If you’re a good writer, you can dominate the blogging world, right? Wrong. Good writers are often surprised to find they stink at blogging. With so much hype over the “Content is King” idea, it’s not surprising to find that many writers simply can’t understand why they are not rocking the blogosphere with their posts.

Do you need to be a good writer to be a good blogger? That’s debatable. But one thing is for sure: good writing skills are not all you need to be a good blogger.

Working in the Kitchen

The best comparison I can think of is a restaurant. If you’re a wiz in the kitchen with delicious recipes and impeccable skills, you can be an awesome chef. The chef of a restaurant is like a writer. You’re the core, the heart of the business.

But running a successful restaurant takes so much more. You have to do administrative work like hiring and balancing the books. You have to design the restaurant, choosing everything from seating to paint color. You have to market your restaurant and make business decisions, like menu prices. You have to be amazing at “front of the house” tasks, like greeting customers and dealing with complaints.

The chef is important, but the restaurant owner is the boss, and for good reason – he or she is the person responsible for the restaurant’s success or failure, and that person needs to know more than how to cook a chicken.

The same is true for a blog. You need more than just writing skills because your responsibilities stretch much farther.

Yes, a chef can be a good restaurant owner – just like a writer can be a good blogger. You just have to realize that the food is only part of the equation.

“You’re Gonna Have to Deal with Stress”

There’s this Dennis Leary song called “Life’s Gonna Suck.” It’s always cracked me up – it’s about how when you’re an adult, life gets stressful and hard. One of the lines is, “You’re gonna have to deal with stress, deal with stress, deal with stress. You’re gonna be a giant mess.”

Luckily, I don’t think life’s quite as bleak as an adult as the song makes it out to be! But the “you’re gonna have to deal with stress” part is definitely true. Many people become bloggers or otherwise work online because they think it’s an easy way to make money. Not true. Starting your own blog is the same as starting a business; you simply have less overhead. It’s stressful, though, and if you’re not prepared to deal with this stress, no amount of good writing will make your blog successful.

For me, managing the stress is about remembering what I love about blogging and focusing my attention on these tasks. I love the writing. Does that mean I can simply ignore all of the technical, marketing, and other tasks that go along with blogging? Absolutely not. But what it does mean is that I can start every day on the right foot by doing some writing, and make sure that all the tasks I do are supporting my writing, so I can afford to write more.

You can also work toward a goal of hiring a virtual assistant (VA) to work on tasks you don’t like so you can concentrate more on being a writer. Ultimately, if you’re a good writer you can be a successful blogger. Just be honest with yourself about the work you’ll need to do beyond writing to be a good blogger.