This might shock you, but you do not need technical blogging skills to start a blog. Yes, you heard it right.
Through this article, I aim to provide you with a few blogging fundamentals using which you can get started on your blogging journey.
Blogging is not rocket science so anyone can create a blog without hard skills. But it is possible only if you have a strong passion for growing your blog and patience if you want to earn from it.
Also, your blog is your professional business. Hence, your constant efforts will take your blog to new heights and run smoothly in the long run.
In the following sections, I will discuss some blogging skills for beginners that can help you feel more positive about blogging.
Let us start.
Why do Skills Matter?
Firstly, let us understand why you need blogging skills to run a successful blog.
As I said earlier, your blog should be treated as your professional business. Thus, you cannot run a business without any efficient basic skills. Right?
It is the same with blogging. Initially, when you know how to start a blog, you may do everything on your own.
Hence, you will need multiple skills to sustain and maintain your blog consistently.
Blogging Skills Required to Become a Pro Blogger
Since I am speaking about skills from the beginning, you may think what skills do I need to start a blog?
Come, let us figure it out now.
1. Time Management Skills
Firstly, managing your time in blogging is the key. I cannot stress enough on mastering this skill. But you need to figure out your “WHY” before starting a blog.
—Because, as a newbie, you may compare with other bloggers on the internet and feel low initially, try to give up after some time. Thus, your WHY and passion act as fuel to clear this roadblock for you.
Along with blogging, you may be managing many aspects of your daily life. But if you want to take blogging seriously as a business, you need to manage your time well with several other tasks and know what blogging mistakes to avoid.
For this reason, you need to have discipline to organize and schedule your day properly. So that, you can give enough time for the activities related to your blog.
I will share my situation as an example for you. I am a full-time employee and a mother to a small child. Along with this, I should manage my side hustle which is my blog.
Since I am an employee, I have fixed 9 hours of office work. And, in between I should take care of my child. Initially, this seemed such an impossible task for me to do. But, I had set up a strategy for myself.
So, before and after my office hours, I dedicate some time to my blog and social media activities. During my office work, I take a few breaks or else do some blogging tasks that do not require a lot of focus.
Moreover, with my child, my schedule is not fixed. But, with strong passion and dedication, I keep my schedule flexible and work on the tasks based on my priorities at that time.
Hence, I recommend you also dedicate a certain amount of time in a day to blogging, so that you will not clash blogging activities with any other work in your life.
2. Content Writing Skills
Writing is one of the most important ones in blogging skills. Without writing content there is no blog at all, correct?
— So, when I say content writing, you need not be a pro in it. But, having some basic writing skills is recommended.
Let me tell you a few blog writing tips. Firstly, it is necessary to have a good level of writing skills so that you can convey your message to your audience.
Without effective writing, the message does not reach them even if you have strong content in mind. For this reason, you need to learn some basic writing techniques.
After this, the content writing game will be pretty easy for you. One practice I followed to improve my writing skills is, setting up 30 minutes aside every day just to write.
Here, I used to write whatever came to my mind and sometimes create short-form content for social media. Because I am habituated to writing through my daily journal writing experience.
But never before my blog did I write professionally. Hence, to brush up my skills I have set up a dedicated time.
Besides setting up some time in your day as my example, what I suggest you do is, if you want to work more on your writing skills, you can:
- Choose a topic and write on it for some time.
- Take a content/article/paragraph as you like, and re-write it in your own words.
By doing this, you can improve your writing skills and identify your unique writing style as soon as possible.
Regarding grammar, I like to check my articles using Grammarly to see if there are any errors in my content.
By the way, Grammarly is a free tool and works wonders when correcting your content. Also, it solves half of your writing problems if you have any.
The next time you write your article, I highly recommend using this tool if you have not started using it yet.
3. SEO Skills
Learning SEO is again one of the crucial skills required for blogging. Because, with this skill, your content will be ranked in the search engines and reaches more audiences.
For this reason, you will need to learn SEO which takes your blog to the next level. Also, when I say SEO skill you need not be a pro.
At least having some basic knowledge is advisable. So, learn the SEO part which sustains your blog and can be ranked well.
— Initially, I did not understand what SEO is and how to incorporate relevant keywords in my article. Due to this, my blog ranking was affected too.
Then, I started learning basic aspects of optimization with keyword research. For this, I used Google to find various keywords and, Google keyword planner to check its volume.
This was my first step and slowly I learned about on-page SEO techniques to incorporate keywords at the right place without stuffing.
