If you are starting a blog as a hobby or as a full-time career, be aware of the common blogger mistakes others do, and never get into a habit of developing them.
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Fail to define the target audience
More likely blogging as a pastime than a serious business, these bloggers write whatever comes to mind: a personal take on a political issue, a newly discovered personal philosophy, or a piece of travel advice from personal experience. As you might have guessed, those examples contain “personal,” which means it’s more about sharing your own thoughts and less on answering questions readers may be asking. It’s not a bad idea to have such a topic as we are all entitled to write our thoughts.
However, if we write specific topics such as finance, food or fashion, we have to define our audience and create a persona about them. We can then try to identify what they might be looking for, a task accomplished with keyword research. In doing so, we have a clearer idea of what topics to write, how to prioritize them and be assured that our defined audience will return to read our next blog entry.
Inconsistent with blog post frequency
In the beginning, bloggers may find it exciting to publish as many blog posts as possible. However, as the excitement about writing wanes, the daily grind of identifying topics to write and writing these topics becomes burdensome. Bloggers may then find themselves skipping from publishing blogs for days or weeks. The longer the blog has been idle, brings less motivation to write and reduce the volume of repeat visitors.
Sticking to a manageable frequency is the best way to keep up with consistency in blogging as this career is more a marathon than a sprint. You can start with one blog per month or per week, and stick with it. Once you have established a routine of one blog entry per month or week, you can gradually try to do it more frequently and maintain consistency. Even if you might end up sticking back to the original frequency, your readers already expect that anyway.
Cover too many topics
With a wide variety of subjects, your blog might not establish a niche topic. Without a niche topic, your blog may fail to attract loyal followers who look for particular issues — with the exception of your friends or if you are a famous personality before you embarked into the blogging scene. Without adopting a specific blog theme, your site might fail to attract the attention of advertisers whose interest aligns with a few of your blog posts because your site holds no authority over the topic.
Fail to do keyword/topic research
Without researching what people are looking for, you could be writing articles that very few people are interested in. Although writing about a topic that you are an expert on and getting read by fewer site visitors is still worth doing, you might as well be sharing your expertise with a more massive crowd when you do prior keyword or topic research.
Fail to cite sources
Sometimes we need to use statistics to convey information more credibly. However, we sometimes fail to give credit to sources who did the research, conducted the study, or took the photo that contributed to the overall credibility of our blog. Adding these citations not only give credit to where credit is due, but it also makes our blog entry more attractive reference to other researchers or site to link to from other websites.
Don’t include relatable examples, if applicable
Some blogs are well-presented and provide a vivid description of their content that makes it easier to understand. Some blogs are full of abstract ideas and fail to give examples that would have been easier for a reader to relate to. For example, if we write about tips on managing your sari-sari store in the Philippines. We not only aim to say we should sell fast-moving consumer goods but cite examples such as sugar, cooking oil, or bread.
Don’t create attractive headlines
Our articles are as good as their headers. That’s because if our content is highly informative, but if it is matched with an unexciting headline, it might not attract attention. When our pages appear on search engine results, and headline text does not connect well with a text description, they can quickly be overshadowed by other search results that offer a more accurate description. Using attractive titles helps articles get the attention they deserve and might be a catalyst for better search rankings.
Fail to engage the audience
Some blogs don’t offer an opportunity to engage with their readers. They don’t have social media accounts where visitors can share the article, no comment feature for visitors to write down their thoughts, or an email address that allow readers to leave a message. Getting user feedback is useful in understanding their reactions and can help influence what blog topic you might want to write next.
Poor content formatting and blog layout
Some blog posts are written in non-standard/readable typefaces and font sizes or published on odd background colors that are hard to read. They also appear in consecutive sentences with no paragraph breaks. These are just some examples of blogs that provide poor user experience and quickly turn away visitors.
Presence of poor grammar and spelling mistakes
Nobody’s perfect, but there should be some mechanism to ensure accuracy in spelling and grammar before publishing a blog post. A blog entry that contains several errors in subject-verb agreement, misusing it’s with it’s, or run-on sentences. A blog may be a more casual, more liberal tone of voice than press releases. However, somehow, a blog with impeccably written content establishes itself with a good reputation.
Now that you know the common mistakes a newbie blogger can make, it is something that you should at least try to avoid when you start your blog. Having a well-written blog post presented on a user-friendly platform will invite a reader to return for the next blog post. This reader is also likely to share your blog with others. Otherwise, a post riddled with mistakes can quickly turn off visitors even before he or she finishes reading your article.