Common Blogging Mistakes to Avoid
When we start blogging and building a community, it’s pretty easy to think we’re doing things right and that our traffic should increase quickly.
Setup your SEO Plugin and put your content inside WordPress website and publish it. You are good to go! Alas! It is not that easy. Follow me to know about common blogging mistakes to avoid.
So we click on “Publish”, we share on the networks and we wait. Some relatives seem to show interest in our post, but nothing after 3 days.
Does this sound familiar to you? Good, you’ve landed in the right place!
We’ve all been there, and today I’m going to share some advice that I would have liked to have received when I started. Without further ado, here are the 10 things not to do when starting a blog!
Things to know before starting a blog
- Starting a Blog without setting a goal
- Blog without knowing your audience
- Don’t use your voice
- Don’t take the time to delve into a subject
- Ignoring the strength of a title
- Ignore Active replay
- Do not apply good SEO practices
- Forgetting to insert visuals
- Ignore the design of your blog
- Promote articles through a single channel
1. Starting a Blog without setting a goal
What is the interest of your blog? If you have not yet thought about it, rethink your strategy for blog.
A blog without a goal is an unsuccessful exercise. You need to think about your readers first.
What will they see when they visit your blog? Someone writing on a niche topic that interests them? Or someone who writes about everything and nothing?
In short, is there real added value for your readers? You also need to think about your personal goal.
Would you like to sell on Instagram? Generate passive income online? Improve your image as an expert in a certain sector? Boost your conversion rate?
Start by defining the main goal of your blog.
Example: Online earning opportunities
Then define the sections of your blog and their purpose. Still with the same example:
- A “Freelancing” section to help readers around the world in their search for a place to work.
- A section “They recruit” to highlight employers who recruit remotely.
- A section “Skill in Demand” for awareness of required skill and how to develop them.
Finally, set a goal for each blog post:
- This article aims to list the 15 best rated online jobs that can give you decent income.
2. Blog without knowing your audience
Now that you have a primary goal, and to allow you to refine your secondary goals, it’s all about understanding your audience and their intentions. This is essential if you want to develop a successful blog.
While you may have chosen your niche, know that your audience is always looking for added value, and most even perform one or more search queries to get very specific answers.
To break into the blogosphere, pay close attention to comments found on forums, questions asked by Internet users, and search intentions. You need to give your audience what they want – specific, targeted content that will provide solutions to the problems they are facing.
As a general rule, the more time you take to get and compile the answers to their questions, the more people will find value in your blog. It could be a detailed answer on a topic, a survey you conducted, or, another example, a step-by-step guide.
3. Don’t use your voice
Another mistake to avoid is being too generic and not carrying a voice that resonates with your audience.
Be careful, however, you should not expose yourself personally: you can very well speak on behalf of a brand or under an alias.
But the tone adopted should remain, as a rule, light and familiar. Better yet, bring your own experience to the table, and the lessons you learned from it.
Your audience must feel an element of authenticity in your communications (email, articles, videos, etc.).
4. Don’t take the time to delve into a subject
It goes without saying that writing a blog – or anything, for that matter – requires a lot of research. You will often find yourself spending more time researching than writing!
You can conduct your research in several parts.
The first is to identify the keywords and queries specific to your niche.
The second is to find out what the competitors are writing and what their bestselling articles are.
The third is to conduct a survey of players in your niche to be able to create exclusive and high value-added content that, if well promoted, could even get you press mentions.
As a general rule, avoid articles that are too generic or that have been covered dozens of times from the same angle.
Conducting this research beforehand will allow you to produce quality content, thus increasing your chances of success.
5. Ignoring the strength of a title
How often do you read articles online?
What’s the one thing that grabs your attention enough to make you read more?
This is obviously the title.
The attention has steadily diminished over the past few years and will continue to do so.
For bloggers, this has led to a major challenge: optimizing the title of their articles to appeal, and make potential readers want to go further.
Headlines should be written with specificity in mind – this will help readers know how long this article will take to read (example: “ultimate guide” vs. “5 tips”) and why it is relevant to them.
Headlines with numbers are often more catchy and will boost your click-through rate.
Present the added value of your article from its title. Instead of “5 new hair products available on the shelf”, write “5 new products that will give you shiny hair”.
