A blogger is a specialized content creator who contributes to regularly updated web publications called blogs. Blogs can exist as standalone entities or can be published as part of larger organizational websites. They are helpful in attracting and maintaining regular audiences and can be used as vehicles for education, sales and marketing, as well as maintaining audience relationships.
As part of their work, bloggers develop post ideas, research background information for the post content, create content calendars, draft, revise, publish, and update blog posts, choose stock images to go with the posts, and optimize the content of the posts for search engines. They may also promote the post content via social media, as well as take and edit original photos to use with the written content.
A common practice in blogging is packaging content into various formats. For example, an interview with an expert can be turned into a podcast, a video, a traditional blog post, an ebook, or a series of quotes to be distributed via social media.
Bloggers often specialize in a topic area, since many areas require a heavy investment of time up front to acquire expertise needed to blog. Examples of specialties may include medical fields, technology, politics, manufacturing industry, sociology, psychology, or personal care. Many specialized bloggers have professional background in the fields they write in.
A blogger can be employed full time in an organization, where they often perform other professional duties in addition to content creation. More often, bloggers work as freelancers and create content for a variety of organizational and individual clients.
Given the variety of content formats, bloggers increasingly need to have a wide variety of content creation skills besides writing, from audio recording, through videography, through audio and video editing, microphone and on-camera work, and social media marketing. Freelancd bloggers also need to have strong interpersonal skills and some entrepreneurial abilities, in order to promote their services and interact with clients.
