Making blogging mistakes is inevitable for us, humans, especially when we venture into something new. Mistakes are also the best possible way through which we learn. However, it doesn’t has to be your own mistake to learn something. You can explore new ideas and learn what you ought not to do, through the mistakes made by others.
Here, we are bringing you a list of the mistakes made by the beginner bloggers, read it, learn from it and avoid repeating it.
Mistakes are bound to happen by every new blogger, and if you have also committed any of the below-mentioned mistakes, do not worry. We are also giving you tips on how to correct them and hence making it easy to avoid the roadblocks that can hinder your growth.
Also see:
- What Is Blogging? A Quick Guide
- How To Start A Blog – Blogging Guide For Beginners
- What You Should Post In Your First Blog? – A Quick Guideline
Not Building An Email List
An email ensures that the blogger have a steady flow of visitors as soon as they publish a new blog. Building an email list should be the top-most priority of every blogger. When you have blogged for long enough, you will notice that the number of your email subscribers are directly promotional to the income you receive through blogging.
You can even segment the visitors of your email list and send them targeted emails or drip campaigns. It is a good way to successfully make sales if you are planning to create or launch your own products.
Building an email ensures enlarging your customer base, which in return makes your website Google Proof. Regularly emailing your readers about your blog helps you to have a good number of visitors on your blog.
But, many of you would wonder how to build an email list? Let me help you with this.
- There are several email service providers in the market. The most popular ones are ConvertKit, Aweber, GetResponse and several more. Sign up with any of the service provider, integrate the feature that they provide into your blog design and start collecting emails.
- There is one thing that you need to give special focus to- testing and measuring from which areas your visitors are subscribing more.
- Then, segment your visitors and send them targeted emails. Through the help of your email service-provider you can keep a track on the stats like open rates, click through rates etc.
- There are several email marketing techniques that can be applied to improve your visitors’ number and hence your income.
Not Building A Relationship With Your Readers
Do you want to become a successful blogger? Who doesn’t? But, do you know one basic quality that every successful blogger maintains? It’s the creation of a long-lasting relationship with their readers.
Many newbies wonder, why and how big names of the industry manages to get so many comments on their blogs as soon as they publish something new. The answer does not lie in the greatness of their writing or the details they provide, the answer is because the readers know the writers.
There are many great benefits that you can reap once you build great and distinctive relationship with your readers.
- You develop a loyal base of followers.
- You get to make friends for life.
- It ensures that you blog is trustworthy to the first-time visitors.
- Trust is there, thus selling any product becomes easier for you.
- The comments section of your blog will be engaging, which will increase the traffic to your site.
How to build a strong relationship with your readers?
- Write in a conversational tone- Nobody is interested in reading a blog post which is formal, boring and full of jargons. Use conversational tone and half of your battle is won here.
- Learn the art of storytelling- If you want to blog successfully you have to learn the art of storytelling. The best marketers are the best storytellers. Start practicing the storytelling skills and if you want to excel in it signup for any copywriting courses or read some good books on the same.
Encourage Users To Comment And Respond To Them
You should always encourage your readers to leave comments. This enhances the reach of the blog and also clears an air around it.
Responding to the valuable comments that you receive also encourages your readers to share their view-points. Always encourage and be friendly in responding to their comments.
With proper and regular comments and response, even the new visitors of your blog will feel fresh and lively and would not hesitate in joining your engaging community.
How to fix the problem of low engagement/comments on your blog?
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- Make it easy for readers to comment.
- Ask questions in your posts and emails.
- Respond to comments on you blog.
Not Selling From Day 1
You might be blogging for an ad income or to establish yourself as personal brand, affiliate or any other reason, but you have to sell.
By selling, I do not mean pushing a product on the reader’s face, it simply means gentle reminder that you have something to sell.
Even if you have engaging contents and your readers and visitors love you, but you cannot make money if you don’t make a sale. Keep reminding yourself that this is a business and business makes sales and profit, and the process begins from the first day itself.
What benefits you can yield if you plan to sell from day 1?
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- You will know very well which forms of monetization works best for your blog.
- You will understand your readers better through the analytics of various posts.
- You get experienced through day 1 selling.
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- It boosts your confidence.
- It sets an expectations from your readers. If you have ads or products to sell on your blog for too long, your readers will become used to it.
What you need to do to sell from Day 1?
- Add excellent value to your products, if you have anything to sell.
- In case you plan to add an advertisement then put it up quickly, so that your readers can get used to it.
- Set up affiliate links and disclaimers as necessary.
- Add relevant and specific call to actions for your products.
- Email your subscribers about your products and make them aware of it.
