Blogging is an exciting business. There is always so much to do, plenty of things to work on and several ways to monetize your work.
The attraction of blogging as a career excites everyone and thus many new people gets caught in the fun. Those that are willing to add that extra mile do gets success eventually, but many fail in the process for several different reasons. The very fact that the process takes time to generate revenue can be a bad signal for those who wanted a quick dime.
It is always good to know the basic mistakes that most new bloggers make, that way one can avoid it and start off on the right foot.
1. Not Posting Enough: Most new bloggers don’t post enough and the reason is mostly their lack of ready content. It is always suggested that before starting a blog, one should create at least 10+ blog posts and have 50+ article titles ready. That way you will have your content queue ready. From here on, even if you write one or two articles a week, you will still have enough content to make sure that your blog does not runs dry.
Ideally, it is best that one should post at least 3 times a week to feed your audience consistently.
2. Promotions: Simply posting the content on your blog isn’t enough. The days are long gone when you would have written the content and people would have reached your site by themselves. Now, content isn’t enough as there’s plenty of content already. The difference is in the sharing, how you promote your content, makes it the king.
Make accounts on several social sites, join blogging communities, forums etc. and then share your content. If people comment or question on those forums, reply them and make a connection.
3. Not Commenting on Other Blogs: Blog commenting is still a major promotional channel available to all bloggers. This step is free, so any one can do it, yet this step is difficult so only few really hard working bloggers are able to make it.
Blog commenting can only truly work for you if you are ready to give in the effort. Try to make at least 20+ comments on relevant blogs every day. Repeat this process without fail every single day. Additionally, try to share other people’s posts on your social channels after you have posted your comment.
4. Email Subscription: Many bloggers skip this step because they either think that their blog is too new with too few visitors or they think that this process is too complicated. Email subscription setup is free and way too easy and even if only a few people are visiting your site daily, you can still end up getting a few subscribers every day.
There’s plenty of free email subscription services in the market, choose one that fits your needs. To configure it on your blog, look for free plugins that works with your subscription service.
5. Networking with other Bloggers: This is another very easy step that a lot of bloggers don’t follow. Simply commenting, sharing other bloggers content, linking them from your blog posts etc. are some of the easy ways by which you can network with other bloggers.
Some bloggers are more popular and they have a larger influencer. If you want to network with them then you have to work your way up to them before you can network further. The easiest way to go about this is to be regular in your comments and content sharing; sooner or later they will notice you.
6. Guest Blogging: Guest blogging too is a free content marketing tool by which you can promote your blog, make yourself an authority and let more people notice you and your content. This step is slightly difficult as the quality of your content needs to be good before you get an opportunity to post on good blogs. But the hard work that goes into guest blogging is worth it because there are too many benefits that come from guest posting.
This is the strongest form of networking that you can do with your fellow bloggers and if you are able to post on larger A-list blogs, then your networking opportunities with other popular bloggers rises as well.
7. Social Media: This is another thing that new bloggers fail to use. Social media is powerful, but your reach is only limited to the network that you have access to. If your friends and followers on a network are limited to a hundred people then that is the network reach you have. For new bloggers, it is important that you join most of the popular social networks and make a presence for yourself.
8. Slow Website: With every passing day, most people are getting used to quicker page loads, no buffering while playing 4k videos on their high end displays and so much so that slow internet is almost now a thing of the past. At a time like this if your blog takes a few seconds longer to load, will anyone wait for it to open?
The days are over when people had to wait for a page to load, so no point keeping a slow site in the fast moving world.
9. Too many Plugins: Plugins, especially on a wordpress system can be an addicting thing. There’s a plugin for anything you want. If you want a feature, a design change or just about anything – all you need to do is to install a new plugin for your specific need. This can be helpful to an extent but if you over do it, you will have an unstable system, a slow site and finally it will start showing errors.
10. Expecting Results too Soon: Blogging takes time to show results. SEO is a long term solution, quality link building takes time and networking with fellow bloggers and making an authority blog on your niche are all time taking processes.
Most new bloggers start with a grand vision and patience is never part of this vision. If the results don’t come fast, they move on to other things that promises better success.
Like anything in life, blogging too requires patience and consistency. It is a successful venture for those who are here for the long run. Content creation is a skill that will take time to learn and networking is a talent that comes with practice and hard work. There are bloggers who are successful but they have worked their way to get that success.