Start A Blog, Change The World, Hire A Web Analytics Manager

We covered the start of the Good Product Manager blog when Jeff Lash first started writing in January.  Jeff is a friend of ours here in St Louis with an affinity for organizing and a promising career as, well, a product manager.  Jeff had experience with blogs, writing his own as well a participating in an internal blog used by his company for cross-department collaboration.

So when he sent me an e-mail saying he had started writing, we of course profiled him in our pages.  And when Jeff had an opening for a Web Analytics Manager here in St Louis, we of course offered to post his job opening at StlRecruiting.com, and I forwarded him the e-mails that responded. 

Today I got an e-mail giving me some feedback on the results of that search, and his blog overall.  They hired a web analytics manager that responded to my posting.  This individual, interesting enough, was one that Jeff had an invitation to connect with through LinkedIn, and she had also read the Monster posting of the job.  Using the blog, however, we had a direct connection, a better job description, and ultimately, the correct fit for his position.

This doesn't mean that she was hired because of this blog, but reading the job posting on the blog inspired her to action, and let her know that Jeff's company was open to bloggers.

A good story - but not as good as the other information Jeff shared with me.  The results of his blogging.

Blog Stastitics:

• Averaging over 100 visitors a day
• Averaging 400+ RSS subscribers
• On the first page of Google search results for "product manager and "product management" and getting almost 50% of my traffic from organic search
• Listed on "popular" tag pages on del.icio.us and getting a good amount of traffic from there

Writes Jeff:

One of the best benefits is that this has allowed me to connect with other professionals in the field and build out my network. It's been a great way to connect with other bloggers and experts in the field, much more so than if I had just tried to contact them on my own. I've also been able to reconnect with former colleagues, and I've started to get emails from other product managers and others in related fields asking for advice and inquiring about various types of opportunities.

Jeff's blog and his social network of bloggers (including me, of course), help him recruit, get known, get feedback, and ultimately, help make him a better product manager and a better employee.  100+ traffic along with 400 RSS readers is quite good, especially for the time he puts into it, and considering he now has an audience - he has access to their social networks, their experience, and their questioning.

Recruiting blogs are not growing the way they should, in part because we have focused on recruiters instead of on the audiences we try to recruit. If you are a recruiter looking for product managers, wouldn't you love to have access to a blog like Jeff's?

For web/tech/e-commerce/search - this is currently a necessity.  For the rest of you, the time is coming.  Accountants, healthcare, sales, marketing, and even light industrial will reach critical mass.  Can you afford to wait until your competitors have built strong communities?