In this ever-evolving technological age, so many people are creating dedicated sites to blogging about their unique life experiences, sharing their opinions on products or services, or any other type of topic they deem interesting to share. Many are doing this without any background in writing or in creating a site. This has led to many blogging mistakes, holding them back from creating a successful site. With this in mind, consider some very basic blogging tips regarding the most common blogging mistakes that could be beneficial in making positive changes to your blogging endeavor:
1. Creating Overly Complex Content
Excess words and long, drawn-out sentences will only lead the reader to skim what you have written and not return for your next blog. For this reason, the average daily newspaper is at a fifth-grade reading level, so keep this in mind when you edit your blog content.
2. Content Focus Is Not On The Audience
If every blog post is strictly about you and how you feel, your audience will quickly get bored with reading them. The best way to avoid this is to ask yourself a few simple questions about your content before you begin to write it:
- How does this affect my audience?
- Will my audience find this helpful and relatable information?
- Will this content add to my audience’s productivity, health, and general well-being?
3. SEO-Dominated Content
If your primary aim is to cater to the search engine powers that be to drive your blog visits, then you will be boring your readers right off your site. Your audience will very quickly pick up on the redundant content of keywords and phrases and realize that you lack the substance they are looking for, which will bring them back again. Create content that is audience-driven first, then edit for SEO later.
4. Limiting Your Content Based On Word Count
Oftentimes, bloggers have this specific idea in mind of how much content a reader will skim through each time before they become bored and move on. To adhere to this type of word-content mantra of “only 500 words or less” also limits value and meaning. Your end goal is to present content that delivers a message as completely as possible in the minimum amount of words needed to deliver it. Ask yourself the following to accomplish this:
- As I read through my completed draft, are there words and phrases that I am repeating?
- Can some ideas be combined or connected?
- Can I narrow the message down by adding links or referring the audience to other sources of information, not online, instead of explaining it?
- Then, revise your post, and you will more than likely create a second draft that is much more value-driven and reader-friendly.
5. Not Ending With A Message
There is very little that a reader hates more than reading an entire post and not finding an insightful message to carry with them at the end of the content. The ambiguousness of this makes them wonder if the content was worth reading at all. Your aim should always be to wrap up a blog post with a statement that will motivate your audience to change their mind about something, take action, or inspire them to feel better.
6. Not Knowing Your Audience
It can be extremely difficult to find a consistent voice as a blogger that readers can identify with if you try to create your post with thousands of readers in mind. This leads to posts without a personal touch and a very general personality. There are several ways to do this through some simple research:
- Occasionally, post small questionnaires on your site and welcome your audience to give their feedback. Ask them questions pertaining directly to the topics. You can use a free audience survey template here.
- If you are promoting a particular product or service, contact that company and inform them that you are writing about their product or service and would like to have a summary of their research statistics regarding their customer base. Most companies will jump at the chance of free advertising and offer a general summary of who you should be targeting.
- Use strategic social media posts to get as much feedback on a topic as you can. For example, pose open-ended questions in a Twitter or Facebook feed or even a very short Instagram post that asks: How do you feel about…? Then, include whatever topic you are considering writing about. Your thread will be inundated with all types of feedback and generate interest in the blog post.
7. Passion-Less Topics
Just because something is popular doesn’t mean you are passionate about it. This will show in the tone of your writing. Readers will sense your boredom and move on and not come back for the next installment of your blog. If you need to find some inspiration, there are a few things you can do:
- Find an expert and speak to them. They would not be experts if they didn’t have some level of passion for the topic, so you will probably learn many things about it you didn’t even know or understand, which will inspire you to share it with your audience.
- If you are promoting a product or service, speak to a customer who has used it and find out how it has improved their quality of life or their business so you can find something your audience can relate to as well.
- Look for other topics that are related to the one you will be writing about to find a link that will inspire some passion for you to share this connection with your readers.
8. Poor Editing
Nothing is worse than reading something and finding error after error in either punctuation or simply typographical mistakes. Readers will give you a “pass” on the first few, but after four or five they will most often stop reading. You should go through at least TWO revisions of your blog post to find typos, revise phrasing to make it more concise, and to add meaningful tidbits here and there that come to mind after the fact as you reread your post.
9. Content Lacks Personality
You can share as much useful information as you like, but how can your audience believe in your message if it doesn’t come with your personality attached to it? You don’t always have to get personal, either. Making up a “personal experience” can show through very easily as disingenuous, so don’t go there. But you can share other people’s experiences anonymously and make it your own by showing empathy for that person’s struggles and inspiration in their journey. An audience will usually appreciate your candor, sense of humor, and even humility and see your character shining through.
10. Waiting For Traffic To Arrive
Speaking of a growing audience, many bloggers tend to rely on their audience growing organically instead of strategically planning for it. This includes setting a goal for a target number of unique visitors to your site over a specific period. If you don’t reach this goal, don’t just move the goal line a few months ahead; you are avoiding a problem that will worsen. Instead, figure out what you are doing wrong and find a new strategy.
11. Creativity Over Practicality
Your title may be confusing your reader. You may be substituting “catchy” phrasing for invoking interest in your audience to keep reading. Most people who are perusing through your site are doing so by skimming or scanning titles that interest them or suit their needs. So, presenting something that is ambiguous and does not tell them with a topic word or phrase what the blog is about will get them to move on quickly to another post or even another site.
12. Visuals Are Missing
People absorb information in several ways; one way is through visual perspectives of ideas. If your blog posts only present word content without images, that audience segment never gets the full message. They will also probably never become return readers. Create a variety of content that will appeal to more readers. Depending on the topic, you should usually include at least two images about the subject matter.
13. Poor Content Organization
You lose meaning very quickly for your blog post audience by not presenting what you mean in an organized style. Ask yourself: What do I want to say and how should I say it? For example, if you are presenting a product and how to use it, understand that it must be outlined in a process pattern of specific stages in order for the audience to understand how it is used properly.
Keeping these common blogging mistakes in mind and following the prescribed blogging tips should put you well on your way to a successful blogging experience.