The 9 Best Blogging Skills To Help You Profit From Your Passions

If your goal is to be a top blogger, having the essential blogging skills is a key weapon to carry in your arsenal to remain competitive. With blogging skills, you'll have the building blocks to be a professional blogger.

Building and setting up a blog isn't hard, but a lot can go into maintaining a blog and growing it into a successful enterprise. It goes far beyond publishing blog content and using social media marketing to promote it.

In this post, we will talk about the key skills you need to be a good blogger. From having the ability to create quality content to honing in on key marketing skills and ultimately uncovering what it takes to be a successful blogger.

Let's get into it!

9 Best Blogging Skills

What are the best blogging skills to have as a successful blogger?

The 9 skills we're covering are:

• Research
• Discipline
• Patience
• Writing skills
• Time management
• Creativity
• SEO
• Marketing
• Passion

You'll see that these critical skills are essential for top bloggers. Let's break it down.

1. Research-Driven

Being research-driven means you're turning on your investigation skills to find and uncover data and evidence that you can draw conclusions from and present professionally in your writing.

For example, you have an idea to write a blog post about how bloggers are using AI in their blogs so you conduct research to create your blog post.

• Collect data: Read reviews, take surveys or polls, or interview people.
• Analyze data: Review the data you collected to identify patterns and trends, getting it prepared for entering the decision-making phase.
• Make decisions: Use the data you collected and analyzed to make informed decisions. This is called evidence-based decision-making.
• Learn from the process: Continue to be curious and open to improvement and further development in the future. This goes a long way in strengthening your research skills.
• Validate: Do peer review or other validation methods to validate your research.

This all sounds super scientific. 

Does this really apply to blogging?

It definitely does.

Research skills are used in many industries like business, academia, healthcare, and other fields. It's also a critical part of the blogging process.

You're using your journalistic research skills to cover topics on your blog. They should be backed by research, which is why this is one of the top blogging skills to have a professional blogger.

2. Discipline

Discipline is critical for bloggers because it's about being consistent, focused, and self-motivated. These are important traits to possess if you're blogging and hope to become a professional full-time blogger one day.

In the blogging world, change is definitely a constant. From algorithm changes happening throughout the year to ad network limits changing, having the discipline to stick through them despite these changes takes major discipline. 

Not to mention, having this skill is critical for:

• Consistently publishing your blog content
• Goal-setting
• Managing your time
• Being open to continuous improvement and learning

Discipline is a foundational skill that's the building block for further developing your focus, resilience, and organization.

3. Patience

Blogging is one of the industries that absolutely requires patience. When you launch a new blog, expect to be in the Google sandbox for up to 6 months. 

According to Hubspot, experts say the sandbox period can last up to 6 to 9 months!

What does that mean?

In the SEO world, they call the Google sandbox period the time when new websites or domains are held back from ranking high in Google's search results.

This waiting period prevents new sites from using aggressive SEO tactics and manipulating search rankings. 

Every website usually goes through this.

It takes some real patience to blog for up to 6 to 9 months, knowing that your content will likely not rank high, despite how high-quality it might be. This period can delay the income you start earning from blogging. It can also delay awesome partnerships that can arise.

Having patience is so critical, so you can patiently wait this period out.

It's tough to do and one of the reasons why 80% of bloggers quit in their first 6 months.

4. Writing Skills

This one seems apparent. Bloggers should have good blog writing skills. Being a professional writer isn't necessary here.

You don't need a four-year degree in writing or communication to have effective writing skills.

The basics of good blog writing should be understood and practiced regularly, like:

• Knowing who your target audience is
• Writing with a clear purpose
• Creating engaging moments in your content and within your blog
• Writing a compelling headline and using hooks throughout your content
• Having a call-to-action

Your writing skills will improve with practice, so if you don't consider yourself a great writer, things can get better with time.

For more examples of creating an engaging blog, check out our roundup of 21 blogging tips to boost engagement.

One of the best courses for learning basic blogging skills and writing skills, including how to create authority sites, is The Authority Site System.

This course teaches bloggers how to start and grow profitable websites. If you're a beginner looking to earn $1,000 per month or more in income from your blog, this course is perfect for you.

5. Time Management

Time management isn't one of those blogging skills you might think of as a top skill for bloggers to have. But, it is an important skill for bloggers to have. Good time management skills mean you know how to maximize your time to achieve optimal productivity. 

You can also be more consistent with your blogging schedule, promotion, and marketing and better balance tasks overall.

