Getting Started V: Documenting Progress

So let's recap what you've accomplished so far:

1. You've launched a blog,
2. Put together your social media sites, and
3. Pitched some content to 3rd party sites.

At this point you've already accomplished an incredible amount, IF you've actually started the process at this point. Many of you are still reading and researching, which is great. 

Now it's time to start leveraging your successes (real or planned). 

Documenting Your Work

I use a Google Spreadsheet to keep track of every article I've ever had published. I keep very basic notes on each article and track when it was published, the title, and the link to the piece. 

But I also take it a step further. Once an article is live I also create a short description of my article. Here's what my spreadsheet looks like:

Title	Description	Link	Date
Getting Started IV - Guest Posting	Guest Posting is one of the most important tools for building your reputation as a writer. Here's how to get started!	http://jphornor.blogspot.com/2012/09/getting-started-iv-guest-posting.html	9/22/2012

I keep a short description for two reasons:

1. It reminds me what the heck I wrote about in the first place, and
2. It makes it very fast for me to paste this into Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or anywhere else I want to share this content later. 

See what I did there? I created a tool to help me leverage my social media platform at the same time I built another resume piece. Don't underestimate the power of this process! 

Putting Your Work to Use

It's not enough to document your work, you want to put it to good use for you. One of the primary ways I do this is by letting folks in my social networks know every time I've got a new article published. It's simple: just paste the short description into your social networks and move on. 

Don't be shy! Share your work often and at first it's okay to send out social media messages about the same article several times. Because it's not uncommon for me to have several articles posted in one day, I typically only post each article once to my social sites. The exception would be those big articles on national websites. 

The key is to be actively engaging in the process of documenting your work. Yes, it's on the more tedious side of things, but it's a necessary part of the process. As you grow and get more published articles, you'll need a running list to show publishers your work. 

And you also want to be building awareness using social media. The best way to do this is to keep showing your successes. Before long you'll find that you're not trying to convince people you're the real deal - the fact is you are...