10 Essential Blogger Skills Anyone Can Learn
As a blogger you need about as many skills as you do undertaking just about any other complicated social endeavor. Some are more essential than others though. The key is not only finding out what makes the difference, but also to make the most of what you do well while trying to become better at what you do less well. Blogging is not for everyone and successful blogging seems to be for even fewer. Being aware of what skills it requires and why each is important is hence important not only when thinking about starting a blog, but also when assessing how much chance of success you have. Most important is it however when trying to better what you are already doing. Reflecting about it is itself valuable, but doing so in terms of what you do well and less well and how to balance things better out may be just what you need to end up both more successful and satisfied.
1. Blog by example
When blogging you should strive at doing things how you think they should be done rather than how they are normally done. It is your blog and your responsibility to make the most of it and that is best done by doing what you believe in. Dare take chances and taking a different route. Lead by example rather than copy what others do. If everyone was following there would be no idea of even getting started as you would only thread in the footsteps of others already way be beyond you. You will never catch up unless you are faster than they are and fact is that most of us aren’t. Find your own way and walk it. And make sure that you tell people where you are going and why so that they can decide if they want to follow you or not.
2. Blog with passion
If you aren’t blogging with passion you may as well spend your time filling out forms or realigning the stuff on your desk. I am not talking about throwing in a lot of words like “Yippee Yeah”, “Coolness” or whatever people say when they are excited about something. This is about communicating that you care about what you are writing about. That you take the time to do it properly and follow up and follow through. Don’t do things half, but do them till they can’t be done any better. Cheering may be right for some, but in the end all it is about is picking what you are passionate about and blogging passionately about it. Some are passionate about blogging itself and some are passionate about money. My advice would be to be passionate about something else.
3. Be organized
If you aren’t organized you are wasting too much time and believe me time is the scarcest resource when it comes to blogging. You will never have enough of it so make the most of it by getting organized. Make a time schedule and bundle tasks. Know what you will and what you won’t. Do whatever makes you most effective, but do something. Lack of organization will lead to disorganization, which leads to stress and so on and so forth. Besides if you are not organized how do you imagine that your blog and your writing will be anything else? Not to mention how you deal with comments, request and questions? Soon you will be drowning in things that you should have done yesterday, just because you didn’t take the time to prioritize and subsequently to organize accordingly.
4. Delegate
You simply cannot do everything well. Obvious things where you probably (indirectly at least) delegate to begin with are the platform (WordPress, Moveable Type, etc.) and perhaps even hosting (WordPress.com, Blogger.com etc.), but it can also be the design (using themes) or the functionality (implementing plugins). Depending on your experience and your goals will you make more of less wise choices. With time should you be able to better your blog so that it becomes more and more unique through less use of (general) delegation. Delegating doesn’t just mean that you should assign certain tasks to someone else though. Delegation also extends to time. No matter how organized you get you will gain nothing if you spend the time won on the wrong things. Delegating your time right may be the most important thing you do.
5. Take ownership and responsibility
Everything worth doing is worth doing right. If you do it right you should certainly also take ownership and credit for it. Likewise you should accept the responsibility for everything going less well. Taking ownership means drawing the line between yours and mine so that people can see what’s yours and what belongs to someone else. That way you credit both yourself and others and make it easier to comprehend why you protect what is yours and react when someone try to make it theirs. Taking ownership doesn’t mean that you have to put everything out there. It is more about how you write and not least how you act and react towards others interacting with your content. Remember you cannot take credit without taking responsibility. There is no such thing as a free lunch as the saying goes.
6. Communicate effectively
Blogging is all about communication so it is of little surprise that you should make the most of it. I don’t write that you should be great or even good at it as that is relative. We cannot all be great writers, but we can all strive to become better. Constantly working at it and challenging yourself with different kinds of writing is they key I think. Simply writing and writing and writing some more won’t do. You have to reflect about it as well or you will just be repeating your mistakes over and over. The more you write and the more people read and respond to it the better you will be able to judge what works and what doesn’t. What you define as effective is another matter though as that depends entirely on you, your blog and what you hope to achieve with it.
7. Be brave and honest
Being brave and honest is a combination that will not work for everyone I think. Personally I am honest to the bone, but I have nothing to be brave about as I write about nothing controversial. Perhaps brave can also simply mean taking chances though. Going out on a limb when choosing the topic or how you write about it. Who you show it to or how you promote it. Being brave is thus about courage and curiosity. As long as you combine it with honesty should you be fine even if you sometimes overstep the line of what you can and cannot do according to those reading you. Honesty is not just about being truthful, but also about being honest to yourself and what you believe in. Staying true to yourself is bound to take your further than trying to fake it no matter how brave you are.
8. Listen
Amidst all the other tasks you have to take care off you should sometimes stop and simply listen. Not to the grass growing although that probably doesn’t hurt either, but to what people are telling you and not least to yourself. What is the response you are getting to what you do and how do you yourself feel about it? Listening to others in this case basically means reading the comments on your blog, the responses from other blogs as well as what people otherwise communicate about you and your blog. The more ways you give them to communicate with you the more you can listen and more you will get out of it. Listening to yourself is best done off your blog I think. Reflect about what you set out to do, what you actually do and how thinking about it makes you feel. Listen carefully and be honest with yourself when you do.
9. Know your readers
Knowing your readers (which to some extent at least means knowing the other bloggers in your community) is perhaps one of the hardest things to do. Sure, you can judge them by their responses to your posts, but what if you just don’t have a very comment oriented audience or things not directly related to your readership cause the unavoidable traffic fluctuations. If you develop your ability to listen are you already well on your way though. The second component is caring. You have to care about each and every reader you have. Some say you should write for just one person. Not thinking about your readers as a mass or group, but focusing on each of them individually. Who is this person and what would she or he like to read or like to be addressed etc. Thinking that way will also bring the best out in your readers.
10. Be a reader
Having very little to go by when listening and getting to know your readers to begin with is my suggestion that you should use yourself as a role model. Ask yourself what you would enjoy reading and then write accordingly. Ask yourself how you would respond or like to interact with your site. How you would like to be greeted and so on. It is hard to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, but trying alone will teach you a whole lot. Being a reader also refers to actually reading others writing and not just your own. Read related blogs to see what they do right and unrelated blogs to get new ideas and throw in some books and magazines for good measure. However much I love blogging there just are boundaries what you can do with them and hence do you have to read something else as well.
Don’t use these ten skills to put yourself down or even out of the blogging business. Rather use them to see where you do well and less well to motivate yourself to do more in certain areas while rewarding yourself for doing well in others. We do not come pre-assembled as perfect bloggers nor did those who enjoy the greatest success or draw the biggest headlines. Although basic skills and talent do play a role there is really nothing on this list that you cannot learn and get substantially better at. You don’t have to take my word for it either. Try writing your own list of skills that you believe are important and comparing it with the skills you possess and see what that tells you. Being a great believer in reflecting about what you do, why you do it and not least how you do it do I really think that every such exercise can only work in your favor and help you achieve what you hope quicker, more easily and not least in a more satisfying way.
This post was inspired by Ben Yoskovitz’ 10 Essential Business Leadership Skills, which I encourage you to check out as well. Basically this is an example of liking an article so much that you chose to rewrite it to be about something else, while (hopefully) preserving what it communicates and how it communicates. Rewriting Ben’s 10 leadership skills is thus my attempt at throwing a different light on blogger skills than I could have if I had started with the blogger in mind.
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