Blogging mistakes are your trails and errors in your blogging journey. Everybody makes mistakes. But what more important is – you should take your mistakes as an opportunity for improvement, learn something new that helps you refine your skills.
There is a popular saying, “Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from poor judgment.” This saying describes everything clearly how you should take your blogging mistakes and other mistakes in your life as well as in your blogging life.
At the beginning of the blogging journey, everybody (including me) makes mistakes. It is very difficult to maintain the blogging journey mistake-free in the initial stage. To become from amateur to Pro and from Pro to Expert, you should know the blogging mistakes everybody makes and how to fix them. Blogging is a long journey. Though you are doing everything, a small awful mistake can be an obstacle to growing your traffic and engagement, your online presence, and much more.
In this blog post, you are going to learn those early blogging mistakes from all perspectives so that you don’t have to make the same common mistakes all amateur bloggers make. You could build a successful blogging business and make living from it knowing all common mistakes and fixing them in your beginning phase.
Table of Contents
Top 5 blogging mistakes in perspective of Mindset
Blogging is all about writing
Blogging is not all about writing. Most beginner bloggers think the blog is about writing the passion and/or something they are interested in and make mistakes in the blogging business.
Writing is just one part of blogging. Blogging business is a marathon, not just a sprint. Blogging is the culmination of lots of skills like designing websites, SEO Skills, Content management, social media, Photo editing, and a lot more.
Bloggers are supreme multitaskers. They inform/entertain/inspire/help their readers with authenticity, personality, and tone. Bloggers need to fundamentally understand their readers and what they want. They require tenacious marketing skills over phenomenal writing.
When you are just a writer, you just have to write an article about the topic and send it to the company’s editor. Then they make it look nice, choose photographs, deal with formatting, marketing, and advertising, and publication. Whereas when you as a blogger have to do it all by yourself and your team guided by you.
Not thinking It’s an investment, a business
“Blogging is a business, not just as we know it” claimed Emily Bell, editor-in-chief of Guardian unlimited and it’s completely true.
If you are a serious blogger, you should stop treating your blog like a hobby. You should take and treat your blog like an actual business to get real results as well as to make money from it. Money attracts money means you have to invest first to make money.
Your blog is your product in your niche market. You have to invest in your blog for growth and success. Form domain to hosting, Marketing to advertising, and different courses to upscale your skills so that you can reach your destined goal and get results.
Source: Convertkit
Blogging is not only about money investments. It takes a considerable amount of your time and effort to build a successful blogging business. The result and success of your blog very much depend on how much time and effort you put into it for value-packed quality content, promotion, marketing, relationship with readers, and much more.
Thus, blogging is a business – your startup which needs an investment of little money but loads of your time. Not thinking it’s an investment – a business when you start your blog is a big – big blogging mistake.
Not knowing why, you are blogging
Most beginner bloggers start their blog without knowing exactly what their goals are and why they are doing it.
Where do you go when you travel if you don’t know your destination point and/or place? You will be lost on the way.
You have to be clear about why you want to blog. It will help you shape up the content creation, stay on track and make progress in your blogging journey.
Blogging is hard work. It takes time to grow your readers and results. However, you started your blog for a reason. You always have to remember that reason – your strongest motivator that will keep you working towards your goals. It will help you stay motivated to keep pushing on your blog.
Try to make every post perfect
Though it is good to hear and be perfect in life as well as in blogging life, it is almost impossible to be perfect. No one is perfect. Yes, there are some formats, techniques, and things to do while you are blogging. It’s not like writing everything that comes into your mind. If you try to make everything perfect, you will make it more zigzag and harder to read your blog post.
Perfectionism is one of the main reasons why every beginner blogger could not start their blogging journey because they think what if –
- anything misses
- it is out of value
- nobody likes the post
- my design, marketing is not good
- the writing is not great
- etc., etc.
Do you know what? Perfectionist views blogging mistakes as a failure, another BIG mistake. It kills creativity and innovation because they fear failure. Because of that, perfectionists are less likely to succeed in life and business.
Hence, you have to make a mindset that you are never going to reach “perfect”. There will always be more things you can do to make your posts better. It would be better to publish and update (when you and/or your readers find the mistake, no big deal, right?) than postpone for perfection.
Giving Up too early
The harsh truth of blogging is – not everyone is going to be an overnight success in blogging. It will be challenging and take consistent time and effort for the weeks, months and even years to get success. You just need to keep patient.
