Blogging leads to new and valuable skills needed for online business success. When you first begin blogging, you think “it’s just writing,” but you are quickly dispelled of that illusion when you have to fiddle with your blog’s template code or get a plugin. The moment you realize nobody is hardly reading your blog makes you understand there is much more to blogging than… just blogging.
Most of us need to learn new skills in order to truly succeed online. I already had a background in web design, which gave me a head start, but even I have been surprised at the constant barrage of new things I’ve had to learn in order to succeed with my blogs, past and present. If you’re a new blogger, you may be experiencing that sinking feeling of dread at all the stuff you have to learn.
Since I’ve already been there, let me give you a roadmap of new skills you should pick up that will best help you.
Writing
Many of us think we’re much better writers than we really are. Suddenly writing for a blog when you haven’t done much writing recently will make that painfully obvious. Writing coherently, consicely, and skillfully takes practice. See my recent Blog Writing Series of posts for more help on this.
Despite all the fun I like to have with techniques, social media, and SEO, good content is still the foundation upon which everything is built. Do what you can to improve your writing, and specifically learn about copywriting.
Web Design
It’s hard to get your blog to do what you want if you don’t know a thing about FTP, HTML, CSS, and a bunch of other alphabet soup. My suggestions are to:
- Learn how to use an FTP program to upload files to your blog. This is how you get plugins for WordPress. Even if you get plugins that let you install stuff more easily, those plugins still have to be added to your blog via FTP. I use FileZilla, which is free and open source software.
- Learn HTML/CSS. Hypertext Markup Language is not as tough as you might think. Not only does knowing HTML help you with design issues, it helps you write better-formatted posts, too. Cascading Style Sheets is how web pages are visually formatted now. It’s easy to get yourself into a formatting jam the visual controls in your blog software won’t get you out of. Only people who can write a little code can do that. You can learn HTML from several sources. I recommend the W3C Schools. HTML.net is also a good place to learn.
Marketing
Blogging is often a form of marketing. People market a product or service with their blog. You need to have some understanding (the more the better) of these areas:
Research
In order to learn all this stuff and write great blog posts, you’ll need to learn how to find the information you need quickly and efficiently. You need to become adept at searching online. You need to learn how to take notes on paper or electronically.
People Skills and Networking
Perhaps the most important new skills of all are the ones you have to develop in communicating with others and networking. I can attribute my success directly to an intense focus on this, which has been difficult, since I’m a bit of an introvert. But by forcing myself to make contact with people, I have made excellent friends and now have a posse that has got my back. Opportunities come my way through my network. Social media helps a lot with this, especially Twitter.
Have Your Say
What new skills has blogging brought you? Tell us in the comments below.
My new skills: finding CC images, free stock photos, sizing photos, using fd’s flickr toys, some basic html. Also, networking online. Improved writing skills… And still learning!
Hello Michael,
This is true. I think blogging not only makes you learn new things but it forces you to learn new skills. If you want to succeed you have to have basic marketing knowledge, CSS and HTML for making small changes to your blog, copyrighting. Another thing a blog helps is keeping you in touch with all that is new in the market because you’ll be on SM sites to market your blog and you’ll find about new things no doubt about it just by reading what others post.
Looking back at some of my posts when I started, 18 months ago, I’m somewhat embarrassed at the quality. Its better to blog and learn these skills rather than buy all these “essential” products we keep getting told we need. David
The marketing/networking thing is what’s hardest for me. I’m a serious introvert, and I’ve found starting conversations on the web is just as hard as starting them in real life *laughs*. Some day I have to break out of my nerdiness and learn so social skills.
This is so very true, before I started blogging I knew nothing about html, or social networks or internet marketing etc. and Now I not only have a very active website and two blogs, but I was asked to teach a class on blogging for one of my online groups! Who would have thought that would happen after a year of blogging.
By the way some really good info here in your article too!
I can’t wait until I get past step two. CSS/HTML is giving me terrible afternoon headaches, and the blog hasn’t even launched yet. Great and inspiring post.
What’s interesting is that I link to Brian in this post and on Copyblogger today is a post about partnering with others and not doing everything yourself. He makes a great point and it’s worth a read. I left a couple comments on the post, too.
I would have to say SEO, marketing and advertisng. I have learned a lot of CSS as well, a great help to me.
My new skills that blogging has brought me are similar to everyone else’s….SEO, writing better, blog in general, marketing, and internet marketing in general. The people I know sound freakin’ amazed when i tell them some of the stuff I can do now!
Great post! After you are blogging for a few years, you basically are a web engineer and the vice president of marketing. You either pick all these things up, are rich enough to pay someone else to or your blog becomes a ghost town. There is really no other route.
Time management, and persistence. When you ‘report’ to yourself (and, I guess, to your readers), there’s no hiding when you haven’t done what you should’ve.
Hi Michael,
Once again, the Remarkablogger to the rescue. I have been beating my head against the wall trying to get a handle on all things “site building related.” I spent what seemed like hours yesterday looking through the HTML code on my blog to try and find a problem.
The link on here to W3C Schools was just what I needed! Thanks!
@Teresa – You’re welcome! I have found it quite helpful myself. In book form, I like to use the O’Rielly Pocket Reference to HTML & XHTML.