It’s also a good idea to change your headline after you’ve written your article – you can certainly add more oomph once you’ve finished writing.
6. Ignore Active replay
Every writer knows the importance of editing. But with looming deadlines and increased workload, it might seem prudent to save time and publish your draft as is.
I can’t stress this enough – don’t do this!
Even the most competent writer should reread himself.
Simple grammatical errors creep in all the time – when you write you are so engrossed in the process that the right wording escapes you.
If you don’t proofread yourself, you will miss the chance to correct these mistakes.
Editing also helps clear up part of your writing: you’ll find better ways to phrase something, or you can reduce a paragraph that’s too long, for example.
While some bloggers change as they write, it’s not the best use of your time. Without the full article in front of you, you could end up omitting important parts of your writing.
Instead, once you’ve written your blog, spend at least 30-45 minutes revising it. You will always find things to correct, even if you’ve been careful.
7. Not applying good SEO practices
Writing with SEO in mind is a completely different practice than writing a regular blog. It’s more technical and requires you to follow good practices. But it is a long term investment.
Indeed, an article that applies good SEO practices can see its traffic evolve over time, even years later.
SEO is what will help people find your blog posts and rank your content among your competitors on Google. This is what you need to grow your audience and build awareness for your brand.
When writing your blog according to SEO guidelines, you will need to choose a keyword or main query that your article should answer. Here, it is the research intent of your readers that will guide your writing.
8. Forgetting to insert visuals
You can write the best blog posts, if your paragraphs aren’t punctuated with visuals, there’s a good chance your audience will lose track (unless you’re into pure storytelling).
Remember, there are hundreds if not thousands of other blogs in your industry vying for attention – you need to do something a little different to stand out from the crowd.
This is where the visuals come in. A great blog header will grab the attention of readers and bring your blog to life.
But you can also include visuals in the body of the blog post – infographic, graphics, mind maps, quotes, videos are all things that make your post easier to read.
An image / infographic should complement the writing. It should not be just a distraction between two paragraphs. Use your images meaningfully.
When it comes to visuals, it’s best to avoid royalty-free images that are a bit pompous because they have been overused in recent years. Prefer creative and original content, or exclusive photos, if you can.
There are dozens of resources online that will allow you to achieve these visuals effortlessly.
Suggested Read : What Is the Purpose of a Newsletter?
9. Ignore the design of your blog
Design isn’t something bloggers often think about – writing is more often the focus.
But a good blog design can make a difference in providing a better user experience. Poor design can affect readability which will cause people to leave the blog instead of reading it.
Take a look at the design of your blog before you go public. Is the text size large enough to be readable? Is there enough space around the text and between the words?
Look at the fonts on your blog. Are they complementary? In line with your tone and positioning?
Beyond the design of the blog platform, you also need to make sure that the way you structure your posts is easy to read.
Paragraphs should be kept small (2 to 3 lines maximum) and divided into separate sections with headings and subheadings.
And you should also follow these guidelines when posting guest articles.
Making your blog design more readable will improve the user experience and help you grow your audience.
10. Promote articles through a single channel
Sorry to tell you that publishing your article will not be enough to attract readers. You will need to spend a lot of time promoting it through multiple channels.
Be creative with your promotion strategy and recycle your content in different formats.
Your marketing plan should include more than one channel to expose your article to a larger audience. Email, social networks, referrals, video, advertisements, eBooks: use all the means you have and the most used by your readership.
11. Ignore the performance of articles
How do you know if your efforts have paid off? Did you achieve your goals?
Set up an analysis and performance reporting system for your articles. It’s not just about measuring the number of views, but also the engagement of your audience.
Which acquisition channel works best for you? Are your readers viewing only one or more articles on your blog? How many only visit it once? How much time do they spend on average reading your articles?
So many questions that will allow you to refine your goals and understand what works for you.
Analyzing is not an easy task, but it can make a big difference, both to the quality of your blog and where you need to focus your efforts.
To go further, I encourage you to do your research and consult the resources of content marketing experts, such as the Hubspot Marketing Library.
Conclusion – what to know about blogging
I hope by now you have a fair idea about common mistakes to avoid while starting a blog. Follow them, test your writing, follow good bloggers like Neil Patel to shape up your writing skills.
Always remember these 10 things not to do when starting a blog.
Happy blogging!