Whether you have created a blog to share your personal story or support your small business you are in good company. According to Media Bistro, Americans spend 32 hours a month on the Internet. With such a huge number of potential readers, it’s important to make sure you avoid these critical mistakes and generate stellar content.
Five Mistakes to Avoid for Successful Blogging
Boring Content
Unless you are already a celebrity, chances are most people are not going to be interested in the mundane day-to-day events in your life. Rather than writing about what you had for breakfast, offering readers content that is useful, engaging and informative will keep them coming back and sharing your blog. Marketing Land notes that Facebook users alone “Like,” comment, and share more than 3.2 million posts every day — make your content worth sharing.
Poor Quality
When you just get started on a blog, the temptation is to start posting lots of articles to fill the site with content. However, quality writing should never be replaced with bulk quantity. Good articles take time and research, and readers can tell when an article is haphazardly written. The worst mistake you can make is writing just to garner search results. If your articles aren’t well-written, exciting or interesting, it won’t matter how many of them there are or how many keywords are jammed into each of them.
Infrequent Blogging
I suffer from this myself but the truth is, to be successful, consistency is key. A blog with infrequent updates will slowly slide off of search engine results and eventually become difficult for new readers to find. Traffic Generation Cafe reports that a blog that reaches a threshold of 21 to 54 posts can see an up to 30 percent spike in readership. When you first begin a blog, create several quality articles set them aside for the times in which you are unable to keep up with the demands of frequently updating your blog. By doing this, you ensure that even if you run into a severe case of writer’s block, your blog won’t suffer for it. Page downtime can be a killer, so find a reliable web host through a service such as WebHostingBlueBook.com so readers can rely on your page being there with fresh content.
Not Using Social Networks to Generate Traffic & New Readers to Your Site
Making your blog easy to find with a search engine isn’t the only way to help readers find you. Social media can help you reach new readers quickly. Social networks like, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter are four of the best networks to generate traffic to your site and spread the word and inform readers about new content on your blog. Relevant keywords can generate search engine results, but writing quality articles about subjects that interest people is equally effective. Use Google’s
Expecting Too Much
Blogging isn’t easy, and seeing results can take time. It may feel like you are writing for a non-existent audience for months, but give your blog time to flourish and spread before you call it quits. Building a readership for your writing is a rewarding experience, so don’t give up. I have seen blogs grow tremendously in six months. Quality, consistent blogging always pays off.
Image Credit: Photo used with permission via Flickr user Tillwe.