Not Diversifying The Income/Traffic Source
If you really want to excel in blogging and successfully monetize your blog, then do not limit your source of income. You must always focus on trying out various ways to diversify your income and traffic source. It can be done through several ways like, affiliate marketing, advertisement income, consulting, selling your products and other sources, it can also be a mix of few sources.
Diversifying your income gives you many advantages:,/span>
- Through, trying out various monetization techniques, you will get to know which one is working best for you.
- If you are a newbie, then this is a great help to earn good amount of money.
- It teaches you everything about monetization through different techniques, you can use this information in your future blog or for consultation.
- It protects you from any adverse situations. If any one of your source of income goes down, you will have others to sail you through the waves.
Every blog have different users, and readers. With the use of different monetization techniques, you will ensure that all your reader gains value, while you can enjoy your income too. Diversifying your income also protects you from the wrath of Google.
Not Choosing A Good Design
“First impression is the last impression.”
But, you only get one chance to establish the first impression. So, for every bloggers, the first impression is the design of their blogs. Choosing a visually-impressive design is important while the functioning design should also be kept in mind.
Functionality and beauty of the design of a blog should be presented in a way that everything is placed excellently in the blog. You can take care of the design through the following ways:
- Choose a readable font- There are thousands of fonts available, so you ought to choose the good font, which is readable by the readers. You can also keep different fonts for the headings and the body of the content.
- Choosing a good look for your blog- Good look for your blog means selecting the right kind of design for your blog. The design of the blog will help you to attract the readers, and hence will increase the traffic.
- Managing your ads/pop-ups- You might feel tempted to fill your blog with ads for gaining more income. But, this can be harmful. If your blog is filled with ads or pop-ups, then it will annoy the readers, and they might not even come back. Keep your ads minimal, so there will be less distraction for your readers.
Not Creating Visual Content
You can keep your reader’s engaging through excellent visual content. It will help the readers to spend more time on your website, and even share it more. An image can speak a thousand words, so why spend your space through words? Fill it with images.
According to studies, an average person will digest information a 100 times faster than the text. It is for this reason that the info-graphics has become so popular, in the modern times.
Create visual content through the following ways:
- Hire a designer.
- Use designing tool.
- Learn to design your website.
Not Making A Fast Website
This is the most important thing that you need to know. If your website loading speed is low, then it will harm the SEO of the site and will also affect the user-experience. In this fast-paced life, people have no time to wait for your website to load, if the loading time exceeds, they will simply move to your competitor. Hence, you should ensure that the website is fast and quick.
How can you manage to have a fast website?
- Select a good host
- Choose a good CMS
- Optimize the database of your WordPress
- Using Caching plugin
- Improve Your Images
Not Doing Any Testing
Measuring and testing are part of any progressive website. If you cannot measure something, then you can definitely not do anything for improving it. Being a good and successful blogger, you should test everything. Starting from the content length, writing style to the ad placements, multiple affiliate programs and others.
If you think you cannot test everything that is available on your website, then you can test the following:
- CTA
- Advertisements
Not Approaching Advertisers Yourself
If you are a newbie in the blogging world, then you would find it difficult for you to open your AdSense account, place ads and experience a regular flow of revenue.
If you have a niche-focused blog, then you should approach the advertisers yourself. If you are afraid of it, then you should know that all the worst that can happen is that you may be turned down by the advertisers.
How can you start approaching the advertisers?
- By setting up and advertising page on your blog.
- By contacting advertisers.
Not Promoting Your Blog
You should always be sure that you spend quality time in promoting your blog. This is the secret that every successful bloggers follow.
You should plan and spend as much time promoting your content as you do while creating and drafting it. Without great promotions, no-one is going to read your blog and it will stay mediocre. But, with promotion you can ensure excellent traffic and great readerships.
How Can You Start Promoting You Blog?
- Get Social
- Engage With Other Successful People In Your Blog Niche
- Find Out Where Your Target Audience Asks Questions And Answer Them
- Not Adding Value To Your Reader’s Lives
If you are not adding value to your reader’s lives, then you are not making any kind of progress. Adding value need not be something knowledgeable or making them learn. It can be anything, it can mean to give them a good time, add a new perspective, and make them aware of something and it can be anything else.
Not Doing Keyword Research
Keyword research is simply the process of searching the right kind of words that can attract traffic, leads and sales to your website or content from the search engines. The bloggers, newbie or successful, sometimes fail to get more search traffic because of the failure of using the right kind of keywords and the keyword research.
The essential tools that you can use for keyword research and gain benefit from the same are:
- SEMrush
- KWFinder
- Ahrefs
- Ubersuggest
Building a successful blog takes time, but you can definitely make your way towards it, by avoiding the most common mistakes, which others generally do.
So, what blogging mistakes are you making? Or you have made in the past? Let us know about what your blogging mistakes and experiences!
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