— SEO is a vast subject and has many aspects included. But you should be updated on the latest trends and information to optimize your blog for search engines.
If you are a beginner, do not worry seeing SEO’s technical aspects. Also, you know its importance, right? Keeping that in mind, you cannot ignore SEO too.
So, understand that you are not expected to learn everything in one day.
Hence, you can learn what is needed for you and you can start from keyword research/on-page SEO and use them in your next blog post.
4. Design skills
Designing is one of the interesting aspects of blogging skills. I hope you know the saying “An image speaks more than words”.
— That is true, because, you will need to use visuals somewhere in your blog posts where you cannot convey the complex information through text.
Hence, incorporating images in blogging is an essential aspect. For this, you may use free images available online.
At the same time, you can design on your own using design apps. Again, you need not be a pro designer here, just some basic knowledge is sufficient to convey the information properly.
I like to use Canva to design images on my own and incorporate them into my articles wherever needed.
Also, the images can be any statistics or charts when you are talking about some data in your article. Using these will be an added advantage for you to show proof and gain your audience’s trust.
5. Marketing Skills
Thanks for being with me till here. Even now, you may think, how can a beginner start blogging?
Trust me by the end of this article, you will feel motivated with the simple tips and tricks I am discussing about blogging skills.
Let us continue.
Along with writing great content, your goal should contain getting more eyes to your blog.
That is when you require marketing skills and promote your content strategically.
5.1. Effective Social Media Promotion
As I said earlier, along with content writing, you also should promote it. Then only your audience will know that your blog exists.
— Initially, it may be difficult to get more traffic to your blog. Here is when you should not give up. Further, I will tell you what I do for my blog.
When I publish a blog post, I promote it on all social media platforms by raising curiosity among readers. Thus, it makes them visit my blog.
Also, I share my blog in relevant online groups and with friends and family. Moreover, you can use other blogging platforms like Medium, Reddit, and Quora.
Again, you can create a short form of your article and publish it on these platforms. And you can link it to your main blog and also, answer any relevant questions in your niche.
As a result, if people find your answer helpful, it brings them to your blog to read more info. In the beginning, this process helps you to get more visitors to your blog.
5.2. Networking with Effective Communication
Besides promoting on social media, you need effective communication skills to network with other bloggers in your niche.
In blogging, your content must reach a wider audience. So, it is crucial to follow the best practices to achieve. What I mean to say is, that there are many other bloggers around the internet.
Therefore, research some of the bloggers in your niche and try to reach them for any collaboration or guest post opportunities. Because those bloggers will also have an audience and some traffic to their site.
With their help, you and your content will reach their audience too. As a result, the traffic in your blog also increases and you can grow rapidly.
So, to achieve that, you should communicate well with other bloggers to convey the message. Thus, mutual understanding can help to grow your blog.
And then, it may be a virtual meeting or an email communication. Both are equally important in conveying the message in the right way.
Finally, work on your communication skills and network with other bloggers from time to time to grow as a blogger.
BONUS TIP
6. Video Editing Skills
Having an omnipresent channel is essential for a blogger to grow rapidly in the current competition. Videos like shorts, reels, and YouTube videos are taking up a large amount of audience.
Several people often find it boring to read text content. So, video content can support your blog’s growth. Hence, I have added the video editing skill as a bonus tip for you.
Do you remember that I have spoken about adding visuals to your blog? So, keeping that in mind you can add relevant videos to convey complex information in a detailed way.
For this reason, if you want to incorporate videos in your blog:
- You may record the videos yourself.
- Or you can use relevant free videos available online.
— But, to use these effectively, you will need some basic editing skills to edit your videos and present them to your audience.
My current situation does not support recording videos with my small child being there with me always. Hence, I did not start adding videos to my blog yet. Soon, I will also include video content knowing its importance.
So, for you, to begin with, try to use the free tools available. Gradually, you can improve your editing skills when required.
Final Thoughts – Blogging Skills
To summarize, you do not need technical or extreme blogging skills to start your blogging journey. Even I started my blogging journey with the above skills.
The main key takeaway from this article for you is “manage your time effectively”. This is one skill that helped me very much in maintaining my blog consistently.
Alongside my full-time job and baby, it seemed difficult to work on my blog. However, I have worked on managing my time as a priority and the rest followed.
The skills that we discussed today are some basic skills you need to work on. Later, once your blog grows, you can learn many skills whenever you require.
If you are looking for how to write a blog professionally, feel free to check my detailed blog for more information.
Comment and let me know which skill you find useful and want to work on.
I would love to hear them.
Happy Blogging!
