I had talks with a couple of good friends this past week about helping me build the “Bart Leahy brand,” however I choose to define it. One thing I (and you, loyal readers) can do to improve your brand is to share content online that demonstrates your expertise in a particular field. For the last four years, I’ve focused on demonstrating my competence as a technical writer. That’s groovy, but it doesn’t necessarily help me demonstrate my worth to my preferred target customers.

My preferred target customers are space people.

So this weekend I started a blog about the business of human space exploration. Why didn’t I do this earlier? I’ll be honest–when I first started this notion of “demonstrating competence” in the blogosphere, the space business wasn’t that fun. The Constellation Program had been canceled, and there was a lot of acrimony in the space business. After spending all day with the unpleasant facts of my predicament (my department was closed out and my fellow coworkers and I were scattered across Marshall Space Flight Center), I wasn’t really interested in talking about space off duty.

But now I’ve had some time to recover, and I’ve been exposed to more of the non-NASA parts of human spaceflight, which has given me some hope for the future and a broader perspective. So I’ll give this another shot.

The point of all this, of course, is to establish my credentials as someone who “speaks space.” If you have a particular field of expertise, you might want to consider a blog about your industry as well. The point isn’t to share proprietary secrets or show that you’re the smartest person in the room–after nine years in the space business, I know I am not–but to show that you have knowledge worth sharing.

Let the internet work for you!