5 Common Blogging Mistakes (And How To Fix Them)
Every business, organization and your Great Aunt Sue has a blog. It is one of the most popular and effective strategies for businesses to achieve their digital marketing goals, as well as a fun hobby and side business for many people.
Every business, organization and your Great Aunt Sue has a blog. It is one of the most popular and effective strategies for businesses to achieve their digital marketing goals, as well as a fun hobby and side business for many people. Even the most niche topics or interests have a fleet of bloggers informing and entertaining the audiences interested in those subjects.
That also means that every blog has competition. If you're starting a blog for your business, this competition can get in the way of reaching those aforementioned marketing goals.
One way to better guarantee that your blogging efforts stand out from the crowd is to avoid the common pitfalls that many blog owners make (and your competitors may be making, too).
For example, if you are selling something then blogging should contain best, how to, best smartwatches, best gadget spinner etc.
This discussion will look at 5 of the most common and biggest blogging mistakes you can make and what to do to avoid them.1.) Not Planning Your Posting
Whether you're blogging for fun or for business, you need to have a plan. This plan will ensure your blog stays organized, as well as remaining on topic and maintaining an active and consistent posting schedule. Sometimes, it's harder to revive an inactive blog than it is to start a completely new one.
Essentially, every post you make should have a clear answer for who, what, where, when and why.
Who — Who will make the post? This is more applicable for businesses where multiple team members may be contributing to the blog.
What — What is the topic or subject of the post?
Why — Why are you creating this post? What's the purpose of the post? Examples include: indirect sales, customer support, SEO purposes and many more.
Where — Where will the blog post appear? On your blog? A friend's page? Your social media account? Your blog post may appear in multiple places.
When — When will the content be created? And, when will it be published? It's important to keep these dates separate from one another in case production gets delayed.
How To Fix
Fixing a lack of planning is very simple. You need to create an editorial calendar. You can make this any number of ways, from a simple word or excel file to a physical calendar in your workspace. The calendar will lay out all of these who-what-why-etc. details in an easy-to-read format. You know exactly what's happening with your blog on any given day, why and by whom.
2.) Not Blogging With A Purpose
The 'Why' section of your plan or editorial calendar is one of the most crucial parts and also the most commonly neglected. The majority of blogs, branded or otherwise, create content for the sake of blogging. In other words, blog owners know that content is crucial and offers valuable benefits. But, that's where their answer to "Why" stops.
Great bloggers not only answer this overarching "Why" for starting their blog, but also for every post they make on the page. If you want your blogging and content marketing efforts to produce strong returns, then you need to define what those desired returns are and how you can achieve them with individual posts.
There are several reasons or objectives behind a single blog post, such as:
● Direct or indirect sales
● Thought leadership
● Backlinking
● Customer service and support
● Branding and image
● Lead nurturing
● SEO
● PSA and news announcementHow To Fix
Every post should be written with a direct objective. Thus, be sure that you thoroughly completed the "Why" section in your editorial calendar. This will help each post stay on-task and reduce the risk of publishing content that doesn't add value to your business or blog.3.) Not Staying Relevant
Part of this crucial "Why" is ensuring that every blog post is relevant, to some degree, to audiences. If you aren't writing about topics and subjects that your audience cares about, then they will go elsewhere to consume content that is pertinent to them.
Relevance in blogging is achieved through keyword and topic research. There's an ocean of data available regarding what people want to learn about your business, products and industry. You don't want to guess what audiences want to hear about. Instead, you want to know.How To Fix
Invest in a keyword and topic research tool. Google Keyword Planner is a popular and free option. That said, if you want additional data, you may have to pay for a more sophisticated tool with deeper topic insights. Once you know what people want, your posts will always be relevant to the current inquiries of your audience. 4.) Not Paying Attention To Engagement
Once you've published your post, the real excitement happens. Your view counters start to climb and you receive comments, links, shares and other key engagement metrics. It's important that you monitor these numbers because they will share key insights into how to make your blog better.
For example, if posts on a certain topic routinely see high views, then you know it is a very relevant topic that you should explore further. Or, you may find a certain type of post does very well, like event announcements. It can be a clue that you need to focus on this content format more.
Most blogs pay attention to these numbers in the first few weeks after a post is published. The real mistake is when they don't pay attention after that initial time period. You never know who might mention or link to an older blog, which can cause a resurgence of views that you want to capitalize on.How To Fix
Create an alert system that will notify you of new engagements with your posts, as well as spikes in page traffic. This will ensure that you know what's going on with your latest and your oldest posts.5.) Not Recycling Posts
The final mistake can be a costly one because it means you're creating 100% new and fresh content every time. That doesn't sound like a bad thing, right? Well, it can be a time-consuming strategy. Sometimes, you need to repurpose your old content and give it a second life.
There are a few instances where this is important. If the title of this article was "5 Common Blogging Mistakes for 2020 (And How To Fix Them), then it would be old news by next year because no one is going to look for blogging mistakes from the previous year.
However, the content hasn't really changed and people, despite the best efforts of this post, will still be making these mistakes next year. Rather than creating an entirely new article, a lot of time can be saved by simply updating this article with any new information.
Repurposing is also useful for those posts that just didn't receive the number of views or engagement that you would have hoped. Maybe they simply came at a bad time. By reposting, you may gain the interest that you knew the post deserved.How To Fix
You should get in the habit of combing through your posting archives and looking for assets that can potentially be recycled. If you update the information or approach the subject from a new angle, people won't mind the re-post.Conclusions
Blogging can be extremely fun and beneficial for your business. However, mistakes like the 5 listed above can get in the way of seizing all that blogging has to offer. You need to start with a plan to ensure that your posts have a purpose and stay relevant. And, don't forget to think about what happens to your posts after they are published!