Getting bored, feeling discouraged, and giving up too early is one of the worst blogging mistakes newbie bloggers make in their blogging careers. Most beginner bloggers start their blog following shiny object syndrome available full on the internet. But when they didn’t get the results as expected, they become discouraged and give up.
Source: Growthbadger
You have to be flexible and always ready to learn. If something isn’t working with your blog, learn it, find it and try again. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Take your time, research, learn, take advice and try new strategies. It is not like that you have to know everything first to start and get success in the blogging business.
Keep in mind and prepare yourself for the long run because it takes time. Instead of quitting blogging, find the solution to your blogging mistakes and/or failure, the motivation, and just remember why you started the blog in the first place. Keep continuing blogging providing valuable quality content. The result will show up before you know it clapping to your time, effort, and hard work.
Domain/Hosting and Design Perspective top 5 blogging mistakes
Not going self-hosting/Using Free platforms
Yes, it is understood, in the early stage of blogging, you don’t have a budget or are tight on budget. That is why you make blogging mistakes like this one and go for your best option Free platform with hosting itself in it.
You are starting your blog for certain reasons. Don’t need to mention here the main reason is business – to make money and live through it. So, for that, the self-hosted free platforms don’t work. It will add the work and pain, at a certain point when you need to migrate to a self-hosting good CRM platform.
Besides, you can’t control your blogging site. There are lots of limitations, not SEO friendly, not properly indexed in the search engines means you won’t have an online presence. You can’t do what you want and can’t grow and monetize your blog.
The cons of the free hosted platforms are:
- Hidden cost
- Lack of functionality
- Limitations/restrictions
- Not good support
- Lack of professionalism
- All your eggs in one basket
There are also cons to self-hosted platforms. First of all, it is not free. You have a bigger learning curve in it because you have to learn step by step and do everything yourself which makes bigger your responsibility. But for your blogging business, this one is the best choice from the starting point of your blogging business. It’s your first small investment in your blogging business. Here are the pros of self-hosting platforms that help you in building a successful blogging business.
- Complete flexibility
- Total control
- Access to plugins
- Access to custom themes
- Better for SEO
- Low cost
- 24/7 support
- More professional
- Easier to make money
- Leaves your options open
- An enormous (WordPress) community
Selecting a bad/slow hosting company
Now, you knew that your first investment in your blogging career is for your domain and hosting. The hosting company is the place where your all data is stored. It’s like home for your blogging business and a bad hosting company means bad living conditions in your home.
There are lots of hosting companies out there you can choose from. You have to take into consideration before choosing the right one many things like speed, features, security, support, track record, and cost. The most important consideration is – does the hosting company you are going to choose has WordPress integrated? Because after all, you are going to build your blog in the most popular and easy CMS platform.
Source: Firstsiteguide
Bad, cheap, and slow hosting can destroy your business and burn investment. It provides you with slow site speed and ultimately you lose your potential reader because of bounce. Google also never ranks the slow or less responsive sites that affect your organic traffic. Besides that bad and slow hosting can destroy the trust of your readers because of poor customer experience.
Thus you have to clearer understanding of why you need to be very careful when choosing to host your blogging website. Everyone expects everything to happen immediately in the world of convenience. Nobody waits for your website to load even for 3 seconds. Therefore fast speed website with the best hosting matters for your blogging business.
Wrong domain/Free domain/Insecure domain
As we discussed in Hosting – hosting your blogging business home whereas your domain name is the address to reach that home. Now it depends on you how to choose your home address in the blogging business the easy way or the hard way.
While we are discussing blogging as a business, a free domain that comes along with the domain provider’s platform is not professional and doesn’t work for business. The wrong domain name in terms of pronunciation, length, and memorable is also affected your blogging website. The free and wrong domain won’t help you much as a blogger even your blogging site is ranked on google. In the say way, the insecure domain will harm your website because it can’t protect you from spammers, cybercrime, malicious software, and other security.
If you want to make a professional blogging website, your most important steps in establishing your brand and business are to choose the right and perfect domain without mistake. Your domain is the first impression of your website so do not hesitate in investing and buying a perfect domain related to your business and your niche.
Your domain should reflect your brand and your niche so that it can help you out to gain recognition out of the crowd. As you are doing your blogging for the long run, you should go for the dot com domain because it is the best domain for branding globally.
Picking a difficult to read and understand Domain name
As we discussed your domain name is your address on the internet. You have to choose your domain name that is easy to read, understand, and forges a lasting memory in the minds of your readers. Your domain name reflects your brand and your niche market.
