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Blogging requires a number of different skills that go beyond writing.
As a blogger, you need to know how to effectively create content that not only resonates with the target market you’ve chosen for your niche, but also with search engines and authoritative entities.
In this post, we list a few skills that every blogger should learn to improve what they can achieve in search engines and social media, as well as help them earn more.
First, let’s talk about whether you need to actively learn these skills in order to be successful with your blog.
Note: We’ve included a bunch of resources to help you with each skill. Most of them are right here in Blogging Wizard. There is one exception – photography. It’s not a topic we cover so we’ve found a great external resource to help you get started.
do you have Learn specialized skills as a blogger?
When you’re just starting out blogging or trying to start a small business, you may wonder if you need special training. You can even search for night classes and online courses that you can take.
The truth is you don’t really know need learn any skill to be successful as a blogger. You will learn a lot by doing and googling whatever you are struggling with.
However, there are a number of skills that don’t hurt to learn in some capacity.
You don’t need a degree in English or business, but you should become more aware of the skills we list in this article by following blogs that talk about them, subscribing to YouTube channels that teach them, reading books about them, and maybe even taking a few online courses to improving your skills.
The point of this article is to become more aware of these skills. It’s up to you to decide which learning technique suits you best: learn by doing, learn by reading/watching, or learn in the traditional sense with an instructor (online courses).
Skills every blogger should learn
- Image editing and graphic design
- Photo
- HTML/CSS
- SEO
- Writing the text
- Marketing on social networks
- Advertising
- Product development and sales
1. Image editing and graphic design
This is one of the first obstacles you will encounter as a blogger. Good quality images for blog posts are hard to come by.
Of course, there are many stock photo websites out there filled with high-quality, well-taken images that you can insert into your posts.
Unfortunately, stock images do nothing to differentiate your blog from all the other blogs that use them.
If you really want to impress your readers and make sure your images have more impact, you need to learn enough about image editing and graphic design to come up with unique graphics for your blog.
Learn more:
2. Photography
Some niches do very well using their own photos on the blog.
Digital niches benefit from screenshots, but what about niches that can’t be captured? This includes the food niche, fishing, volleyball, car repair and anything else you need to do in the “real world”.
Bloggers in these niches should consider learning more about photography so they can take more impressive photos for blog posts.
It’s definitely okay to whip out your smartphone, snap a few photos and include them in your posts, especially if you’re already struggling to get content out on time.
But you can really do a lot for your brand by taking an artistic approach to your photos, especially when you post them on social media.
Learn more:
3. HTML/CSS
This isn’t very important to learn with all the point-and-click, drag-and-drop website builders out there these days.
However, there may be cases where the editor or tool you want to use suddenly has small pieces of HTML and CSS that you can edit. HTML and CSS are the coding languages that make up most of the web. They control the appearance of your website.
You can see what these languages look like by right-clicking while viewing any page and clicking Browse. This feature should also be available on whatever mobile browser you use.
HTML and CSS may seem complicated at first glance, but they are really the simplest coding languages to understand.
Many bloggers get by without ever learning them, but if you do, you may feel more confident editing certain sections of your website.
4. SEO
SEO or search engine optimization is one of the most important skills that all bloggers should learn and keep up with.
SEO will always have a big impact on how much traffic your site can generate.
Having other sources of traffic, such as social media, is important, but most successful blogs get most of their traffic from search engines like Google.
There’s a lot you can do to optimize your entire site for Google, but when it comes to on-page optimization, that changes whenever Google’s algorithm changes.
It’s these changes that make tracking SEO so important for bloggers of all skill levels. Even blogs that produce high-quality, reader-friendly content are rocked by Google algorithm updates.
Learn more:
5. Writing the text
It doesn’t matter if you started your blog with the intention of making money or if you started it as a simple hobby. At some point you will wonder how to make money from it.
Affiliate marketing, sponsorships and selling your own products and services are popular sources of income for bloggers.
This is where adding copywriting skills to your repertoire can come in handy.
Copywriting is a specialized form of writing in which a piece of text, or “copy,” is written in a way that encourages the reader to buy or subscribe to something.
A skill like this is typically used for marketing materials, such as advertisements, but is just as useful for a landing page, product page, or blog post promoting a specific product.
Learn more:
6. Marketing on social networks
Maybe you started a blog instead of a YouTube channel, TikTok profile, or podcast because you want to write, not make videos or talk.
However, if you want to make money from your blog, you need to treat it like a brand, and in the digital age, brands need be on social networks.
This means creating long and short videos, uploading stories and posting pictures.
If all you do is upload a link to your latest blog post (X) on Facebook or Twitter (X), you need to change that.
The best way to learn what type of content to create for social media is to actually use social media, so start consuming social media content in your niche. It can be on a private or branded account.
Learn more:
7. Advertising
Product promotion, whether it’s your own or affiliate products, isn’t just about the copy you write to market those products.
It’s also about the target market you choose to advertise to, how you design your images, and where you actually place your ads.
Additionally, “advertisements” can even be blog posts and social media content you create to promote a product. It can also be ads you place on your site from sources like Google, Mediavine and Ezoic.
You may want to learn more about advertising to provide any promotional content make create is optimized for whatever platform you publish on.
Learn more:
8. Product development and sales
Every blogger should create their own product at some point in their career.
Ads, affiliate marketing, and sponsorships are fantastic sources of income for bloggers of all experience levels, but each one depends on one’s business.
If you create your own product, you can always be sure that you have at least one source of income that depends entirely on your own brand.
Not only should you learn about the types of products bloggers can create, you should also learn how to market those products.
Learn more:
Final thoughts
One of the best things about blogging is the skills you learn in the process.
All of these skills are very valuable and you can offer any of them as a service. Everyone is wanted. All individual skills in this list. And you can place yourself inside each of them.
Some, however, are more monetizable than others.
So if you want to offer the skills you learn as a service, focus on the ones that can make other people the most money.
These are the ones you can charge a premium for.
