Blogging is a fantastic way to grow a following online, market an existing business, or just get your thoughts out to an audience. There’s a lot that goes into creating a blog, so today I wanted to touch on a few blogging mistakes I’ve noticed that many beginners makes. These are things I’ve seen plague other bloggers do, as well as a few that I have unknowingly done myself. If any of these sound like habits of yours, then it’s time to break them, they’re only holding you back.
Not Tracking Results
That which is measured grows, so if you want your blog to grow you need to be tracking key stats. Traffic is probably the most universal metric to track, but there are countless other numbers that are valuable to track. Things like sales, search rankings, and email signups are a couple popular ones that might be relevant to you.
Taking it a step further, you should also be looking to spend some time evaluating those metrics. I like to sit down once a week and look over all my stats and make sure they’re moving in a direction I’m happy with. You don’t have to spend a lot of time doing this, but you should be keeping track of key metrics and how they match up with your goals.
Not Following Best Practices For SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Another bad habit to avoid falling into is not following best practices for SEO when writing your articles. While you certainly want to be writing for your audience, keeping SEO in mind can be just as important. Especially for newer blogs, having well-optimized content can be the difference between getting 0 traffic and actually having readers.
There are a ton of great tools out there for SEO, but keeping it simple is best for those who are just getting into blogging. For WordPress users, plugins like Yoast are easy ways to make sure you’re following the best practices. There are hundreds of tools out there that can help you ensure your content is following the best practices.
You don’t have to be an expert in SEO or spend tons on fancy software to see the benefits. Simply running your content through an SEO checker is often enough to give you a solid base. There’s always time to improve and bring in fancy tools later when you’ve established yourself.
You Only Focus On One Type Of Content
A big trend over the last few years has been to expand to different types of content. Articles are great, but branching out to things like images and video can give you a large boost and bring in new followers.
It can be a bit intimidating, but creating different content types doesn’t have to be hard. Tools like Canva allow anyone to create visual content that looks great. This can be a fairly low-effort way to begin branching out your content creation channels.
This doesn’t mean you can’t be successful with only the written word, you certainly can be. But, getting creative and expanding your reach is always a good way to find a larger audience. It's also a great way to supplment your written content and make it even better.
You Don’t Promote Your Content
What good is your article if no one ever reads it? If all you’re doing is writing your article and throwing it up on your blog you’re leaving a lot up to chance. A little promotion can go a long way in establishing your blog.
There are a million and one ways to market your content, and it would take a dozen articles to even attempt to cover them. The quickest advice is to go where your audience is and leverage social media. Sites like Instagram or Twitter are fairly easy to get setup on, and can help you to start building your audience and marketing your content.
Promotion is not a one-and-done thing either, but an on-going, long-term task. Each piece of new content should be going through your promotion pipeline to help inform as many people as possible about your newly released content.
You’re Not Being Consistent
Lastly, too many bloggers are inconsistent. Having a posting schedule and sticking to it is key, and it’s something I believe every blogger should be doing.
There’s not much to say here, but my advice is to realistically figure out how much time you can devote to creating content and stick to it. If you can do an article per day that’s great. If it’s one per week that’s fine, just don’t get lazy and skip a week.
One last tip: never sacrifice quality just to get something out the door. It’s far better to delay an article by a day or two than to publish half-baked garbage. There’s far too much junk on the web already, don’t add to it and you’ll have much better long-term success.
Blogging Mistakes
The above 5 blogging mistakes are ones that afflict many new and veteran bloggers, but there are certainly more than just these 5. Did we miss one that you think is important? Let us know what types of bad habits you’ve encountered in your blogging journey and what you’ve done to break them.