Writing a blog to increase sales has become a common content marketing strategy in today’s business world. But many businesses assume that writing a blog is easy. That assumption is quickly refuted when they dive into blogging — even determining the title of a blog post can be a challenge. So don’t be surprised if many new bloggers or amateur bloggers make big mistakes when blogging. Here are 7 of the biggest blogging mistakes you should always try to avoid:
A lack of consistency
One of the blogging mistakes that many beginner bloggers have is that they are inconsistent when writing blogs. They only write blogs based on mood, and when the desire to write is passionate.
Yet to reap the true benefits of a blog, consistency is critical for regularly updating content. Even if it’s not every day, it can be every week or every two weeks, but consistency is crucial.
If you’re more consistent in writing a blog — and your content is exceptional — the number of traffic and visitors to your blog increases, which is a huge SEO benefit in Google’s eyes. Even old posts, such as articles from last year can attract very high traffic. According to a chart released by HubSpot, about 90 percentage of blog visitors’ traffic comes from writing written a few months ago.
To overcome the problem of deviation, there are plenty of tips for better blogging consistency, one of which is to create strong habits. These habits can be started by making a special calendar about the schedule to publish content on your blog — and forcing yourself to stick to it.
Messy Content
Being a successful blogger is not just writing a blog and then publishing it. That doesn’t work. Interesting, useful, and captivating content is necessary so readers are happy and engaged with your blog.
Many novice bloggers make the mistake of blogging by writing messy, unstructured content. This is often a result of venting their current thoughts without analyzing and auditing whether their content is engaging enough to attract a reader’s undivided attention, and will return for more content in the future.
Coschedule said that there are 9 types of blog posts that can increase visitor traffic. One way is to write in the form of a very long list.
If you have trouble writing systematic and uncluttered blog articles, then you can take advantage of the services of freelancers and professional copywriters.
Boring Titles
It is undeniable, we only have 8.25 seconds to be able to attract the attention of readers. In such a short time the reader decides whether or not they have any interest in your content. One of the most obvious first-encounters with your content is through the title of the article. When the title looks boring, doesn’t indicate any value, or doesn’t incite emotion, your clicks and readership will suffer. Therefore avoid blogging mistakes caused by boring titles (and test a few to find out what works best with your audience!).
According to Buzzsumo, there are five basic elements that can be applied by novice bloggers when determining the title :
In addition to using BuzzSumo’s five elements, you can also add something that catches the readers’ attention, such as the use of numbers or superlative words like “the most amazing, the most inspiring, the easiest, cheapest, etc.”
Ignoring the Visual Aspects
If your blog doesn’t have sufficient visual content, it’s time to add some.
Humans more easily absorb visual content than written content. Even the brain’s speed in absorbing visual appearance reaches 60,000x faster than writing.
To create visual content now is not difficult. You can use several image editor applications such as Canva, or hire through Fiverr, but ensure the harmony between image content and writing is strong.
Topics Are Too General
When novice bloggers begin blogging for the first time, usually they discuss topics that are too general or have too broad a scope. This can include things like:
- What is social media?
- How to get rich easily!
- Tips for starting a business
From the three titles above, it is certain that the topic is too general and will raise several other questions. Blogging mistakes like this should be avoided by creating more actionable specifics to content.
Lack of Content Promotion
Writing a blog with interesting content doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have a plan or a means to promote your content. Many internet marketing experts advise beginner bloggers to create a plan to promote their blogs even before writing. Derek Halpern argues that the 80/20 system is very good for increasing the number of blog visitors, where 80% of the time is spent on promotion and 20% of the time in writing interesting and engaging content.
One easy way to promote a blog is to utilize Cross-Channel and Multi-Format marketing. This can be achieved by combining search, email and social media as promotional outlets for your blog’s latest posts.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism in the blog world will only degrade SEO’s reputation in Google’s system and is probably the worst thing you can do as a blogger. Unfortunately, there are many beginner bloggers who take the easy way by copying people’s writing directly into their blogs — without even editing a thing.
If the owner of the article knows about it and you don’t give credit at all, then you could also have a legal case on your hands. But if you want to publish other people’s writing on your blog, then you should add credit and also pay attention to how to quote the correct article correctly.
Regardless of whether you’re a beginner or expert blogger, if you ever find yourself making one of the blogging mistakes as above, it’s very important to fix it as soon as possible.