Are you banging your head to get more results from your blogging? It might at times get bit complicated if you are not too sure about the things you are doing.
While blogging you often wonder why you
are not getting the desired results. It might have happened that you
have never realized that while being a blogger you have committed some
grave blogging mistakes and never got a notice about it. Let see some
common mistakes we often commit without realizing and which, if
corrected can surely give you better yields.
#1: Failing To Understand Your Audience
Often the common mistake bloggers
usually make is to relate with their audience. You will find many blogs
where the bloggers understand the topic, but they somehow fail to relate
or connect to their audience. Bloggers have to understand the problems
their audience are facing and how they can craft the useful information
which the audience wants. Otherwise it fails to serve the purpose for
the audience and therefore gradually loose the momentum for its readers.
#2: Not Having A Strong USP
Bloggers often try to cater to all the
sections of readers. But you just cannot be “Jack of all trades and
master of all”. You just cannot beat the factor that clarity and focus
are the essence of any business. Say suppose you are a Chef and are
blogging for different ways of cooking food, you just cannot randomly
write about travel and tourism. Instead delve more deeper into the
varied shades of experimenting with food. This way you will be able to
keep your audience intact and they will always wait for your latest
posts! This way you also make it clear as to how passionate you are
about your niche.
#3: Discrepancy
Inconsistency or discrepancy is another
very common mistake which most bloggers often do in terms of quality and
in publication frequency. But often this works as a trick because both
of these elements are essence of success and work as opposing forces.
Often you feel that you only blog when
you have something to say, but that is actually not right. The basic
thing that you should keep in mind is that frequency of publication
(weekly/monthly/quarterly). You create a routine and gradually over time
you audience gets accustomed to your publication and each time they
will wait for it.
But making publishing routine does not
mean throwing up any garbage as you have committed to give three posts
every week. Quality always surpasses frequency. Two outstanding posts
per week will topple over five average posts per week. A balance between
the need to be publication routine and the need for steady quality is
the key to successful long-term blogging.
#4: Focus on Quantity Instead of Quality
I think a lot of bloggers focus on
quantity versus quality and guess it is the biggest mistake a blogger
can ever do. A theory that states one needs to blog a few times a week
to make his/her blog always seem fresh; both from the angle of
readership and also from a search engine perspective. The advantage is a
boost in quantity—perhaps also a gain in page ranks—but definitely a
loss in quality. A good blog or post needs in-depth research, write and
edit. Unless you are equipped with a team of professional writers,
there’s not enough time in a day to it all by yourself thus leading to
under-performing material.
#5: Making It All About You
Are you that interesting to write about
yourself? If the answer is no, stop writing about yourself and write
about something that your readers will find useful, interesting or
entertaining. You have to understand that your readers are selfish. If
they don’t find topics of their own interest they would just stop
reading. Don’t make it always your individual opinion.
Sure, put your own personality into your
content or add a post or two about something that has happened to you
and is noteworthy, but along with that write about interesting stuff.
#6: Bad Writing- Hone Your Craft
A blogger’s main target is the same as
any other writer: to get readers. The more readers you get the better it
is. And you have to keep in mind the best thing to get your readers
ignore your blog or posts is bad writing.
With the ever increasing demands for
content nowadays you hardly get to see good writing. It’s not uncommon
to find errors with formatting, spelling and grammar littered throughout
blog posts and articles published online.
Not only do these mistakes make a post
difficult and unpleasant to read, they make the point harder to get
across, and ultimately leave the reader with a less-than-professional
opinion of the blogger. Of course, good writing is more than
grammatically correct sentences that have been spell-checked.
Good writing is concise, has a point to
it and is accessible (in other words, easy to read and understand). But I
would argue that half of the battle to gain readers comes down to
simple, lazy mistakes that are easily fixed. Use spell-check; take time
to research ideas, facts and concepts you’re not sure about; and most
importantly, read over your work before posting. This can make a huge
difference.
#7: Failing To Engage Readers With A Compelling Headline
The biggest mistake bloggers make is
failing to engage readers with a compelling title and an opening
statement or question that supports it. Think of the title as the label
of a package, one that will only be opened if the label clearly or
cleverly describes what’s inside.
Once the package is opened, the first
few lines have to hook the reader again by delivering on the promise of
the label. When both the title and opening work together, the remaining
content is willingly consumed.
Try Copyblogger’s How to Write Magnetic Headlines if you are just getting started.
#8: Only Focus on Your Company, Products & Services
Often bloggers talk a lot about
themselves—their own products or their services—on their blogs and that
the best way to go about it. If prospective customers are seeing your
blog for the first time, they don’t care about you yet. They care about
their problems and how your product or service can solve them.
Informative content such as tips/tricks or how-to posts are much more
effective. Whether you’re a furniture company giving home decorating
tips, or a B2B marketing analytics software company giving marketing
tips, informative content puts the customer first and build trust before
the sale. That’s how you build relationships and create a community
that will advocate for you.
#9: Not Spending Enough Time To Respond To Your Blog Comments
The biggest mistake a blogger often
makes is not to take the time to respond thoughtfully to comments and
interact with readers. Interacting by responding to comments and
questions is an important way to build readership because readers who
are acknowledged are likely to come back. It seems that some writers
approach blogging as a unidirectional means of communicating (i.e., “I
have something to tell you”) rather than an active conversation within a
community. Although the content might be quite interesting, the
richness often comes through the back and forth with the audience. Not
only were great questions asked that benefited other readers, but the
comments also helped me realize what readers are interested in hearing
more about in future posts.
#10: Not Uniting With A Blog Community
One of the largest mistakes new bloggers
make is running the show all alone by oneself. There is no dearth of
talented writers who might love to form a community blog based around
wonderful content in your area of expertise, which would speed-up your
blog’s development with more promoters and give you a wider social
circle to pull from for comments and sharing.
You will always have to welcome a blog community and learn to be associated with the community.
#11: Sacrificing Keyword-Rich Titles For Cleverness
Another mistake many bloggers make is
that they sacrifice keyword-rich titles for clever, drawing attention
through headlines they feel might share better socially. However, doing
so will ensure a quick trip to social media wasteland and cause your
content to be overlooked by its best friend, the search engine. With a
keyword-rich title, your blog post will live on in search indexes and
become a resource instead of a flash in the pan. For a catchy title, put
your keywords first, add a colon, and write an attention-grabber. Keep
in mind that blogging is the social media rope which binds the room
together. So ensure you’re getting it the attention it deserves.
#12: Neglecting Blog SEO
The main attention in any blogging site a
blogger tries to make is keeping his site spam free. However, the most
important part in this is to make more people read your blog posts. This
means that each post have to follow SEO best practices to rock the SERPs. Bloggers should make sure their posts have:
- A descriptive, keyword-rich title.
- A ‘permalink’ natural-language and keyword-rich URL.
- Section headers that are descriptive and utilize keywords specific to each section.
- ‘Anchor’ text (the text that is hyperlinked) that contains keywords relevant to what’s being linked to; and, most importantly.
- Self-hosting your blog instead of using Blogger or WordPress.
Also, a blog should have an SEO plug-in like “WordPress SEO by Yoast”
or in some way be set up so that bloggers can craft their own title and
meta description tags for each post. All of these elements should
convey the subject matter of the post in a keyword-rich manner, top to
bottom.
If a blogger can think and
eventually try to implement and rectify these mistakes then he/she would
get the best results one can think of.
Do you think that there are mistakes
other bloggers are making that I haven’t mentioned here yet? Or have
you made any of these mistakes yourself?
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