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Starting a blog can be fun as well as very time consuming. But, if you have something to share then a blog is a great way to get your voice heard, help others with your knowledge, and get paid for doing it. It’s a win for everyone involved, right?
8 Blogging Mistakes To Avoid
Blogging is fun and enjoyable. However, it needs time to grow, develop, “simmer”, if you will. You have to work hard to become a successful blogger. You might only come to realize this once you start composing your first blog.
There are a lot of challenges that will come your way. But, don’t let them stop you! Learn from those challenges and find ways you can overcome them and start succeeding.
Don’t Dwell On Your Mistakes
When creating a blog, mistakes will happen. But, don’t take those mistakes as a sign of failure, make them a learning opportunity. Even professional bloggers or those who have been blogging for a long time make mistakes, it’s how you handle it that matters.
As a beginner in the world of blogging, one thing you should do is to learn from other people’s mistakes. It’s so much better to learn from others and avoid mistakes they have made – trust me – there will be plenty of mistakes you can make on your own, there’s no need to fall into mistakes others have before you! Here are some mistakes you should avoid.
Don’t Start Writing Before You Know Who Your Avatar Is
Who are you writing the blog for? Are you writing for students or for business marketers, stay at home Moms, empty nesters? Are you targeting individuals who want to save more money, or mothers who are into couponing?
It’s important to know your audience. Instead of throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, create an avatar. An avatar is the person you are writing to, make up a complete profile of this person. Male or female? What age? Married? Children? Hobbies? Where do they work, or do they work? Once you have fleshed out a complete picture of the person your are writing for, make sure each post and topic speaks directly to that person.
Write great content about your chosen subject and make it resonate with your avatar. Talk like they talk, make sure you are holding their attention and drawing them in, after all you should know them inside and out, so, it should be easy to do.
You are keeping your audience in mind when you use:
- Concrete and specific words
- Specialized terms ONLY when your readers can understand them.
- Accurate words
- Plain words instead of fancy ones.
- Appropriate connotations and associations.
- Inclusive language.
Don’t Take The Short Cuts
Blogging is hard work, yet rewarding, too. You can make people’s lives better with your instruction, empathy, and connection to your readers.
Don’t look for and use shortcuts. Shortcuts may lead you to fail. Shortcuts often come back to bite you years later when it’s too difficult to fix them without starting over completely. If shortcuts could make bloggers successful, then every blogger would be successful in short order.
Be sure to put in the work, time, and hustle to do it the right way and you’ll be successful and proud of what you have built.
Don’t Let Money Be Your Focus
If you started a blog to get rich quick, shut it down now… lol Because that is not how this works. You want to provide your audience with quality articles, and information they need, the rest will come in time.
Focusing on the money will make you make bad decisions, ruining your reputation as a blogger, and it can ruin your integrity with your readers. There’s a fine line. You’ll be successful and in turn make money. Just don’t focus only on the money.
Don’t Write Poor Quality Posts
Having poor quality articles can destroy your blog. Search engines will quickly see that your articles are of poor quality and stop sending you traffic. Search engines look at your “Bounce Rate”, your bounce rate tells them how quickly people find and then leave your site. If they leave too quickly that means – to the search engines – the information they were looking for wasn’t there. Then the search engines stop sending people to your site because it makes them look bad.
On the other hand, if a reader finds your site, and stays for a while and visits more than 1-2 pages, then the search engine decides that is a quality site to send searchers to, making you have a good bounce rate and making search engines see your site as a quality, trustworthy site.
You need to build and write unique content that your avatar will love. There is nothing new under the sun, I get that, but, you can definitely give it your spin for your readers. Making them understand it. For instance – maybe you had heard the phrase “Bounce rate” before but, never knew what it was, I gave it a spin that you now understand (hopefully :)).
You need to watch your sentence construction, your punctuation, and most especially, your grammar. Be sure to proofread and re-read your posts before publishing the, maybe re-read them a day later before you hit publish. Fix any typos, spelling, and other mistakes you find. Make sure the words flow. You can also try places like Grammarly that can help you proofread your posts.
You have to maintain the quality of your blog. Write only good and unique articles to build your authority and to introduce yourself as an expert in your chosen field. be consistent, write 1 day, 3 days, or everyday, just publish the same day(s) each week. That helps your readers to look forward and know when to expect your posts.
Don’t Skip Photos
Everything is easier to read if there are photos. We are very much a sight driven society, so be sure to not skimp on photos.
Photos are useful when you are describing, something when you’re emphasizing a phrase or a quote, and if you want to break up the article.
Don’t Copy Others
One of the common blogging mistakes is trying to copy other bloggers. Once other bloggers start making good money, some newbies start to copy them. Remember how you learned in school not to plagiarizer? The same applies today in blogging.
Many beginners build the same things they see on another blog that is in demand, popular, or common. Plus, there are some who publish the exact same copy of posts that other professional bloggers write.
Copying other posts and publishing them on your website will wreak havoc on your blog. You can be sued for stealing someone else’s work, search engines will ignore your work because they can see it was copied from someone else’s site, it’s just not worth it. Always make sure you are writing your own stuff.
Don’t Use Photos That Aren’t Yours
Just like not copying other people’s writing, don;t use photos without permission unless you took them yourself or bought them. If you take your own pictures to use in your posts, you might want to think about using a watermark to make sure no one takes yours.
You can also be sued if you use a picture you didn’t get permission to use. Be extremely careful when choosing images for your posts. There are some free sites you can get images from, and there are some paid sites.
Just be sure to either purchase, get permission, or take your own photos to share in your posts and on your blog.
If you want to be a good blogger, you need to love writing, and write what you love.
I hope these common blogging mistakes can help you. I hope this will help you in improving your blog and feeling the fire to step up your blogging game.