While it is not easy to choose the short and sweet domain name as most of the best domain names are already taken. You can also change it later if you don’t like it but it is a very time-consuming process. So it will be the best decision to choose the best domain at the beginning of your blogging business.
Source: Statista
You should use a domain name that is easy to write, spell and pronounce as well as easy to remember. It should not be long and complicated. The domain name should not match the name of other brands. It will be better not to include hyphens, dashes, and numbers in your domain name.
Therefore you should take time in choosing your domain name as per your niche, your target audience, your business, and your company. After all, everybody knows the first impression is the last impression. Don’t make it complicated and hard to read and understand. Refect your brand and business in your domain name and make it simple.
Unprofessional Website design with Wrong theme and plugins
Although the content in the blogging website is important, it only can not guarantee the traffic to your blogging website. The looks of your website play a vital role in your blogging business success. Without professional blogging website design with visual appeal, clear navigation, and ease of reading. You can not attract visitors, tempt interactions, optimize conversion and leave long-lasting impressions.
You should use responsive themes for your blog. The theme of your blog is face to your blog. Think similarly about how you can’t go out without makeup and grooming. your readers’ judge is your theme in the first place and then how the blog is presented. Plugins are available for everything to make your blogging life easier. it doesn’t mean that you should install the plugins for a tiny work to do in your blogging site. Wrong, bad, and free theme and plugins won’t optimize your site for SEO, don’t provide the speed you want, and are not easy to customize.
Design your blogging website in a way to make your interface simple and reader-friendly and improve your customer experience. Take into consideration of category and sub-category, typography, blog structure, blog layout and organization, lead magnets, etc when designing your blogging website and make it stand out in the world of the internet.
Top 5 blogging mistakes in perspective of SEO
Finding no right Niche
Though there is no bias from creating a blog freely to talk about anything and everything, there should be a blog topic or niche. Without a blog niche or topic, it will be difficult for you to stick around your reader. It will create trouble when you want to monetize your blog. Blogging isn’t writing anything and everything that comes to your mind unless you have the talent to spread your blog with the writing style and a sense of humor.
First and foremost while choosing your niche or topic. It must be interesting for you. You must entertain and be motivated while creating your blog and spreading your knowledge. The niche or topic on which you have no interest, no experience, no expertise, and no comfortable will only deliver writer’s block or low-cheap content.
Source: Founderjar
From a business point of view, your interest and passion are not enough when you start your blog. There are many things you have to be careful about. Authority on the subject, trustworthy content, expertise, too broad topic, too narrow topic or niche, Google ranking factors, uniqueness, stand out factor from the competition, and much more.
You have to choose the clear topic niche in such a way that it is broad enough that you can create a wide range of content and narrow enough that you can attract the right kind of targeted readers. In such a way you have the best interesting topic or niche which excels and stand out from the crowd.
Related post: The quickest and easiest way to finalize your blogging Niche.
No SEO / Too much SEO
SEO – Search engine optimization is all about getting your blog to perform better in search engines results which will bring you more traffic, readers on your blog. Not using SEO from the beginning of your blog is one of the biggest mistakes you have ever made in your blogging career.
Every second there are 67 thousand searches performed on Google and 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. This is the value of SEO and without SEO best practices and structure – your content won’t visible and digestible by search engines. Thus you will be missing out on a huge opportunity for traffic.
You should take it seriously in your blogging business. Yes, Of course, SEO is the technical part of your blogging business and takes time to learn but you must learn it at the beginning of your blogging career. Don’t make the blogging mistakes of thinking SEO is crap, complicated, and not worth the time and so putting off the SEO. When you mastered the SEO, it will become the most interesting aspect of your blogging business marketing as well as digital marketing,
Understanding and learning SEO, its structure, practices are your biggest asset in your blogging career. But doing only SEO won’t get you to result, you need to provide valuable quality content based on your niche with the right keywords.
Not doing Keyword Research/Keyword Stuffing
Keyword research is like oxygen for your blogging life to continue living. Finding your targeted niche base keywords for the post is the half battle won. Keyword research is simply the process of finding out the words and/or phrases that generate more traffic into your website from search engines, especially from Google.
The main purpose of Keyword Research is to provide answers and solutions to your readers’ queries on search engines. Because of your query-related keywords optimized post. Google may recommend it to the readers whose queries match the keywords and so you earn your traffic. The main mistake you are not getting traffic in your blog even though you put lots of hard work to deliver quality content and interesting (you think) content on your blog is not doing keywords research, not knowing your target readers’ search intent, search query.
