Chris Garrett has a great post over at Performancing about the number of hats a professional blogger wears in the day-to-day operation of a blog.  His list he started is:

• Entrepreneur - the ideas, the vision, motivation and drive
• Salesperson - brings in the advertising, sponsorships, does the deals
• Bookkeeper - keeps the numbers in check
• Editor - controls the output, checks and amends for quality, final decision on topics
• Researcher - investigates stories and information for articles, gathers facts
• Writer - does the actual writing, possibly based on the researchers gathered materials
• Designer - keeps the blog looking great, formats posts so they look their best
• Organiser - admin, project management, to-do lists, calendars, diaries …
• Tech Support - backups, fixes things when they go wrong, hosting, software upgrades, modules, ad serving …
• Mentor - impartial wisdom and advice, been there got the t-shirt
• Network manager - for when the enterprise grows from one blog to many, someone needs to run the farm
• …

As a business owner, I tend wear all of these hats as well, as when I am a problogger, and  agree with Chris’ statement that:

I think it would be fair to say that it is a rarity that one person encompasses all the qualities required to an excellent degree.

He goes on to say:

This says to me that as professional blogging matures there will be more and more team blogs. Blogs will become more akin to online magazines than online diaries. Note I say “team blogs” rather than “multi-author” blogs. While these blogs might well have multiple authors, the distinction I make is there will be essential team members who do not post.

If we look at it from the opposite side of the coin, as a business owner who also has a business blog, I can tell you I need to have team bloggers as well.  I need to have the time and energy to post regularly here on my own blog.  As the hats change, so does the time it takes to wear all of those hats.  Each hat carries with it a cost in time.  We can eliminate some of the stress of having to wear the blogger hat, and can save time for you to add another couple of hats to Chris’ list:

• Banker - Using your time to make your business money you can actually deposit.
• Travel Agent - Spending some quality time with that hammock on the beach instead of spending all your time in front of the monitor.

Speaking of hammocks, beaches and traveling, make sure to get over to the Blogonomics site and get your reservations in to attend the conference.  If you go on the cruise and need a professional blogger to watch your business blog while you are sipping umbrella drinks, drop us a line, and we will get your business paired with the perfect professional blogger.  Yuo can then leave that hat at home.