5 Common Blogging Mistakes that You Can Fix

In this guest post, Sylvia explains several blogging mistakes we make along with advice on how to quick fix them.

Is the content marketing industry near its end? Not a chance!

In The State of Content Marketing 2018 report by Smart Insight, the signs of growth are pretty evident. When asked to choose the single marketing activity that would make the largest commercial impact in 2018, 20% of business owners chose content marketing. That answer was at the top of the list, followed by 14% of votes for big data, and 14% of votes for artificial intelligence and machine learning. Social media marketing got only 10% of the votes.

So content marketing still rules and there’s no question about it. Every single business needs a blog.

But blogs are already pretty common. We practically see them on most websites. Why aren’t they all successful? Well if you think that producing content is enough, you’re making one of the most common blogging mistakes. Speaking of blogging mistakes, we have that major one plus few others to list.

1. Assuming that Blog Posts Are Enough

You write content, so that should be enough, right? Wrong!

There are at least 8 important components of a content marketing strategy:

• High-level goals
• Brand story
• Audience Personas
• Competitive research
• Keyword focus
• Content objectives
• Promotion and distribution
• Measurement of key performance indicators

So no; starting a blog and publishing random content when you feel like it is not enough. You absolutely need a strategy if you want the blogging process to be effective.

2. You’re Too Serious (and it’s Causing Blogging Mistakes)

Have you ever read a blog post that sounded like an academic article? All those big words, endless paragraphs, quotations that you barely understand… Yeah; that style doesn’t work in blogging.

If you go through the most popular blogs, such as Wait But Why for example, you’ll notice that no matter how serious the topic is, the style is always light and there’s some humor involved. Even if you tackle a topic that wouldn’t stand humor, you could still keep the light tone.

This is the main rule of blogging to keep in mind:

The audience doesn’t have much time or energy to deal with content that’s hard to read. Don’t be formal. Just write as you speak.

Hopefully, you don’t address your friends on an academic tone. That could be both a real communication mistake and one of your blogging mistakes. Well, don’t blog like that, then!

3. Writing Whenever You Feel Like It

“I feel so inspired today. I’ll write a blog post. Two, even! Then I’ll take the month off blogging and wait for inspiration to strike me again.”

In an ideal world, that’s how blogging would work. You would write a blog post whenever you felt like it, and you’d just rest when you faced a writer’s blog.

But this is not an ideal world. You absolutely need a strategy, and that strategy involves a schedule. Consistent blogging is necessary for few reasons:

• It helps you develop a habit. When you simply wait for your muse to visit you, the blog will remain poor of content. If you create a schedule and start working on your blog every single day, the routine itself will keep you inspired.
• You get more traffic if you produce more content. It’s simple math: the more pages you have at your website, the more your audience can explore it. The more links you share on social media, the more people see them.
• Your audience develops a habit, too. If you tell them to expect three posts per week, they will get used to visiting your website on those days. If you fail their expectations, they will simply forget all about your great blog.

Consistency is challenging. It means working on the posts and their promotion every single day. If you’re willing to make that commitment, you’ll be successful. Even if you cannot find enough time, you can still make it happen. Just outsource part of your work to AUBestEssays or freelance writers/editors.

4. Going Free All the Way Can Be a Big Blogging Mistake

Yes; WordPress and Blogger allow you to start your free blog. Since you can avoid spending money, you decide that would be the best thing to do. You’ll just share your blogs on a free platform and you’ll share the links for free on social media.

Oh… sorry to break your bubble, but that won’t work.

If you want to optimize your blog for search engines, you’ll need to invest in reliable hosting. If you want to make it attractive to the audience, you’ll need a good responsive free or premium theme. If you want people on Facebook to see your posts, you need to start thinking about paid advertising.

5. Avoiding Long-Form Content

If you focused on long-form content, that would mean spending at least two days on a single blog post. You could compose several short articles instead. That would mean more pages at your website and greater frequency of publishing. But it would also be the wrong thing to do!

Almost everyone could compete with short articles. When you deliver something elaborate, detailed, and super-informative to your audience, you’ll have a competitive advantage.

Long-form posts rank higher in Google results. Take a moment to let that detail sink in.

So are you making any of these blogging mistakes? When you identify the mistake and fix it, you can expect great things to happen. Just keep listening to your audience and fixing the things that don’t work.

 

About Silvia

Silvia is a freelance writer and novice entrepreneur from Phoenix. In a free time, she travels and works in a field of psychology.