Blogging is a very good alternative in expressing ideas combined with pleasure and freedom. Though, blogging is not as easy as setting up or creating a Blogger or a WordPress account and pushing freedom content to the limits. We have noticed that many bloggers are unfortunately doing it the wrong way and are therefore wasting their time.
I asked for help to my few blogger friends in my hangout site (Bloggers.com) about their own experience in these “wrong-way” stuff and incorporate it with my own experience. Here are the top 10 lists of the Most Common Blogging Mistake I encountered as well as other fellow bloggers.
1 – Poor Content Quality
“Not so describing title for a article/blog post- title should be easy to read and gives a instant idea what the reader may find out within the article.” – Moonomo of moonomo.com
This is the number 1 issue with most blogs. The whole point of blogging is to deliver useful content that your visitors can share and link to. You miss out on the whole SEO/SMM value of the blog if your content is not worth reading or sharing.
Tip: Focus on quality, not quantity! Posting 1 quality blog post per week is much better than 5 average ones.
2 – Duplicate Content
“Echo-blogging – posting blogs about news, latest gossips, etc without even adding his/her personal views, review, etc. Failing to acknowledge sources or even link to relevant information when necessary.” – Neilyamit of Kartonista.com
“Not giving proper credit for sources (Image etc) or Hiding credit while it’s due.” – Moonomo of moonomo.com
A widespread disease! To discourage people from doing this, Google recently launched 2 major updates (Panda Update) that ultimately penalized all websites who plagiarize content. Let’s get one thing straight, if you find interesting content on another website that you believe your readers will benefit from, it is OKAY to copy parts of it, as long as you add a link to the source somewhere in the article.
3 – Lack of SMM Capabilities
You could have the highest quality content out there, people are most likely to “+Plus” or “Like” or ”Tweet” it if you give them an easy way to do it. Look at the Network side of this blog post for instance, we display a dynamic sharing bar (AddThis) that makes it easy for our visitors to share our content in one click. It can’t get any easier! Also, our posts are automatically shared on Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn through the use of some highly efficient Blogger.com widgets and apps. By having Social Media Marketing capabilities within your blog, you help your content spread and go hit and viral!
4 – Poor Formatting
“Mixing cAsE/using too much special characters in title/post. Having grammar and spell mistakes. Making words shorthanded and ruin English writings for example: i lyk d hell!” – Moonomo of moonomo.com
“Making it hard for someone to read, i.e. using all centred text, or not breaking into proper paragraphs.” – TropicalMum of tropicalmum.blogspot.com
“I think unnecessary fancy font and dark shade will be the one for that list… “ – Sunitagiri of IDareDream.blogspot.com
“Not consistent in choice of typeface for headings; sub headings and text. Poor knowledge of graphics/ layout/ structuring etc. “ – Thiruselvam k of ladbeaunews.blogspot.com
“I think it depends on the type of blog and the formality. Structure, punctuation, grammar and font are not as important as the context of the blog. When I first started writing I had a friend editing my blog and it took away from the rawness of my writing. “ – Gail of gailsforum.blogspot.com
“Poor Design, black backgrounds with red text are not fun to read.” – Special McSpecial of crippiescorner.blogspot.com
A lot of blogs out there are tough to read because of poor formatting and CSS styling. Make your blog content light and easy to read by splitting your content into short paragraphs. Add headers or sub-headers within your blog post. Add images or videos or quotes or colors! Make sure your font is clear and large enough to read. All these factors influence the interest of your readers.
5 – Inadequate Blogging or Post Updates declining
“Waiting several weeks in between posts, your readers will forget about you.” – Special McSpecial of crippiescorner.blogspot.com
This is quite a popular mistake. Posting once or twice a year simply doesn’t cut it. People get excited when they first launch their blog, but the excitement starts to gradually fade out and the blogging frequency starts to drop.
Note: Remember, it takes a couple months of blogging to start gaining a loyal audience. Don’t give up mid-way!