The core of SEO strategy is Keyword research. It is impossible to rank in search engines and get organic traffic without the right quality content for the right keywords. You have to find keywords with low search volume and low competition to easily rank on the first page of Google.
Source: Orbitmedia
Among the two types of keywords – Short tail keywords (3 words or less) and Long-tail keywords (4 words or more), you have to go for long-tail keywords for easy ranking. Short tail keywords are popular ones with high competition. Long-tail keywords are more specific with low search volume, low competition, and target specific groups of readers.
Another blogging mistakes beginner bloggers do related to keywords is keyword stuffing. You have to understand that using keywords repeatedly in your blog post won’t increase the chances of a high ranking in SERP. Using the keyword two or three times in every paragraph is called keyword stuffing and Google might penalize you for such a post. Using keywords once in every 100 words in your blog post is fine. The heading and subheading of your blog post also have to include your keywords for better SEO.
Not thinking about Building Links
Bogging business is about a give and takes principle. Unless and until you are not linking to others then there will be less chance that you will also get a backlink in return. The best way of connecting to your new readers besides SEO traffic is links building.
External links which point to other websites can point readers to excellent resources. Internal links, which direct readers to other information within your blog, keep readers engaged, and boost credibility. Internal links also help you to spread link juice throughout your blogging site. Backlinks which is a link pointing to another website. it helps you in your site ranking position or search visibility and makes your content trustworthy.
There are many ways to build links on your site. You just have to follow from the beginning of your blogging career not make any mistakes. A direct approach to fellow bloggers, email outreach, commenting, writing a guest post, building profile links, site directory are some methods of link building in your site.
Don’t make mistakes just writing and publishing content and forgetting link building in your early days of blogging. Making connections with similar niche bloggers through links will help you grow your reputation and authority. Links are the top factors search engines crawl between the pages on your website and rank accordingly.
No focus on site speed
Site Speed is one of many factors that search engines use to rant your site. Google ranks websites with a better user experience higher than other and site speed is an important factor for it. It decides how the users’ experience on your website will be.
No matter how value-packed quality content you produce or how many guest posts you write to attract traffic if your site’s load time is slow your blogging site won’t rank well. Here you can see the importance of site speed presented by Kissmetrics:
- 47% of visitors expect a website to load in less than 2 seconds
- 40% of visitors will leave the website if the loading process takes more than 3 seconds
- 7% loss in conversions in every one-second delay
- Visitors often leave webpages in 10-20 seconds
Source: websitemagazine
The site speed affects the increasement of bounce rate in your site if your site doesn’t have a good load time. it also affects your site’s revenue decrease. From the illustrated picture, you can see it also decreases conversion rate, and ultimately you will end up losing your readers/visitors to your blogging site.
Content Creation perspective top 5 blogging mistakes
Not creating in depth content pieces
The longer the blog post more the chances for getting at the top. The blog post length and in-depth content are important factors in SEO to rank high in the SERP. It depends on what are you writing about in your blog post. whatever your write, you should try to write and include all the necessary elements and information going in deep. The in-depth content in your blog post provides your readers best value.
In this time and age where your readers are bombarded with different types of content every day. They will become picky when choosing where their attention goes. If your content in the post is mediocre and low in value, your customer won’t go through your blog post. Value-driven in-depth content is trendy and is rising to the top nowadays.
In longer blog posts, you can write more in-depth information on the topic. Most of the readers of blogs are showing a preference for longer in-depth content at this time.
Source: Laborator.com
Source: databox
Text-only posts/Not creating visual content
You have to stand out from the crowd. There are already thousands of blog posts on your niche. Using text-only posts, you can not differentiate from your competitors. Visual is worth a thousand words and easily processed by the human brain. The average person will digest information 100 times faster than text.
The one and only Facebook is a live example of why you should create visual content not only text content. Visual contents are more engaging and attention-grabbing. It means your readers see what they like, spend more time on your site, like and share more.
Source: Firstsiteguide
You should write as you talk. Your writing should not be too stiff. There should be uniqueness in your blog posts pouring your opinions, stories, experiences, personality, and possibly a sense of humor in your writing.
By using complex and fancy words, you only make your blog post difficult to read. Use simple understandable text in your blog. It will create a flow in readings. When you are working on your blog post, you should also consider the Heading, subheading, proper images, paragraphs, spelling, and grammar, and all the formatting of the blog to make it successful.
