Pro Blogging: Skills Plus Tools

Most bloggers screw it up.

Bloggers believe tools give bloggers power. Not so. Bloggers feel tools do the job for them. Absolutely not. Why not? The job is you spending 1000’s of hours:

• practicing
• creating
• connecting
• monetizing
• promoting
• writing
• learning
• studying

all of which allows you to develop the skills necessary to become a thriving, professional blogger. Developing skills takes real time, practice and a full on commitment to blogging the right way for a long time. But bloggers erringly believe a tool – or collection of tools – does some big-time, critical blogging job for them.

For example, imagine if you bought a blogging tool for sharing your blog posts around the clock on Twitter. Tweeting your old blog posts hourly rocks but what if you rarely practice your writing to become a skilled, clear, confident writer? Who cares if your tool tweets one old blog post every hour over 24 hours if your blog posts are pure crap? Tools fail unskilled bloggers who do not put in the work. Tools fail bloggers who do not practice. Tools merely augment or optimize the skills you developed through hard, consistent work, enhancing what you already have, skills-wise.

Tools cannot give you skills because tools cannot do your full blogging job. Tools amplify what is already there in terms of your pure commitment to your blogging craft. Imagine publishing a low-quality eBook because you rarely practice writing. Investing in some tool that promotes the eBook in a high number of spots simply blasts the low-quality eBook out to a high number of spots. Who buys a low-quality eBook? No one, whether the tool promotes the eBook in 10,000 areas or not, buys a crappy eBook.

You need skills to become successful. You need skills to become a professional blogger. You gain skills through persistent, patient, generous practice; no other way exists. Stop trying to take shortcuts with blogging tools. Cut it out with trying to become wildly successful through investing in a high volume of blogging tools. Tools are only as effective as the skill level of the blogger using tools. I do OK; I barely use any tools because I am not a tools guy. I give virtually all of my attention and energy to writing blog posts and guest posts, commenting genuinely on blogs and promoting other bloggers through my social media. Helping people with the bare essential activities – being relatively void of any/all tools – leads to a successful blogging career. But it takes a long time to mine this success because it takes quite a while to practice enough to become a highly skilled blogger.

Develop your skills first. Write 500 words offline in a Word document. Publish 1-3 blog posts weekly. Comment genuinely on blogs. Promote other bloggers through your social media accounts. No one needs any tools to do these things; each is a tool-free activity. As you develop your blogging skills, feel free to invest in 1 or 2 tools designed to make your blogging job a little bit easier. No tool can do your complete blogging job but tools simply enhance your skills, making your blogging life easier through the functionality of each tool you use.

Develop your skills through patient, persistent, generous practice. Invest in tools farther into your blogging career to optimize your skills and to serve your readers effectively.

Never become a tool fool who believes tools can do all of the blogging work for you.

Your willingness to practice blogging by creating and connecting for years is the biggest factor in your blogging success.

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