Jentrepreneur

If you want to be successful in blogging (just as if you want to be successful in any type of business venture), you need to have some kind of professional edge. What’s yours?

I’d say there are three components / skills that can make a good blog:

1. Design / Functionality

2. Writing / Content

3. Marketing / Promotion

I’m no designer, and I’m just a beginner when it comes to coding. I know enough to manipulate templates when I want to, but I’ve only created on CSS design from scratch, and couldn’t code a Wordpress theme from scratch to save my life.

Luckily, I have the other two areas of successful blogging covered, and that’s my “edge” as a blogger. I’m a professional business writer (most of my blogs are at least somewhat business-oriented). I also have my degree in Public Relations on top of studying other areas of business (namely marketing). I also run a small PR firm, specializing in online PR, so the promotion side of things is a piece of cake for me compared to many bloggers.

We’re at a point marketing-wise where nearly all bloggers seem to follow the same basic steps, and very few are doing anything unique to really draw attention to themselves. I consider the content and marketing sides to be the most important, especially with blogging for a few reasons:

1. You can get great free blog themes now, and inexpensive professional themes.

2. You can’t fake basic writing ability. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it has to reflect a personality. And if you’re getting the writing from someone else, you’re really not a “blogger” at all anyway.

3. You can always hire someone to do your marketing for you, but most don’t understand the variety of tactics really available between marketing, PR, and advertising. By having an in-depth knowledge of those fields yourself, and not just the basic Internet marketing tactics everyone yaps about, you’re able to promote your blog anytime and in any way that you want to. I also believe control over your marketing message is pretty important. With a lot of Internet marketing pros out there not even having a real background or expertise in marketing, it’s tougher to find one who understands the fundamentals like the basic marketing message. Remember, blog marketing is about a LOT more than just traffic and links. It’s about quality traffic, branding and reputation, and more.

So… what’s your blogging edge?

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