Your blog team, not unlike your web team, needs to have these common skills to build a successful site. Is your team missing any?

Design

  • Photoshop: basic graphic design skills are paramount for image creation and photo editing
  • Knowledge of how to create an overall effective blog design layout (knowing where the navigation goes, where to place advertising, etc.)
  • CSS: being able to enhance your blogs with stylesheets (including colors, font and table properties) will enhance blogs’ look-and-feel as well as help you brand them. Go beyond basic blogging templates.
  • Creating a design that is inherently usable, not just “cool”


Writing

  • Basic grammar skills, writing knowledge of sentence and paragraph structure, and spelling are all helpful
  • Creativity for developing unique, valuable content
  • Establishing an effective “voice,” style, and tone that resonates with your readers
  • Ability to write on a regular basis and stay passionate with the topic
  • HTML: making lists, links and making something bold are absolute minimum requirements to making successful blog posts

Technical

  • General blog server setup
  • Adding and tweaking blog functionality like forums, contact forms, comments & trackbacks, newsletters, e-commerce
  • Managing visitors and registration requirements
  • Knowlege of RSS, PHP, SQL, UNIX, Apache

Marketing

  • Attracting repeat, quality traffic – not just one-time visitors
  • Search engine marketing basics can help you get your blog listed in Yahoo and Google search engines with keyword techniques
  • Advertising and Affiliates: know what programs are availble (ie. Adsense), know which ones make sense for your site, and how to effectively implement them

Intangible Skills

  • Being disciplined – to write, to tweak, to manage distractions
  • Finding time to do all the things you want to on your blog
  • Keeping fresh ideas coming and communicating them ideas effectively
  • Business and financial acumen
  • Staying abreast of the latest blogging techniques and technologies
  • Be motivating, encouraging
  • Have patience and persistence
  • Kill self-doubt and procrastination

If your blog team is missing any of these key skills, contact ContentRobot and we can fill them in.