What skills do you need to start a blog? Anyone with a reasonable understanding of language and an attitude to further learning will make it
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Blogging skill levels
People blog for many different reasons therefore the skill levels required do vary for individuals.
You may want to write for others
Blog for business
Affiliate marketing
Product or brand recognition
Charitable reasons
Each has its own set of rules that you need to follow.
Blog writing for other people
Because Blog writing needs to be consistent many businesses will outsource the work.
However, they will require that you research their portfolio so that you are able to represent their products properly.
In many situations, they will provide the keywords they wish to pursue and leave the rest up to you. They may even provide a product magazine and give you Carte Blanche at the production of suitable material.
Either way, you will need to satisfy your employer and the customer's needs. You can do this by having a plan of assault that you are taking so that everything is laid out clearly and you will have an open mind on what you create.
Of course, the answer is in the results achieved. Therefore make sure you have good analytics to back up your journey through the portfolio.
When you write blogs for a business
A business blog is an extension of your webpage. Its role is to fully explain products and services that are marketed by you in a longer format.
Furthermore, because of a good Keyword selection, other people will find your blog and then go to the website to complete a transaction.
A business blog can cover many things. It may be a full product descrip[tion or a how-to-do things tutorial. A blog is not a sales tool. Its purpose is to answer questions and solve issues that customers require.
It will have a call to action however you are providing content that creates interest in your readers. That interest may then convey them further into a buying cycle.
Affiliate marketers use blogging as a sales tool
As an affiliate marketer, you are trying to move readers from your exciting content off to a supplier that will complete the sale. Therefore you are not selling anything just writing content of interest. Your Keyword use will bring readers from all sorts of places and with all sorts of needs.
There is nothing in it for you unless you can convince them to click through to a supplier of choice and then the sale must be completed by them.
To achieve this you should build a level of trust in your recommendations so that readers can take the journey without fear or concern.
There are a lot of scammers in this market that are purely selling for the income generated and often with big ticket items.
You need to be well away from this group of writers by gaining a band of followers that will consume your many great articles that offer real beneficial products.
Your writing is not hard-core sales but content that provides interesting and informative information that answers the many questions posed by readers.
Sales tools are Web pages and sales funnels that have a specific role in getting a commitment out of readers.
Your affiliate partner will fulfill the selling duty for you when you hand the customer over by using links within your page.
You can learn to do Affiliate marketing
Product and brand building can be done by blogging
With this set, your objective is really self-praise. Telling the world how good you are and why they should welcome you into their world.
It may be a new product that you want to launch and that could be done with a review or comparison to the competitor.
However, your purpose is still to build a loyal customer following that will buy your products and support your future with new sales.
Blogging for Charitable reasons
Many a blog is written to spread the faith and to keep worshippers in the loop of information.
I bit like branding it is there to maintain a flow of content and to keep the followers informed.
It may also, on occasion, request financial support to help its role in carrying out its humanity endeavors.
The words may vary but the intent of the blog still aligns with the other methods. This is in delivery answers and replies to their section of the market.
Can anyone become a blogger?
Blogging is open and substantially free to anyone in any country to start a writing career.
All you need is a name (URL), a template, and an understanding of keywords to provide your input to a large database of readers.
Is blogging hard to do?
This is essentially just expressing your opinions and ideas to a very large audience by offering helpful content that addresses questions searched by the many.
What skills do you need to start a blog and what is it based on
What is the basis of good blogging
Google states this is all based around the acronym E.A.T
Expertise.
Authority.
Trustworthiness.
When you fulfill the roles needed your blog will be recognized because you provide the best content relating to a subject.
Do the Google core updates matter
Because Google is continually seeking perfection they will make changes at regular intervals and these changes will impact many writers.
They insist your material must be original and not just copied from other sources.
Expertise is a deciding factor and the higher your authority the greater your chance of success. You can borrow expertise by referring to higher authority as part of your research into the area of interest
Of course, presentation counts. You need good grammar and spelling as well a structured setup to compete with the best.
Comparative benefit. Does your work provide a better answer that the others in the same playground? This is fairly new and poor reader acceptance can put you on a slippery slope
down the rating. Page time is a good indicator of this
What skills do you need to start a blog if it is not being read
Why is your blog not being read?
The most common answer to blogs with little or no traffic is the poor use of keywords. Understanding Keywords and in fact user intent is the most important part of blogging. Plus, if you get it wrong it is very difficult to fix.
It should be remembered that Google is not the only search engine and that Bing and Yahoo are also active in recruiting readers. In China you have Baidu and in Europe Yandex as well.
It may be when you add them together your score will be better than anticipated.
Bing has retained the exact match keyword system whilst Google has moved to reader intent by using AI to read the answers.
Can you get more readers to your blog?
SEO is just one of the many inputs to traffic, however, it is the most important of the lot with access to a much larger pool of readers.
Social media may send many readers when used properly which can create a real database of followers.
Forums can be a source of readers at places like Quora where many questions are asked and you have a chance to be involved.
The usual friends, family, and social contacts along with referrals can build some traffic to support what you do.
What skills do you need to start a blog to build your trust
How do you build trust in blogging?
Authority will always bring trust with it as well as expertise in a given field. However, for the masses, it is a matter of consistent exposure to a base of readers delivering quality content.
Many will use customer references to help build some trust as well as a good BIO of background in the subject.
Consistent blogging over a period of time should build a trust factor when they know and like your work.
Conclusion
I like referring to blogging as an art form. When done properly it will exceed all expectations and even provide monetary returns that are unlimited by convention.
Google does insist on structure as well as reader intent so getting it all together is important.
The skills needed for blogging are really the ability to follow the rules and use all the available tools to create a piece of work that readers like. Answer the questions and solve the problems and you are almost there.
What skills do you need to start a blog by Peter Hanley
