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When Can You Call Yourself a Professional Blogger?

When Can You Call Yourself a Professional Blogger?

Labelling yourself a professional is an act many bloggers for hire won’t immediately embrace.

Mind-chatter like “I don’t have enough writing samples” or “my posts don’t get a lot of engagement” fuels a bloggers’ belief that you can’t —or worse, mustn’t— call yourself a pro.

But what does being a professional blogger really mean?

Do you need to have written X number of articles before you can call yourself a pro blogger?

To answer these questions, let’s dig into the habits and characteristics of well-known professional bloggers, and compare them to your own distinguishing traits.

What Do the Pros Do?

When Can You Call Yourself a Professional Blogger?

Thesaurus.com tells me the synonyms of the word “professional” include skilled, trained, competent, efficient, proficient, learned and experienced.

Research by a global executive search and assessment firm called Russell Reynolds Associate analyzed what differentiates top CEOs and qualifies them to be called pros and be the leaders of the pack. Their key findings were summarized in 9 attributes:

  • Willingness to take calculated risks
  • Bias toward execution
  • Ability to efficiently “read” people
  • Forward thinking
  • Intrepid (the ability to perform effectively in complex and difficult environments)
  • Team building (the ability to achieve success through others)
  • Strategic yet tactical
  • Tough yet emotionally sensitive
  • Decisive yet inclusive

Aside from having common executive skills like good communication skills, initiative, and accountability, these top CEOs —the most pro of all pros, if you like— manifested traits that allowed them to conquer what Steven Pressfield, in his book Turning Pro, called resistance (fear, self-doubt, or self-sabotage).

In a nutshell, they chose to develop these mindsets and habits because they were determined to succeed. They chose to block out all distractions that could sway them to give up their goal of being learned, proficient, and competent in their industry.

You and What You Do

“Those are CEOs and they may have gotten a lot of training to accomplish that,” you might say [or insert your preferred self-limiting statement here].

Okay, I hear you.

But answer these blogger-specific questions first:

  1. Are you specializing in blogging for a specific niche?
  2. Can you write fast or are you practicing to write faster?
  3. Do you do what you can to drive traffic and engagement to your posts?

If you answered yes to any of these then you have my permission to call yourself a professional blogger now.

Because you’re officially doing what professional bloggers, and professionals in general, do.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at these 3 top bloggers:

Carol Tice

Carol is a Seattle-based freelance writer and I gather she doesn’t have a journalism degree. But she didn’t allow this lack of credentials to stop her from pursuing blogging and writing gigs with top business websites like Forbes and Entrepreneur.

As she’s had experience writing about business in print media, she specializes in blogging about business topics. Specializing and consistently writing about a particular topic gears you to becoming an expert in that field. In other words, you become an industry pro.

Daphne Gray-Grant

Daphne has had her share of working for corporate print publications. This experience made it quite easy for her to transition from managing print articles to working online as an editor. But however related writing and editing might be, Daphne found writing to be more tedious than editing when she was a newbie.

In this post, she admits she previously considered writing a hard task. But through dedication, practice, and using proven techniques, she won the battle against writer’s block and is now able to write fast all the time. She’s even coaching other writers about it now. Do you have the same commitment to become better (and faster) at writing for the web? If so, then you’re a pro.

Kristi Hines

Kristi started out as a hobby blogger. She wasn’t blogging to get writing jobs. She was blogging for fun. In fact, she liked joining blog contests. Eventually someone noticed her writing skills and she got her first paid gig. Her desire to win in blog contests helped Kristi develop strategies to promote her blog content to reach as many readers as possible. This strategic and tactical approach helped her win those contests and is still helping her now when she promotes her posts.

As a writer, she knows it’s heartbreaking when nobody seems to be reading the piece you’ve poured your heart, mind and energy into. So the answer to that is to promote the heck out of it. If you’re a smart marketer like Kristi, who after writing a post continuously pursues blog post promotion methods, then you’re a true pro. You know that great article you’ve written deserves to be read, you just need to make it as visible as possible.

Are You a Professional?

Having even one of the attributes I mentioned makes you a professional blogger.

Do you need any more convincing?

If so, when will you allow yourself to be called a professional?

Today is the best time. You know you deserve it!

