8 Big Blogging Mistakes (Never Make These!)

Struggling with getting great blogging results? Blogging can be tricky, so it’s important to make sure get it right!

Below are some mistakes a blogger can make followed by how to correct those mistakes before it’s too late. These blogging mistakes will help you figure out how to improve your blog and get the results you want.

Not Being Patient With the Process

New bloggers may think that with only a few excellent posts and the right type of ads they’ll be on their way to making a steady blogger income, but usually, it will take time. Don’t get frustrated if it doesn’t happen right away. Social Media Examiner recommends writing regularly and writing keyword-rich posts. They also go into further detail about other ways to improve your chances of building a popular blog:

“Oh, there are so many mistakes business bloggers make. If I had to choose just one, it would be not committing to the process. Too many people get into blogging thinking that it will have an instant impact on their business. Their search engine visibility and inbound traffic will skyrocket, and they’ll be sleeping on a bed of $100 bills.

However, unlike pay-per-click advertising, constructing a blog that builds your business takes time and effort. I tell people to plan on writing two to three posts per week for six months to get the results they’re hoping for… more if they’re in a competitive industry.

This means more than just writing, however; you also need to write keyword-rich posts with persuasive, compelling titles that will be read, linked to and shared on social media sites.”

Putting Together an Unrealistic Publishing Schedule

It’s nice being excited about a new business venture and coming up with the perfect type of content for a new blog, but Start Blogging Online reminds a new blogger not to get ahead of themselves. At first, it may be easy to set unrealistic expectations and expect to push out a lot more blog posts than what you actually have time to complete. Set some goals but at the same time stay realistic as to how many articles will actually get published in a specific timeframe.

“When you first start blogging, you are full of ideas. It’s all new and fresh, so it’s easy to publish like a madman and get all your ideas out. At first, you’re going to think that publishing every day won’t be tough at all – but I can PROMISE you, you WILL slow down, and it will get harder.

That said, some bloggers don’t set any blogging schedule at all, so they get lazy and don’t update for months at a time. Both of these are problems because your audience needs to have some predictability; they want to know when they can expect you to publish.

When you publish too frequently (or infrequently), you create an unpredictable pattern that can frustrate your readers and cost you an audience.

My advice: Be honest with yourself and start conservative. Commit to publishing on a schedule that makes sense for your real life and other obligations.

Space out your posts (don’t publish five all at once!) so that you have a steady stream of content to keep people coming back.”

Not Having a Conversational Writing Style

It’s easy to get caught up in grammar and making a blog post sound nice and neat, but don’t forget to interject some personality into your posts from time to time. If you’ve heard the suggestion to “write like you talk,” whoever suggested it has a valid point. If you write as you talk and the audience will be able to better identify with what you’re trying to convey and will be more likely to engage with the content, which is what HubSpot points out.

“Writing a blog post is much different than writing a term paper. But when bloggers first start out, they usually only have experience with the latter. The problem? The style of writing from a term paper is not the style of writing people enjoy reading.

Let's be honest: Most of the people who see your post aren't going to read the whole thing. If you want to keep them interested, you have to compel them to keep reading by writing in a style that's effortless to read.

Solution: Write like you talk.
It's okay to be more conversational in your writing — in fact, we encourage it. The more approachable your writing is, the more people will enjoy reading it. People want to feel like they're doing business with real people, not robots.

So loosen up your writing. Throw in contractions. Get rid of the jargon. Make a pun or two. That's how real people talk — and that's what real people like to read.”

Not Having a Crazy Good Conclusion

Sometimes it’s easy to get so caught up in writing a post that time gets away and then there’s the final part – the conclusion. You’re first impulse may be to rush through the conclusion to get the entire post finished, but copyblogger says to avoid that. Rushing through the end is like reading the end of the book and what will the ending say about the post as a whole? Make it compelling and engaging so that if your readers skip to the end, they will want to come back and read the entire post and more!

“It’s an easy mistake to make.

You’ve poured all your energy into writing your post. Now you’ve gotten to the end, and you wiz through writing your conclusion so all is done.

But serving up an uninspiring conclusion is like presenting the cheapest supermarket ice-cream after a lavish home-cooked meal. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Don’t disappoint your readers with a bland conclusion. Try writing your conclusion first. Or write it the day after you’ve written your post.

Put all of your enthusiasm into a conclusion that inspires, motivates, and energizes your readers.”

Not Having a Strong Niche

Social Media Examiner mentions one of the biggest mistakes bloggers make is trying to be everybody when it’s more important to stay focused on a particular niche. Even though it may be tempting to wander away from the blog message at times, it's best to stick with what you’re trying to market. Settle on a compelling niche, and it’ll be easier to establish a persuasive blog and dedicated audience who knows what type of content to expect.

“The biggest mistake bloggers make is trying to be everything to everybody, or even three or four things to three or four different groups. You can’t overestimate the benefits of focus, and the more clearly and tightly defined your mission for blogging is, the more likely you are to develop a niche following that is equally as focused, passionate and valuable.

For instance, if a banking blogger is especially interested in lead generation for small business lending, he shouldn’t waste time and energy also trying to write about the mortgage market. Instead, he should focus that energy on niches and interesting topics within small business lending. How do loans differ for convenience stores versus restaurants? What are the different small business loan options for different businesses?

This doesn’t pigeonhole the blogger; it just means the wealth of topics is more specific, and ultimately more interesting and informative, to a smaller group of people.”

Not Spending Enough Time on Creative Posts

Copyblogger says it’s easy to get caught up in everything you should be doing right to make money on your blog, and we see their point. If you get too caught up on SEO, ads, and the like, a blog can become spammy and not truly engage an audience. Don’t get so focused on keywords that creativity gets left in the dust.

“Writing exclusively for Google will bore the boots off your readers. If you’re only writing for robots, then you might be wasting human time. Your readers aren’t interested in regurgitated keywords that exist for crawling robots.

Don’t allow Google to turn you into a keyword-processing machine. Don’t allow Google to kill your creativity.

Always write for your audience first, then optimize for search engines later.”

Not Promoting Blog Posts

Jeff Bullas reminds bloggers that it’s important to promote blog posts, and we have to agree. Promote current posts and past posts so that they’ll gain traction on social media and hopefully elsewhere too. Posting regularly on social media should improve a post’s reach, audience, and maybe even bring in some extra profit too!

“I have noticed there are a lot of bloggers that post and forget and that’s exactly what happens – they’re forgotten. If there is one thing you do and that is promote your posts on Twitter and not just once. A great post that has received great comments and traffic should be promoted constantly why should only 1,000 people hear about it, why not 10,000. also don’t forget to also automate the posting of your new blog posts into Facebook and LinkedIn after hitting the publish button.”

Not Having a Subscribe Feature

Do you have a way for readers to subscribe to your blog? If you don’t Jeff Bullas reminds bloggers that this is a big mistake that should be immediately rectified. To keep a subscriber base around they need to do just that, subscribe. Create an easy way for them to sign up and read blog posts on the go and hopefully this will help you achieve amazing results.

“Not implementing a subscribe feature on your blog from day one (both RSS and Email) – As your subscriber base grows alerting them by email or in their RSS feeders that you have just written a great new post is providing a base foundation of readers that visit your blog everyday.”

Sources: HubSpot, Start Blogging Online, Social Media Examiner, copyblogger, Jeff Bullas