Top 10 Blogging Skills You Need to Become A Professional Blogger in 2024

Do you want to become a professional blogger? Don’t know how to take your blog from zero to the next level in 2024?

Well, in this post, we’ll talk about the most essential blogging skills YOU need to build a profitable blog from scratch.

At first glance, it may seem an easy thing to create and maintain a blog. Yet set up your account with a host platform such as WordPress, choose an overall theme, prepare some posts and publish. Nearly anyone who understands the basics of computers and the Internet, can build a blog.

However, there is a difference between creating a blog and creating a successful blog. The latter draws readers and keeps them. The good news is that most people can readily learn the skills necessary to launch a successful blog that builds loyalty.

Quick note: We just launched a new eBook on Keyword Research Made Easy which helps you find a ton of keyword ideas even if you’re a beginner.

So let’s talk about the vital blogging skills anyone needs to build to build a better blog in 2024.

10 essential blogging skills to become a pro blogger

blogging skills

1. Content writing Skills

The ONLY way to build a better blog that makes money is to provide HUGE value to your audience.

How can you add value? Only through your content. Without writing engaging, helpful and unique content, you can NEVER build a profitable blog. That’s why it’s so essential to become a good writer. Write every single day (either offline or online). Read best blogs and books to hone your blog writing skills.

This may seem apparent but is still often overlooked by those wishing to join the blogosphere. While you don’t need to be a published author in order to compose a blog posting, you will need to understand the basics of presentation in terms of word usage (not overly technical), writing style (conversational and friendly) and length (articles with over 2,000+ words usually rank well in Google).

If you want to improve your content writing skills, try Jasper. It is a fantastic AI writing tool to create content automatically. 

It’s been working great so far, and we recommend it! You can read more about it from our Jasper AI review or check out Jasper pricing plans if you’re interested!

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2. CSS and HTML Skills

No, you don’t have to be a full-pledged WordPress developer or programmer to build a successful blog from scratch.

But you should definitely learn about the basic HTML coding such as image interlinking, adding alt tags, including headlines in h1 or h2 tags etc. Although WordPress is a powerful platform which lets you create content without any coding skills.

But it’s always better to know about these basic elements so you won’t panic when you face any tag related issues.

While every blogging platform does come with built-in themes from which you may choose, it may be that you wish to prepare a unique theme that will fit in with your branding strategy. In this event, you will need to know at least some HTML as a well as the basic principles of cascading style sheets (CSS).

Knowing the basics of each will be the difference between joining the crowd and creating a site that will be allow you to present your business in a unique manner. This knowledge can be picked up from such books as the Dummies series.

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3. Networking Skills

Networking is one of the best blogging skills you can ever acquire.

Not only networking helps you connect with thousands of bloggers but it also opens the doors for you to boost your website’s traffic and sales.

While blogging may be done alone, you will have to interact with readers on a daily basis. Though the interactions are via the blog, you will still need to be attuned to reader preferences and interests so you may create posts that they consider relevant.   For example, if your blog is focused on personal finance, you might offer posts that describe best credit card deals for a variety of audiences.

4. Follow-up Skills

You will want to engage readers by posting comments and questions regularly (at least 3 times per week). Fresh content is what maintains reader interest. When you post a question be sure to follow-up with reader responses in a timely manner. The idea is to engage readers on a daily basis and you can only do that by maintaining a consistent and active presence.

Not only following up to your blog comments but also you should involve in blogger outreach. It’s the surefire way to boost your blogging skills to build strong connections with others in your field.

5. Photo Editing Skills

An image is worth a thousand words. We all know images go viral especially on social media.

Using images in your blog posts is the surefire way to increase your overall search rankings.

While most blogs are text-heavy, you may wish to incorporate an image or images. The image may be a logo of your business, or one that’s appropriate to specific blog postings. You will need to understand how to edit these images in terms of cropping, resizing, reformatting and other simple tasks. You will not need to understand Adobe InDesign or Photoshop as the editing software is part of the tool bar of most blog hosting platforms.

Photo editing skills is one of the must have blogging skills you should acquire if you want to give a visual treat to your blog audience.

6. Social Networking Skills

social networking tips for bloggers

Social media is the new SEO. Not only it helps you boost your blog traffic quickly but you can find more audience for your content.

It is important that you learn how to use Facebook and Twitter so you may network to gain readers for your blog. Part of social networking is having good interpersonal skills so you may engage with others.

These platforms can also help you promote our blog by incorporating a link on your Facebook or Twitter pages. The primary benefit of social networking sites are their viral nature so that people who are attracted to your blog will then influence those in their circle of influence to join as well thus boosting your potential readership very quickly.

