Tripping Over Mistakes: Common Blogging No-Nos

This is a guest article by Riley. You too can be part of this great knowledge sharing community. Take a look at our guest blogging guidelines

It doesn’t really matter what your end game is with running a blog. You could be running it as a business and working with clients or just for your own personal amusement. The problem is that bloggers in both of these camps often make the same mistakes. You’re blogging because you’re trying to get peoples’ attention but if you’re making a lot of errors then it’s going to translate into poor readership and will affect your following. If you’re frustrated with your blog’s latest results try some of these steps before you give up.

Blogging Fails

Scan-Friendly:

It’s a fact that people spend far less time reading an article or post than if they were to actually take the time and understand what they’re viewing. About 16 percent of people are likely to read an entire post. This is why, if you want people to read your content, you have to be short and to the point with the most important sections in bold. People need to be able to scan through your content, other wise they get bored and give up. This is a sad fact but this is just the result of a mass media driven culture. We’re taught to consume on a massive scale and it translates into a very short attention span.

Making Posts Too Long:

Again, people don’t really like to read even if they try to tell you different. You need to keep your articles and posts under 800 words. Anything more and you’re just wasting your time. People want to be able to extract the key message by glancing through it. The more words you have in a post, the less likely it’s even getting read at all.

Updates:

You have to stay current. There’s nothing worse than a blog that’s been sitting idle. If a user comes back more than once or twice and they see the same content on the main page, you’ve likely just lost a follower. You have to remain active and that means using social media sources, emails, newsletters and the like to keep your followers aware of what you’re doing.

Asking For Help:

If you’re trying to do too much and your server just isn’t working, you might be in need to implement some decision analytics. Some professional help might be just what your blog needs to get it organized and help you better relate to your customers. You might’ve picked up a lot of bad habits in the way you run things that could be greatly affecting the streamlining of your process.

If you’re just writing posts and you’re not offering supporting media as a companion to your other work then you’re not going to get much attention. People like colorful sites with images in their posts. Sometimes, even when a blogger puts a picture in a post but the material does not support it. They have to relate to one another. You have to actively engage your viewers on many levels and that also means taking a multi media approach to everything that you’re doing.

These are just some of the tips that you can use to help improve your blogs viewership and following. If you think your issue is larger than this, consider getting some professional help or contacting a SEO company to help improve your online image. It will cost you but you have to ask yourself, how much is having a good blog worth?