Image: david drexler

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Comments

    • Hi Jenny,
      I liked your post – it’s short and to the point and gives useful information to your target audience.
      I suggest a more engaging headline for your blog post – using questions instead of statements, making it problem-based.
      In this post, you could ask readers for any suggestions or queries.
      More spacing between lines and paragraphs.
      Clear Subheads (start the description on the next line).
      Hope this helps.

    • Hi Penny,
      Full marks for the title and the post – the pictures, the spacing, the subheads.
      Excellent.
      I wonder if you could cut out the profanity in the second paragraph? Subhead 4 is okay.
      Also you could add a concluding line inviting comments – the post seems to end too abruptly.

  3. Hello good to know that I am a professional blogger and working towards improving my writing skills everyday. I would really love to have my writing style criticized. I hope I win this.

    http//:ieesha2.hubpages.com/hub/sicckle-cell-anaemia

      • Hi Penny,
        Full marks for the title and the post – the pictures, the spacing, the subheads.
        Excellent.
        I wonder if you could cut out the profanity in the second paragraph? Subhead 4 is okay.
        Also you could add a concluding line inviting comments – the post seems to end too abruptly.

  4. I love this mindset, it really puts actions behind words. Funny thing is when I first starting writing, I was doing it for pennies on the dollar, but today some of my articles are still receiving revenue, due to the exposure. So, yes from here on out I am going to make sure everyone I know, claims their “inner professional!”

    Here is a link for an article that I wrote and submitted today, for a parenting blog, no pay, but very fun site. I would love to hear your feedback. I did have a little help with the edit.

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v-v0dOaj9hL7W808zZgxN73S8z-VqnfkqX0TiJsS1xQ/edit

  5. Thank you for spelling it out plain and simple for me since I always try and complicate everything. I am a ‘pro blogger.’ : ) I said it…I believe it…therefore, I AM!!!

  8. Even though I cringe at what Carol might find, I think having a serious critique is important. I do need to at least start going to a higher level and doing it with confidence!

  9. Hmm.. Before, I’m still hesitant whether to call myself as a professional blogger because I haven’t proven/done anything “big” yet. But after reading your post, I gained some confidence.

    I admire Ms Tice because she became a successful blogger even if she doesn’t have a journalism degree. I first became a web content/SEO writer, not really a blogger. But soon, I decided to put up a personal blog. It’s not always updated though because I’m still studying. But I hope I could be one of the lucky members who could win the free blog post analysis. Here’s my blog post:

    http://monmonkun.blogspot.com/2013/12/why-should-students-blog.html

    Thank you very much.

  10. I don’t know if I can call myself a pro blogger. I have written for small blogs, but when it comes to submitting my articles to the higher paying blogs, my confidence seems to fade.

  13. I like the one who writes about a particular topic. I started one blog like that and it’s all about transcriptions. I haven’t updated it yet, and neither have I updated my other blog on ‘anything under the sun’ as well. Yes, I do believe that I should keep on writing until I stumble upon something that will make me that successful, as these other bloggers did. They were persistent in what they wanted to do and are successful. They’re in it already and I don’t think they’ll ever stop.

    Thank you for this great inspiration to keep writing what I basically want to write about.

  14. I apologize for not mentioning Ms. Carol Tice as the blogger who doesn’t have a degree in writing, and yet, she’s good at writing. I believe I am luckier and I really should be in this line of work for I graduated with a communication arts degree here in our country, don’t you think so?

    These days, I believe, that writing does not have to be complicated like it used to be. I have this notion to K.I.S.S., that is, Keep It Simple, Stupid. Excuse me for that last word, that is what I remember from other writers in the field to do this because readers will take the time to digest the articles laid out to them on the Net, as what I also do, and yes, I see that the articles are written in a very simple approach. Which, as a writer, isn’t hard to do because I don’t need to look for difficult words to get my thoughts across to others just to get my drift.

    Anyway, here’s my blog –
    http://milay68.wordpress.com/

    It’s about transcription. Thank you so much.

    • Hi Emily! Thank you for sharing your thoughts here. I hope the points I mentioned in this article helps you in succeeding as a freelance writer/blogger. Often, it really is just a matter of showing up. 🙂

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