Once again, the fastest way to learn about using social networking sites is simply to learn as you go by creating profiles.  You can also pick up “how-to” books but be sure you put into practice what you read.

7. Marketing skills

One of the major reasons few bloggers quickly succeed online is because of their selling skills. Learn the art of selling.

If you don’t know how to properly promote or market your blog’s content, product or services, you will fail to build a loyal readership around your blogging network.

Here are few simple yet most incredible tips to improve your marketing skills as a blogger.

  • Connect with the influencers in your niche. Get to them. Promote their stuff. Think about various ways to let them promote your content and products. If an expert recommends you, it can skyrocket your blog’s traffic and sales almost instantly.
  • Read more books, especially marketing, psychology and business related. They can give you better ideas on what to do and more importantly what NOT to do.
  • Don’t take it heart when you get rejected. It’s all common while marketing. Don’t step back when no one is showing interest in buying your products or hiring you for your services. Analyze the reasons behind them and bounce back. That’s how you become a top marketer in any field.

8. The art of selling

The #1 way to become an expert blogger in any field is to learn the art of selling. You shouldn’t sound like a sales guy while pitching your products (be it affiliate products or your own products or services).

Selling is definitely one of the most desired blogging skills you can acquire as a blogger or marketer. Here are a few great ways to become an expert at selling online.

Be genuine and think like an expert: You need to be genuine. There’s no other way around it, really. If you’re promoting any affiliate products, you can use affiliate disclosures, or show logos or testimonials from others to showcase that you’re an expert.

Learn from the pros: People like Neil Patel, Pat Flynn etc knows how to sell online. If you observe closely how they are closing deals and selling their products, you can learn so much.

Read more: The simplest way to learn how to sell online is to read more books related to marketing, psychology and business. We recommend you to check out books like Influence, Give And Take, The One Thing etc to learn how to sell like a pro.

9. Understand the “emotional triggers” of your audience

Knowing who to sell to is one of the most important blogging skills you need to learn and master. Without knowing your target audience and what triggers them to buy something online, it gets really difficult for you to make money online.

So if you want to become a professional blogger, learn and understand the “emotional triggers” of your target audience. That being said, firstly, you need to define your target audience.

Here are a few quick ways to understand and define your target audience.

  • Invest your time to figure out all the products and services you offer from your website so you can easily identify what kind of people who’ll look for such products and services online
  • Study your competitors as it’s one of the simplest and most effective ways to define your target audience and find out their wants and needs
  • You can also conduct surveys from your website using simple quizzes or take help of social media sites or email lists to know your target audience
  • Last but not least, determine your target audience demographics such as age, gender, education, household income and language preference etc

How can evaluate the “emotional triggers” of your target audience?

As we said above, understanding your audience is one of the key blogging skills you must master and here’s who you can find out what triggers your website audience to buy something from you.

Use AIDA: AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.

Here’s how it looks like;

aida model
  • Attention is getting a visitor to pay attention to your website including a product, commercial, or landing page
  • Interest is communicating information in a way that is interesting and memorable
  • Desire is generated by making the story extremely relevant and irresistible to your website audience
  • Action is a call to action (CTA) regarding what you want someone to do, such as buying a product, subscribing to your email list or even visit your website

10. Negotiation skills

negotiation skills for bloggers

If you had to learn only one blogging skill to earn more, it is this: learn how to negotiate with others. Do you know why? As a blogger or marketer, you’ll be negotiating with other people a lot.

Negotiation blogging skills help you with;

  • Getting your guest posts accepted on top and high-quality blogs
  • Helps you get better deals around the affiliate products you promote (when you talk with the respective affiliate managers)
  • Helps you easily earn more
  • Helps you connect with other influencers in your niche well
  • And the list goes on

So how can you improve your negotiation skills as a blogger?

Here are a few quick tips to master negotiation blogging skills in 2024 and beyond.

  • Listen more than you talk. That’s how you can understand the emotions of others. Think about their pain points so you can deal better.
  • Always pitch high. Don’t be afraid of asking more than you deserve.
  • Show results. If you can show results and expertise, people will be spending more. It’s all about how you present yourself.

FAQs

Here are a few important questions about the essential blogging skills you need to become a professional blogger in 2024 and beyond.

What are the top 3 blogging skills I need to become an expert blogger?

Here are 3 blogging skills you need to become a professional blogger.

Communication skills
Technical skills (such as coding or properly using SEO tools and so on)
Selling skills (you should know how to sell without actually selling)

How to improve my blog writing skills?

