5 Traits Every Blogger Needs Besides the Ability to Write

Blogging has taken the web by storm over the past few years, and whether you just prefer blogging on sites like Tumblr, or you have your own large blog and following, blogging is a rewarding pursuit.  The ability to write poetic, perfectly structured sentences is a gift.  Not many people have it (including me).  As a blogger myself, I feel there is more to blogging than just being an English major and having a knack for writing.

Whether you are a seasoned professional with many years under your belt, or a newbie blogger looking to captivate an audience online, here are 5 traits you need, besides your ability to write.

If you’re interested in more blogging tips, here are some posts that will interest you:

• Using Your Blog to Promote Your Business
• The Best Tutorials for Custom WordPress Options and Settings Pages
• How to Make Your Website Multi-Culturally Accessible
• 5 Unique Ways to Do Keyword Research

Hope you find these blogging tips useful!

Think you have a trait that we missed?

Let us know in the comments!

1. Creative Craft

We start off with the most important trait. If you are a marketer, you understand the importance of differentiating yourself and having a unique value proposition. Every one of your blog posts should give the readers a takeaway. Even the smallest tid bit of information will keep people coming back to your blog. Putting a creative spin on newsworthy information is a route that many bloggers take, try keeping your creative spirit alive in the voice of your blog posts.

2. Persistence

I cannot stress enough the value of being persistent. Updating your blog regularly when you aren’t seeing any progress can be one of the most demoralizing things. Don’t stop. Don’t blog with sole purpose of driving traffic, blog from the heart. Keep the passion for what you do alive in your blog, build a social community and you will succeed as a blogger.

3. Social Spirit

A social spirit means you should approach everything you say as means for opening up a line of communication. Blogging isn’t a one way highway. It is a two way street that needs to be consistently driven on both ways. Make sure you are active on social networks and have a friendly, social demeanor when engaging with other on these sites.

Having a social spirit also means you will need to reach out actively to other bloggers within your niche to create relationships. Your competitors are always your friends in the blogging community.

4. Humility

Nobody likes arrogant people. If you are already a well known writer, tone down the ego at the door. The blogging community likes passion and opinions, but nobody likes bloggers who think they are “better than blogging.” Embrace the fact that you are a blogger and use it towards your advantage.

5. Relevance

What is relevant in your niche? Do news stories do really well or do informational list-type article do better? These are the things you will learn as a blogger, in the online marketing industry, list-type article often do really well. In the celebrity world, however, news-based content is all you can find. Figure out what types of articles are relevant to your target audience and make them as good as possible.

Simply being a writer isn’t good enough to succeed as a blogger. I have come across many writers aren’t great bloggers because they don’t understand there are many more things that come in to play when blogging; your content must be optimized for sharing, easily scannable and fun to read. If you are a blogger, having relevance, humility, social spirit, creative craft and persistence will payoff down the road.

Image Credits: Forward.com & Scripps Freshman