Writing and posting blog posts only not your job. You should check them, edit them and proofread them so that there is no mistake in your blog in terms of format, style, tone, and grammar. Visual content is way better than text-only posts. You have to be capable of creating the content in your blog post in such a way, it converts your readers into customers easily.
Off topic content/Multi-topic blog that doesn’t convert
This one is also a common mistake beginner bloggers make. Choosing a topic that comes to mind and what they are interested in even though it is out of track topic. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that what you are interested in and what you write, your readers are also interested and read your blog post.
You should not choose a broad and/or multi-topic blog as well as a too-narrow blog topic. Choose such blog topics that are demandable in your niche market, that is capable of solving the problems that your readers facing. A multi-topic blog requires many details which is difficult to create a flow. The too narrow topics will create a lack of readers in your blog post.
Source: Convertkit
Even though you want to cover everything and anything for your readers in the beginning. It is better to choose your blog topic that is specific, that convert well. You should be clear about your blog post’s goal and call to action in your blog. Only writing when you have to sell and only talking and wring about products and services will not build trust with your readers.
Besides that, you should create content based on your niche and your blog post title. Your readers are poor in time. When they search and find your blog post. If it is not related to the topic or headline, they hit the back button in seconds. The off-topic blog post doesn’t give the answers to their question or search query.
Create a blog post that provides great value, targets a specific group of readers, and solves the problems of your readers to get success in your blogging business. Know your readers, give them what they want, and curate your content as per your readers.
Not being interactive
Time is the best investment in your beginning blogging journey. Don’t make the mistake of being non-interactive and disabling your comment section. It is your responsibility to reply to comments on time and also to show that you are real.
You should encourage your readers to comment on comment sections so that you will know the things you miss in your blog post. Interaction and communication are the best ways to build credibility, trust, and relationship.
Source: Convertkit
Timely replying makes your readers feel valued. When your readers get answers to their comments/questions, they are more likely to take time to comment, engage with your blog post, and share it with others they know. It is the way to let your readers know that you appreciate their valuable comments.
What kinds of things do your readers ask about over and over again? From their comments and conversations, you will find out and also can learn about your reader’s needs. This will help you to address in your next blog post solving their problems.
Writing only for SEO
Already mentioned in this blog post that too much SEO is not good. Similarly, Writing only for SEO and traffic and obsessing with numbers and page views also damage your blogging business. You should take care of the priorities, goals of your blogging. There are lots of technical aspects of blogging, you have to learn to succeed in blogging.
Yes, SEO is also one of the important and technical parts of blogging. It helps you to generate organic traffic from the search engines and blogging wouldn’t be complete without SEO. But first thing first, you are writing for the humans, not for the Robots. Building trust and relationships with humans is the most difficult aspect you will face in the blogging journey.
Knowing your readers’ needs and creating unique valuable content for your targeted readers is a way you can implement at the beginning of your blogging journey rather than SEO. You should focus on quality over quantity. Using too many keywords in your blog post also won’t be like the search engines. If you write only focusing on SEO, it will bring traffic to your blog post from SERPs but they will quickly vanish because they find that your post is not relevant, interested, and doesn’t solve the problems they have.
So, it is good to know how search engines work. But your focus should always be on your readers and what they need. By providing valuable and useful content to your readers, they will keep coming back that increase engagement. They will share your blog post with other people and which will, in turn, improve your search engine rankings.
Top 5 blogging mistakes in perspective of planning
Not having a consistent publishing plan
To see some results from your blogging business, the key factor is consistency. None can decide the future of any blogging business by just posting a few blog posts. Your blog posts are less likely to be found if you write and publish less.
Blogging results won’t happen overnight. You should know that blogging requires patience to get results. so don’t discourage and keep writing and posting. You should make a content publishing plan and schedule so that you can publish your content continuously.
Inconsistency is one of the blogging mistakes that quickly ruin your trust both to search engines and your target readers. On the other hand, consistency will grow your readers’ trust, engagement, relationship, branding as well as helps you in SEO.
Source: Convertkit
Dedication, focus, and time are the main factors to see results from blogging. Whether you decide to post 4 posts in a week or month, you have to find the routine you can consistently stick with for the long haul. You can not establish your blog as a reliable source of solutions without consistency.
Consistency is the backbone of all success in digital marketing, blogging, social media as well as and online business. Bloggers who post consistently are almost guaranteed the success and growth of their audience. Google and other search engines also reward consistent content producers.