Here are a few quick blog writing skills for you to take your writing to the next level.

→ Write more. It’s as simple as that. If you write at least 500 to 1000 words a day, eventually you’ll become a better blog writer.
Read top blogs in your industry and see how the authors are writing as it gives you a ton of ideas.

What are the top blogging tips for 2024

Here are few top blogging tips you need to master in 2024 and beyond.

Learn how to write like a pro
Learn how to do keyword research
Learn proper on page optimization
Learn how to analyze your competitor sites

How to launch a blog from scratch?

Here’s a simple tutorial on how you can launch a blog from scratch just within 10 minutes in 2024.

What’s the best blogging platform for beginners?

Although there are a ton of blogging platforms available such as Blogger, Typepad, Joomla but we highly recommend using WordPress.org for beginners.

Browse more Blogging Tutorials:

Final Thoughts

Every professional blogger who is making a lot of money now once was a beginner.

Every blogger whom you admire once made a lot of mistakes and acquired blogging skills to rapidly grow his income, audience and traffic. The more you practice the more you become successful at anything you do. Practice is the key here. Anything becomes a skill only after a vigorous practice.

And don’t compare your beginning with someone else’s peak stage. You’ll be exhausted. Focus on one skill at a time, work on it until you master, then move on to the next. That’s how you can become a successful person at any field.

So what are the other blogging skills do you think someone need to succeed in blogging? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

About Author
Anil Agarwal is the Founder of Bloggerspassion. He is a full-time blogger and SEO expert who has been helping people build profitable blogs for over a decade Now. He has been featured in Over 100 Publications including Forbes, The HuffPost, HubSpot, Shopify, Semrush, Kinsta, Bluehost, Hostinger and G2.com etc. Know more about Anil Agarwal from here.

Reader Comments (35)

  1. If you’re a passionate closet writer who wants to be published but can’t find a way to do so, make each keystroke your way to wealth by penning your own blog. Starting a blog doesn’t require extensive technical skills but it’s important that you have expertise in the field you are writing on. This will attract visitors to your site. Building a large following will enable you to earn profit by luring advertisers, writing paid reviews or getting commissions for promoting other people’s products.

    Reply
  2. Great blog post! I love the way you written each and every word. I read the entire blog. I too want to write and thought about a lot for starting. I didn’t start yet because every type of blog is written by the people over the internet. If, somehow I start writing. But, my written communication skills are not up to that professional level. Content writing is the backbone of any blog. I’ve also heard that these days crispy blogs are in trend. It’s true every professional blogger once was a pro. I too want to write. Consistency, niche, excellent written english and most important part which you have not mentioned in your blog post is that how a blogger researches and find information to use and play with his/her words on a blog. In, your blog you covered in a deeper way. There are lot of things people want to know which YouTube, Google doesn’t provide. People want guidance like a small primary kid. I like your post. I just want to know. How to research, find information for blog. How to improve my written communication skills. How to earn from a blog. Starting a blog is not hard. The only thing is to maintain it with valuable content. What are your thoughts?

    Reply
  3. Hello Anil.

    Thank you for the best. It’s very useful. I found great emotional value in the final thoughts on not comparing oneself’s beginning with another’s peak.

    What would you say is a better platform for getting traffic to a blog: Twitter, Quora, or Instagram.

    Thanks
    haz..

    Reply
  4. I wonder if one of the most needed skills is overlooked. Anil, your post is effective and offers great suggestions, but I’m reminded that almost anyone can write how to blog posts on any subject. What about their message,? What about communications the purpose of their blog? Ryan, for instance has a platform of blogging to travel the world. That’s his purpose. Mine is helping others to earn from blogging. What is your purpose?

    Reply
    • Yes, almost anyone can write how to blog posts on any subject. But you also need to write better than anyone else in your field. Here’s where having your own niche helps you write more contents around particular topics. For example, I mainly focus ON SEO on this blog so I know more about SEO than majority of the other bloggers who are into different industries.

      Reply
  5. Hi,
    I think only technical skills arr not enough to keep blogger counting blogging. You should be persistent, creative, clear objective, and prideful in his work.

    Reply
    • Yes, that’s so true Manohar. You need to learn the art of managing your time effectively and also focus on long term results instead of thinking about getting rich quick.

      Reply
  6. You really need to have those content creation skills down cold Anil. Rocking tips bro.

    I have written my rear end off for many years to be able to churn out posts pronto. Now I can write posts in my sleep. Helpful posts at that. Being able to write is definitely the #1 skill all bloggers need to develop to rock it out.

