags: volunteer, self improvement, blogging, writing, social media

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