Not starting list building/email marketing early
In the early stage of blogging when you don’t have and/or have small size readers and you have nothing to sell, it seems building a list is not essential for blogging. But when you grow your blogging business and gain more exposure, then only you will realize your mistake of not building an email list from day one.
The money is in the list is a true saying you should believe and follow. You can compare 100 subscribers in your list with 10,000 likes on social media like Facebook. When somebody trusts you, is ready to commit, needs you, finds solutions to their issues then only they give you their email address whereas people who give likes on Facebook might not be ready to commit.
Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools to fulfill your blogging goal like generating traffic and improving conversions. Once someone is on your mailing list, you can contact them whenever you link and tell them about your blog, and promote the products you like most. You have full control over it. By providing valuable quality content you can turn them into your loyal customers.
List building is one of the easiest and effective ways to create more revenue. You can see the data below, how it converts your subscribers into customers.
Waiting to make money / Not monetizing blog early
The ultimate goal of every blogger is to make money from it. So why not make money from day one. There is nothing wrong with putting in place money-making opportunities on a new post like an affiliate link.
You don’t have to make the same mistake after reading this post. You can make your monetization strategy before launching your blogging business. There are many ways to make money from your blog. You just have to choose the right methods and the right strategy according to your niche and market.
Even though you don’t have enough traffic in your blog post, you have to test and try the opportunities available from the beginning. so that you can figure out and learn the best possible ways of monetization when your blogging business grows.
Create your content that enables affiliate marketing, links to various companies which offer several products and services under your niche. When you create content mentioning the companies products and services, you can contact directly to the company and ask for the payment for promotion from day one. You don’t have to wait for traffic, the popularity of your blog. As soon as you start your blog, you choose your monetization plan and apply it.
Selling instead of marketing
Promotion and marketing are the main factors of a successful business. Blogging is a part of the content marketing of any business. That’s why blogging is purely a marketing tool for attracting the right visitors to your business.
Don’t make mistake writing a blog post only when you have something to sell. Only talking to your products or services in a blog post also make your readers push away. Your readers don’t care about your selling, when they landed in your blog post, they are only looking for the solution to their problems and issues.
You should provide value in your blog post. The most important thing for your blogging business and/or any business is to build trust and relationships. Building relationships and trust keep your readers coming back and leads to share and repeat business.
Whatever your blogging goals are, if you fail to add value to your readers’ lives, you are not making any progress. Give your readers something to take away from your blog post. Value first and then only selling. After building trust and relationships, your readers automatically buy the products and services you recommend to them. This is the power of relationships in marketing.
No Guest Posts/ Networking
Although it is safe walking alone, if you want to get to your destination faster and earlier you need to walk with others. This is a perfect description of networking and collaboration. One of the biggest mistakes beginner bloggers make is not building a rapport and collaborative network with others.
As mentioned earlier in this blog post, the blogging business is about a GIVE and TAKE principle. if you are not networking with others then there will be less chance that you will also get a link in return. Networking gives you an opportunity to connect with similar readers.
Source: Founderjar
Among the different ways of networking, guest posting is the best one. Guest blogging is actually writing content for another company’s website. Guest posing offers mutual benefits for both the guest blogger and the website hosting the guest content. Besides this, the guest post also helps you attract traffic back to your blogging site. Boost your domain authority using external links to high-authority domains. It increases your brand credibility and awareness and builds relationships with peers in your industry.
Social media connections, Niche-focused online communities, meeting people in your community, speaking at conferences or events in your niche are some other best ways for networking and exposure, thus growing your blogging business.
Social media perspective top 5 blogging mistakes
Ignoring Social Media/Not utilizing Social Media
Social media is one of the best sources of organic free traffic. Though its algorithm changes from time to time, if you are able to establish a strong social media presence (where your target readers spend most of the time), you have still chances of receiving organic traffic to your blog post.
Find out where your target readers hang out and create social media accounts in those places. You don’t have to be active in all social media available out there. promote your blog content through your fan page, in your community and/or group, and through your friend’s profile on social media.
Don’t make mistakes of forgetting to shout out on social media about your new blog post. Leverage social media to generate quickly and faster the right amount of traffic.
Source: Convertkit
You are not active in social media
It is understood that you don’t want to share your personal life on the internet. But don’t make the mistake thinking of social media is only for friends and family in this age and time. In fact, social media has become a daily part of nearly everyone’s life. Millions of people are active on at least one social networking site.
You are not active in social media means you are actually missing out on your business. Social media is the key and essential for your blogging business to get optimal results. The more work you put into social media, the more you will get out of it.