    Ryan

    Reply
    • The #1 reason you can write even while you sleep is that you developed the habit of writing almost every single day Ryan. When you get to that point, there’s no more stopping for you as you can write flawlessly which is a great way to take your blog to the next level.

      Reply
  7. Excellent article Anil. All the bloggers should have some basic knowledge before starting. Without having these skill you can not be a successful blogger. I think content writing skill, basic SEO skill, and social media marketing are the most important qualities that every blogger should have.
    You have shared all the important skills that help us to be a perfect blogger. Thanks for your informative article.

    Reply
    • That’s so true and valid points Munna, you should definitely develop writing skills and SEO skills if you really want to build a profitable blog that makes money and gets more traffic from search engines like Google.

      Reply
  8. Nice tips… and this photo editing tip us best if you make your blog post viral then make some High quality Photos and share it on social media it’s definitely increase blog traffic.. because 70% people read our blog post if Blog post has Quality photos…thanks for sharing Awesome ideas…

    Reply
    • Yes, true that images add a ton of value to your content. Just make sure to keep them appealing so they can be included within your content easily. Also optimize them for search engines so you can increase rankings as well.

      Reply
  9. Can I start my blog I don’t have good in English.I have some content writers in my network. Can it possible to do that?

    Reply
    • Harmeet surely you can take help from the content guy in your network to start a blog. But somehow I feel to get success with a blog, you also should be good at content level. You cannot rely blindly on anyone for all of your blogging needs.

      Reply
  10. I think I have all the skills but without CSS & HTML.I don’t know anything about HTML & CSS.Please suggest where I can learn some basics of HTML & CSS.
    Thanks.

    Reply
  11. I think most important is writing seo optimized content. Images editing is important because once you understand and learn photoshop you can create beautiful infographics.

    Reply
  12. Content Writing and Handy Coding in HTML and CSS is really important if you wanna create a profitable blog 🙂 Other skills are also important which you have written 🙂 thanks for such share.

    Reply
    • True that, both writing and coding skills can make you a great blogger. Besides that you also need to learn how to sell and for that purpose, you need to hone your communication skills as well. Thanks for the comment!

      Reply
  13. Anil, thanks for this timely post. Communication skills are needed by every blogger who wishes to succeed in blogging.
    Two import skills I feel I need to acquire are the HTML and the CSS; they are too important to be neglected.
    Like you rightly said, constant practices lead to perfection. I am gradually improving in the areas where I am lagging.
    Do have a lively day.

    Reply
    • Yes, for every blogger, good communication skills are really important. Most of us feel we are below par when it comes to communication skills but here’s the thing: as it is with every other skill, it gets better only when you start practicing it. The first thing you need to understand is that, you should be confident about yourself and your personality, that’s how you get good at it and that’s the ONLY skill you required to be a great blogger in the long run.

      Reply
  14. This is a great list! The only skill I would add is time management and organizational skills. Sometimes I find myself tumbling down the rabbit hole and chasing a million different things at once – especially when it comes to promotion. It’s not enough to write great content anymore. Now you have to promote on social media, work on your off-site search engine optimization, brand yourself, get your name out there in various ways and work with brands, etc. It’s so easy to fall behind and hyper-extend yourself. Keeping it all in check and in balance is a real skill (and the hardest for me to master, personally).

    Reply
    • That’s a great comment Michael, you must know what you’re doing. If you’re tired and don’t have the mental energy to understand the problem, better take a rest than make any changes in your code. While this may seem obvious, I’ve seen too much evidence of the contrary. Also, your mental focus is important as it is the discipline of being able to concentrate and control your thoughts to stay laser-focused on the task at hand, which is a must have skill for every blogger.

      Reply
    • Yes, images are still often overlooked as an SEO tool. They can also drive traffic to your site through the image search.
      Creating SEO optimized images is really simple, but gets skipped a lot.

      Reply
  15. I do not believe that you need photo editing skills to write a decent blog, I have been writing my blog since 2007 and I know absolutely nothing about editing images. 🙂

    You are right about needing a basic understanding of writing a post.

    Reply
    • I agree with you, but if you have been blogging for years, you might want to challenge yourself, you would be surprised ho fun and easy it is. I use that as my downtime. I also save a ton on images.

      Reply
  16. The two skills you’ve put here that I have to improve are #2 CSS and HTML skills, and #5 photo editing skills. I guess I have to pick up that Dummies book if I want to seriously learn about CSS and HTML, but for now, I’ll stick to learning some of them here on the Net.

    Reply
    • Hi Caroline, yes, if you really have coding skills or if you can learn some basic stuff around css or html, it can be of a huge help so you can make minor changes to your site anytime you want.

      Reply

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