I regularly come into contact with once promising, inspired writers laid to waste by the disappointment of their blogging reality versus what they’d envisioned. Inevitably, most of them make the same mistakes and fail, confused as to why their blog didn’t succeed.
- No clear content strategy for their blog. They know who they want to attract, but they don’t put enough thought into what their desired visitors will want to consume.
- Inconsistent writing. It doesn’t matter if you write the greatest post of your life, without regular content, your readers will forget about you. Google won’t see you either because a big part of SEO (showing up in a Google search) is based on regularly producing content for your site.
- Zero call to actions. You may produce awesome blog posts, videos, infographics etc., but if you don’t prompt your visitor to take the action you hope they take, what is the point? What do you want your reader to do once they finish your post?
- Misusing guest bloggers. I have worked with a lot of blogs who recruit guest bloggers to take some of the pressure to produce regular content off of themselves. Often this helps their traffic considerably – regular, excellent content has the tendency to do that. But what good is a site with 80,000 monthly visitors if you get nothing out of it? It isn’t any good, and this goes back to strategy. What do you want your blog to do for you?
- Lacking a rudimentary knowledge of SEO. I am not an SEO expert by any stretch of the imagination, but there are basic steps you can take to boost your post and make sure people find it when they’re looking for the information you’re providing. There are simple WordPress plugins and straightforward steps that so many bloggers don’t take.
- Not using social sharing to maximize exposure. If I told you how many times I helped a client with their blog only to discover that the developer didn’t even include social share buttons on it, you would be stunned. But gaining social shares doesn’t just happen by putting buttons on your blog. This is where putting in the work to build your own community on social media means the world of difference to the success of your blog. Where is your community? Do you help them so that they, in turn, want to help you?
I help people build blogs. That may mean developing a strategy, editing, SEO tactics, and even simply nagging them regularly to keep them on task. If you need help or want to suggest something I missed, I’d love to hear it in the comments or reach out to me in your preferred medium.
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