The Five Biggest Mistakes Bloggers Make

writing

Apr 8

You can’t blog anymore and stand out. Blogging is a mistake – that’s what people say. There are too many blogs out there. What? You think you’re going to make it big by blogging about your life? Don’t even try. Unfortunately, if you are listening to this kind of nonsense, then you are already making one of the five biggest mistakes that bloggers make.

Mistake Bloggers Make #1 – Listening to the Naysayers

In a world of proliferating content, there are plenty of new avenues to entertain, educate and inspire. If you are a good writer, understand digital marketing, and are willing to put in the hard work it takes to create a successful blog, then there’s no reason why you can’t. That’s why one of the five biggest mistakes bloggers make is listening to the naysayers and not giving it a go for themselves.

There is plenty of space out there for a good blog with enticing content.

Mistake #2 – Giving Up Too Soon

When we buy packages, we expect them to be delivered next day – two days tops. So when we write a blog post, share it to social media, get 10 views and then radio silence, we get frustrated and we give up. Sure, we might have the fortitude to keep it going for a month or two. We swear we are going to write a post once a week, and that will somehow turn into a successful blog.

A year later, our domain goes up for renewal, and we take a pass.

Here’s the problem though – creating a blog that generates interest, traffic, and eventually money takes time! There are those who seemingly make it over night. But those bloggers are incredibly rare. Even the creator of Art of Manliness, for example, had already created an entire other, and considerably less successful, blog before AOM became a thing.

Moral of the story

Give yourself time. Lots of time.

Mistake #3 – Ignoring SEO

My blog generates thousands and thousands of page views every month, and most of that is from SEO. I love SEO. It’s my best friend, and it’s the way most of my awesome readers learn about my website and eventually join the Joseph Writer Anderson family. If I had never bothered to learn to write for Google as well as my audience, I doubt any of this would have been possible.

Still, so many writers refuse to learn even just SEO best practices. “No way, bro. My work is too good to be bothered with keyword optimization” they say. “I’m creating art, not internet fodder”. True. You are creating art that nobody will ever read. Meanwhile, the guy or girl down the street with half the writing chops is making a killing cause they learned SEO and actually have readers.

Moral of the story:

Learn Search Engine Optimization

Mistake # 4 – Writing Only For SEO

Ultimately, it’s people that read your blog posts. Not just a robot crawling the endless depths of Google. Too many bloggers ignore the things that make great writing great – a compelling story, a consistent voice, and more. They litter their content with keywords, write clickbait titles, and ultimately add no value with their posts.

Those visitors they trick into stopping by won’t come back around, and their blog probably won’t last, either.

Moral of the story:

The best kind of blogging is written for the audience first, with Google in mind second.

Mistake Bloggers Make #5 – Never Trying Something New

Getting your blog out there in front of as many people as possible requires you to try new things! That blog post you wrote about dogs didn’t get views? Okay, maybe dog lovers aren’t really your audience, after all. That podcast you thought was awesome generated no interest? Okay, maybe direct your efforts elsewhere.

Good bloggers are constantly measuring, and constantly experimenting, until they find something that works. Then they exploit the heck out of it.

Moral of the story

The best bloggers are constant experimenters.

With hard work and determination, your blog can succeed. People want to hear what you have to say. Sometimes, you just need a little pep talk to get that content out of your mind and into the world.