You just name it. Brand awareness, building brand trust, Traffic generation, public relation, credibility, increase in engagement, growing your readers, social signal for SEO, and finally generate sales, you can have from social media. You just have to be active in the social networks where your target readers are mostly hanging out.
Wherever you are on social media, you just have to be active all the time. Social media is the place where as a blogger and as a marketer, you need to be. Only being there isn’t enough. If your page or you are inactive, you can’t expect any results. The key is to update a social network where are infrequently and engage in communication with fans and followers.
Source: Oberlo
Choosing inconsistent social media handles
Nobody wants to remember all of your different handles for each social platform.
A social media handle is basically your brand name and/or user name for a public that you have used on social media accounts. you have to choose a similar username as your blog domain name for social media. For e.g. if your domain is sagansuman.com, you have to try to get the social media username @sagansuman in all the main social media networks.
Though it is advised that you don’t have to be on all the social media platforms for your blog marketing. Just be in that network where your readers are. But from a business and marketing point of view, if you can be in all social networks to get benefits from them. It’s not bad at all. Every social media network works differently and has a different purpose.
When you have more than one social media accounts, having a social media handle that’s the same on every social media network makes it easier for users to find you. Consistent social media handle shows professionalism, helps your business find easily, makes your name clearer and memorable and makes the marketing process simpler. Whereas inconsistent social media handle creates confusion in users, make your name/brand very unprofessional.
So try to be consistent on social media handles as it is an important step of every business’s and blogger’s online marketing to get more traffic into the website.
No social sharing buttons
Your blog success largely depends on how many people read it. The most important and easy way to increase your blog readership is to include social share buttons on every blog post.
Social share buttons are a great way to get readers engaged and to share your thoughts and ideas. Those buttons, not only make it easier to share your ideas and blog but also gives you an indication that topics are more engaging than others.
Besides by just putting the social share buttons in your every blog post, you can get the benefits that social media provides you such as good user experiences, natural links development, value addition in your blog post as well as in your website, get more traffic and lot more.
When somebody likes your blog post, gets value from it, he/she wants to tell the world how he/she found it and they want to share it. But there are no social sharing buttons on your blog post, how does he/she share it? That gives your readers a very unprofessional image and thus you will lose your credibility. So, don’t make this blogging mistake of not putting social share buttons on your blogging website.
Applying the same strategy for each social network
Thinking all the social platforms/networks are the same is one of the biggest blogging mistakes beginner bloggers make. Every marketing campaign needs a defined strategy. Without a strategy, you will not be able to get results. The strategy helps you establish your outcome.
When every social media platform serves a different purpose, different audience, how it is possible to apply the same strategy for all social media platforms/networks. Having an account on all social media platforms and applying the same strategy does not guarantee that your media marketing will succeed.
It is your responsibility to think and choose the most appropriate platform that suits your blogging business and define a solid strategy for marketing. As each platform has its own rules and audiences, you need to optimize your methods of marketing and promotion to succeed.
Top 5 blogging mistakes in perspective of Productivity and Marketing
Emphasis on Quantity over Quality
Don’t make the mistake of diluting your message for the shake of word count in your blog post. Focus on your message and idea, your readers don’t care about the word. They will be only on your blog post because of the solution, value, and quality of your post.
Quality content gives you a better conversion rate, lower bounce rate, and more visitors to your blogging website. There is no meaning in creating content that has no value, no quality and that doesn’t convert only for increasing the blog post numbers.
You should focus on quality than quantity. Create unique, in-depth, and valuable content that would make the audience attracted to your post. If you want to get organic traffic from search engines, providing value-packed up to date quality content is the only way. Your blog post should be easy to read with no complicated words. There should be a good structure of the blog with the heading, sub-heading, minimum sentence paragraphs, and proper images.
Use clear, user-friendly language in your blog post to build readers’ trust. Maintain up-to-date and relevant content with the right information in your blog post. Know your readers’ needs, post accordingly so that they get value, solutions for their issues from your blog post. After all your readers’ are your money maker and they are deciders of your blog post whether it is a quality post or not?
Source: Findstack
Lack of Focus and Objective
Don’t make the mistake of spinning the content or try to plagiarize when you lack the content topics and ideas. Your blog content speaks for you. Brand credibility and reputation lie in your content. Try to write every time original, unique, valuable, and error-free content to your readers.
Being beginner bloggers your focus should be totally on content creation. Don’t be like everyone else and photocopying high-income bloggers’ style and writing only add you to bloggers’ failed stories. You should have realistic expectations from your blogging business and should keep continuing to create valuable quality content.
