There are many people involved in maintaining a website for a huge company, and each person's role is important to the specific area of the site they work on. Corporate blogs have involvement from many of their employees, but for personal bloggers, the individual is responsible for fulfilling the duties of all the positions rolled into one.
After viewing and analyzing a few personal and corporate blogs, I have identified some roles I believe that the blogger must hold.
Writer~ First and foremost a blogger must be a writer. Bloggers may use their space to write about their thoughts and ideas about life in general or in relation to a topic of their interest. There is a debate on whether bloggers are considered journalists and I believe they are journalists. Some people have used their blogs to bring attention to their writing in an effort to get published. For those writers who have been denied by publishers or editors, blogs give them the opportunity to reach a wider audience, stress-free and at no-cost to them.
Reader~ A blogger must be a reader, whether they read articles and websites to get substance for their posts or visit other blogs in the same interest area.
Researcher~ A smart blogger will conduct research on topics and trends to stay current with what is happening on the web. There are tools and programs that can be used to enhance one's blog and a blogger must do research to retrieve this information. There are sites or other blogs that offer tips for maintaining a blog.
Designer~Blogs are web pages and should exhibit proper design elements. A blogger's page should have a design that is reflective of their personality or related to the content that is on the page. Images, video and other media elements should be added to make the page look unique. It is easy for a blog to be setup and sites offer templates. However, not all blogs should look alike and with everyone using the templates given by their providers, this will most likely happen. As a side note, I am currently using a template, but I am working on learning CSS so that I can differentiate my site from others and use colors and images I like.
Information Architect~ A blogger holds the role of the information architect because they are responsible for the organization of the content of their page(s). Thought should be put into the structure of the site and where page elements are placed. Bloggers must design with their target audience in mind and make important information apparent to the reader. An information architect must re-organize content depending on user responses and actions, if any.
Editor~ A blogger must be a writer, editor and proofreader. It is the sole responsibility of the author of the blog to make sure their writing is clear and error-free. Taking advantage of spell-check is the key. Otherwise, people will probably stray away from your blog or post bad comments for all to see.
Usability Specialist~It is important that a blog is easy to use. A blogger's site should be easy to navigate through and the process of reading posts and writing comments should be simple.
Web Master~ Overall,a blogger wears the hat of a webmaster. In personal blogs, they are solely responsible for the maintenance of the blog and they oversee the direction of the site and make sure that the goals of the site are accomplished.
Not all bloggers populate their site with original content, although it would be more useful if they did. There are bloggers who have created "unofficial" blogs for their favorite companies where they will post information regarding new projects or events that are occurring. While researching corporate blogs, I stumbled upon many blogs which resembled fan sites. There is nothing wrong with this especially if an official company blog does not exist. Bloggers and readers who share a common interest can interact over the web and discuss different topics related to the company. The most interesting "unofficial" blog that I discovered was for Disney. The blogger's site is highly populated with content about various Disney happenings with links and ads for Disney as well. Until reading the About section, I thought that this was the official blog for Disney. This particular blog is a great example of usage of various page elements including Blogads, Sponsors, Links, RSS Feeds etc.
Bloggers wear any hats, but not everyone does it well. I will be sure to live up to the goals that I outlined for the roles above.
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