There are a ton of other benefits that come along with being a good manager of time:

• Increase productivity: People who are good at time management are natural planners, and improved productivity is a direct result. You're good at setting goals and meeting deadlines, and you can prioritize tasks and work efficiently.
• Being a more consistent content creator: A direct impact of being good with time management is more consistent blog writing. This could include creating and executing a content calendar for yourself, allocating your time well for brainstorming, content creation, editing, etc.
• Avoid being a procrastinator: If you manage time well, procrastination becomes obsolete. You are focused on your goals and use techniques like batch creation, breaking up large tasks into smaller ones, and setting deadlines for yourself.
• Being able to better adapt to change: You can stay ahead of the curve and continue to grow and evolve with your blog despite the changing blogging landscape. 
• Better work-life balance: Work-life balance is improved, and you can prevent burnout with effective time management. Setting dedicated work hours, setting boundaries, and making time for rest are great ways to achieve this.

6. Creativity

Bloggers are creatives. They can create original, engaging blog content for their audience in an innovative, captivating way.

This is super important because being creative will make you stand out in a sea of millions of bloggers.

You'll have a unique voice and perspective that you can share, using your experience and the art of storytelling to connect with your audience.

Your content will be unique, engaging, and problem-solving at the same time. You'll help your audience overcome their challenges, presenting solutions clearly.

What Are Some Ways To Be Creative With Blog Content?

Visuals can be used throughout your blog and content, using visually appealing and engaging photos, graphics, videos, and other multimedia. 

Engaging with your audience through interactive tools like surveys, polls, giveaways, and contests is another way to experiment with different content formats to appeal to your audience.

Other ways to diversify your content include:

• Writing case studies
• Storytelling
• Conducting interviews
• Hosting webinars
• Hosting live streams

Creativity is another foundational blogging skill. It drives engagement and can set the stage for long-term growth and success, helping you build a loyal, engaged following.

7. SEO

SEO is a critical skill for bloggers. SEO includes keyword research, link building, and other strategies to create quality content so your blog posts appear in search engines.

Some examples of SEO elements are:

• Keyword research: Identify relevant keywords and phrases that their target audience is searching for. Then, use those keywords in your blog content to improve your chances of ranking higher in search results for relevant queries.
• Technical SEO: Technical SEO components ensure that search engines can index and rank your content well. This includes website speed, mobile-friendliness, and site architecture, to name a few.
• Link building: Using link-building strategies can help you gain backlinks. Backlinks are a ranking factor in SEO. They signal trustworthiness and authority, so the more high-quality backlinks your blog has, the better. 

SEO helps improve your visibility in search engine results and attract organic traffic. This has a significant impact on your blog's reach.

Thinking about SEO can feel intimidating, but you can start with simple changes and build on to your efforts from there.

This post breaks down SEO for website traffic in 12 simple steps.

8. Marketing

Using marketing as a blogger is incredibly important. Marketing skills are one of the most crucial blogging skills you should possess.

You want your high-quality content to be discovered online. Marketing is fueling that, driving traffic to your website and blog posts.

Having marketing skills as a blog owner is about having the courage to promote your blog on your own. New bloggers generally don't have a marketing budget to pay agencies or professionals to do marketing for them.

It will boil down to using your natural marketing skills to pursue marketing channels like social media marketing, email marketing, and other digital marketing channels to push traffic to your blog.

There are so many marketing tactics you can use, and many of them are free, so you can organically generate traffic for your blog.

For example, email marketing effectively targets viewers and funnels them to your content pages. This email marketing guide shows you how to start and run a successful email marketing campaign.

Marketing Tips To Promote Your Blog

Here are some additional helpful tips and strategies you can use to promote your blog:

• Use social media: Social media marketing is an excellent way to connect with your target audience. It's also a great way to meet and network with other bloggers and professionals in the space, which can introduce other marketing opportunities.
• SEO: Use content marketing and SEO to rank for keywords so your content can be found in search engines.
• Guest blogging: This is a free way to promote your blog by writing blog articles for other websites. It's also great for networking and building up your reputation as an expert in your field.

9. Passionate

It's important you're passionate about your craft because it'll help you remain consistent and stick with blogging long-term.

Passion is the fuel behind creativity and perseverance. It can lead to the creation of more engaging and impactful content.  

This is one of the chief reasons why you hear so many bloggers talk about choosing a blog niche that you're passionate about. It's because it'll help keep you consistent and continue in your blogging journey.

“If you have a passion for a subject, you'll want to write about it regularly”

Squarespace

Channeling your passion into your blogging efforts can help you create the best content that truly connects and resonates with your audience.  

Blogging Skills: Bottom Line

Every blogger starts as a beginner. You don't become a pro blogger overnight; every blogger doesn't have these skills from the start of their blogging journey.

The blogging landscape is everchanging. It's diverse and filled with millions of bloggers trying to reach pro-level status. Having these core blogging skills in your corner will help you stand out among the competition and potentially lead to a long-term, fruitful career as a blogger!

Start with the skills you have, and continue practicing and exercising those skills to improve them over time. Then, gradually work on gaining the other skills you haven't yet mastered.

Take your time with the process and continue to refine your skills. They'll definitely show in your blogging work!

What do you think about these blogging skills?

What other skills do you think you need to succeed as a blogger?

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