Just focus on the blogging business goals and objectives you have finalized when you start your blogging career. Set your priorities and think about why you are blogging in the first place. Creating content that is fashionable or searchable for the moment also has meaning. It becomes viral only for a short period of time, not good for your long-term blogging journey.
Yes, it will be a little difficult when you are creating the same topic for a long time. But doing more research, creating a content plan, reading news in your niche industry, reconnection to your readers, and surveying to get ideas from your readers will help you to create content that has an objective, such as driving traffic to the blog or promoting a particular product. Don’t post the blog if you are unable to define the aim that your blog serves or the goal it should achieve.
Not doing collabs with other bloggers
One of the biggest blogging mistakes bloggers do in their early stage is thinking of competitors to other bloggers in the same niche. Every blogger wants to increase blog traffic and the best way to increase traffic in your blog is by collaborating with one another. The more you get your blog out there the more traffic and visibility which benefits both parties.
Collaboration and networking is very powerful tool for your blog promotion and drives traffic into your blog. Your effort and time in creating fantastic blog posts will go in vain if no one knows about your blog. So promotion is a must for your blog business. It is said that you should spend 20% on creating content and 80% on promoting them.
Therefore, not promoting your blog posts widely across multiple platforms, forums, bookmarking sites, influencer outreach, and collaborating with similar niche bloggers will be your fatal mistake in blogging. Building a good relationship with other bloggers will open more channels to distribute your blog posts, be invited for guest blogging, and more. This is your secret sauce for your blogging success.
Source: Orbitmedia
Not measuring the performance metrics of your blog
As we are talking – blogging is a long journey. It takes time to grow and get success. You just need to be patient and keep posting your blog post. It doesn’t mean that you wait for a year to evaluate your improvement and performance.
Measuring the performance of your blog post metrics even if it is tiny, guides you to an improved blog in the coming days. It gives you an in-depth view of how your blog works and what changes to be made to make it more successful.
To get the best blogging output you have to keep eye on various measurement metrics. You have to thank Google because it has given you the best analytics tool – Google analytics. You can use this tool from the day of your blogging business to track and measure your progress. The key performance metrics and indicators that you should measure for your blog are:
- The number of visitors that gives you insight of what readers are reading and what they are looging for.
- Lead generation to help your business grow and earning in the future.
- The number of subscribers
- Social media shares
- Track inbound links
- Page-views
- Average time on page
- Returning visitors percentage
- Bounce rate
- and other necessary metrics for your business
So don’t make the mistake of waiting for online recognition of your blog. You have to measure the growth of your blog after the first month or when it starts to show some metrics.
Source: Convertkit
Focusing on traffic rather than your readers
This one blogging mistake was made by both the beginner and advanced blogger. If you concentrate on immediate traffic, then it’s going to be hard to prove the enduring value of your blog. After all, this traffic is very brief and short-term traffic.
Instead of that, you have to focus on long-term traffic creating relevant and quality blog posts for your readers. You have to create long-lasting relationships with your readers like most successful bloggers do. Write for your readers what they need and read, not for yourself and not what you want to write.
You shouldn’t write your blog post only focusing on money. You should value your readers more than the Ad revenue. Think for the long term and don’t ignore the user experience in your blog post. Don’t write to just fill your day and increase the quantity of your blog post.
Know your readers’ persona, think about the people who are reading your blog post and write the kind of blog post they need, provide value first and give the solution and information for their issues and problems. By all means, create blog content that will get readers’ attention and focus on creating blog content that will change your readers’ lives.
Final words
Now you have known the common blogging mistakes, bloggers’ could make in the early day of blogging. It seems overwhelming and difficult to make a mistake-free blog. That is why I present and write this post for you so that you can take care from the beginning.
It is not easy to make a perfect blog without any mistake but it is achievable if you put together the right amount of hard work and adequate time to create your blog post. Pay attention to the feedback your receive, analyze your mistakes, and try to learn from them. it will help you improve your writing.
The pitfalls in your early day blogging journey are the process of growing into a good professional blogger. Learn from the list of common blogging mistakes and make your blog more valuable.
Which blogging mistakes did I miss?
If you have any more blogging mistakes in your mind which I didn’t mention in the list. It’s my humble request to comment down below.
One more request, if you think this post is valuable and you can make your blog better, then please share this post with your friends so that they can get also value from it.
Related post: How to start a blog that makes money – a step-by-step guide.
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