6 – Blogging too often
This is very similar to number 5 though We might look in depth. The other side of the coin! Blogging too often can make you look like a spammer.
Tip: Don’t flood your visitors/subscribers with content, make them look forward to your next post!
We’ve seen some small blogs update posts in up to 4 to 5 times a day! Now, that kind of blogging frequency is fine if you’re a major authority like Mashable, but when you’re starting out, keep your posting at 2 to 3 times a week at most.
Solution: If you have a lot to say, get on Twitter!
7 – Poor Headlines/Titles
Titles are the most important part of your blog. That is pretty much the only factor that determines whether people will click to read more or ignore your post. Make your titles short and sweet. Also, write them in a way that visitors will feel like the info they’re about to read is unique, up-to-date and cannot be found elsewhere.
8 – Neglecting Blog SEO
Blogging is a tremendous benefit to your overall SEO initiative. To get the full value from it, you should make sure your posts have: a descriptive, keyword-rich title, a permalink (also known as keyword-rich URL), section headers that are descriptive and utilize keywords specific to each section, “anchor” text should contains keywords relevant to what’s being linked to.
9 – Self-Promotional or “Love My Own” Blogging
“I don’t write or pretend to be perfect but my posts come from the heart and are intended to help, motivate and inspire others.” – Gail of gailsforum.blogspot.com
“Less interest about Socializing with fellow bloggers/readers. Or, Too much interest to get huge traffic/rank within short period of time by doing kind of spamming the internet for example: link dropping anywhere possible.” – Moonomo of moonomo.com
When you blog, you should focus on providing useful content to your visitors first, promoting your own services/products should come second. It is okay to add a link to your products and invite people to try out your latest service, but you must do it in a way that feels genuine to the reader. Talking about your products in every blog post is a good way to lose all your audience.
10 – Covering too many topics
If you want to establish yourself as an authority in your genre or industry, make you sure you’re blogging exclusively about that industry. It is okay to occasionally blog about an external news item or major event that is taking place in your city, but keep 90%+ of your posts on-topic and make sure you’re delivering useful info to your readers every time.
That’s all folks. Let’s make a Better Mistake tomorrow.
A great read, thanks for including me! I had forgotten about my pet peeve with black backgrounds, glad someone covered it here. 🙂
Hello… Thanks for dropping your comment here TropicalMum. I’m your one big follower. Congrats for having the top spot in Bloggers.com and your always welcome to suggest or share your wit thoughts here. I’ts Switzerland! 🙂
nice list jrplaza it’s really an in-depth analysis about blogging. Sometimes bloggers forgot that once they have been readers also and so they forgot what keeps them returning or avoiding to certain blogs. 🙂
Thanks Aj… I realize that there are things that is very important in blogging which usually done wrong. Things like this should be stopped and remedied before things go worst.
This post is awesome! I learned many things in this post! But what really make me smile is this part “Solution: If you have a lot to say, get on Twitter!” Hahaha. BTW this part is true. There are many blogger who keeps updating there post per day but lack of rich content (sometimes a pure graphics or just a video). What I do is “Unfollow”. Why? It is not comic book or youtube.
Glad to learn about this but I think not all of them are applicable for personal blogs or people who blogs just for fun though this is very useful for someone who’s opting for more traffic.
I agree with your last statement.. some things needs to be resolved before it get worse where repairing would be more difficult..
BTW, I recently added the followers widget on my blog.. I would appreciate if you can join..Thanks 🙂
Thanks for dropping by kristina. I’m one of your followers too. It really did feel better that someone really do enjoy my post. Thanks again.
We have the same cliche in mind my friend. I really like this post of mine too, it reminds me to where my goals and grounds are. Keep in the line my friend.
Great post and some very good tips. thanks.
I’d like to add one more – long wordy posts – you start to lose interest after a while. I have been guilty too of these but now I try to keep them as short as I can.
I will definitely recommend this to my fellow bloggers and freelancers… It’s good to know how to avoid them to be able to make your blog an authority site.