15 Deadly Blogging Mistakes And How to Fix Them
Yes, blogging can be a career/profession and a full-time job when done right from the beginning.
You can make money blogging as long as you avoid these common beginner blogging mistakes and pitfalls.
Therefore, ignoring these 15 blogging mistakes will increase your chances of giving up too early in your blogging journey.
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15 blogging mistakes you should avoid
1. Picking a too narrow or broad niche
A niche can represent your target audience, the subject of focus or the industry/market you are targeting.
For example, fitness, personal development, health, lifestyle and making money online are all niche markets.
This is one of the many dangerous blogging mistakes because a narrow niche will suffocate and discourage you since coming up with fresh and unique blogging ideas and content will be exhausting.
Also, your traffic will grow at snail speed in a narrow niche because it has few engaged target audience. As a blogger, you do not want less traffic and page views because the higher you have, the more chance of making a lot of money blogging.
On the other hand, you do not want a broad niche because it will be hard to find a focus and the right target audience.
Therefore, take time to choose the right blogging niche which is not too narrow or too broad.
Recommended reading: 3 quick hacks to finding your perfect niche
2. Not knowing your audience
Who are you writing for? What are their problems, needs, and wants? Where do they spend most of their time? What unique value do they receive from your competitors?
In summary, all the questions above answers who is your buyer persona or target audience.
Some bloggers make this deadly blogging mistakes when they start to write for themselves- what they feel, their desires, who they are etcetera.
If you want to grow an engaged fan base and customers, then always remember that your blog your needs and wants, but about the needs of your target audience.
You must solve a problem for them and provide unique value for them to buy from you and act as brand ambassadors.
Suggested reading: How to find your right target audience and unique selling proposition
3. Lack of consistency
Do you have a publishing or marketing schedule or do you perform such tasks when you feel like?
For example, a consistent blogger will publish at least 2-5 posts weekly and actively promote them across many platforms, such as Pinterest and Facebook daily.
Also, they will keep in touch with their audience through emails, responding to their comments, messages and any other channels of communication.
Are you such a blogger or are you the type that does it today and then gets lost a whole week, month or year and then gets back to it again?
Inconsistency is one those blogging mistakes you should avoid because it can quickly ruin your trust both to search engines and your target audience.
Therefore, to avoid this blogging mistake, you must have a weekly or monthly schedule to stay organized and track your wins and losses.
Recommended reading: A bloggers guide to blogging consistently
4. Writing boring, outdated or shallow content
Who wants to read shallow content which does not solve a problem or pass new knowledge?
More so, who wants to read audited facts or boring content, which does not meet their present needs?
The answer is no one!
Thus, before you begin wondering why no one is leaving comments, sharing or engaging with my blog posts, avoid this blogging mistake.
There are many strategies you can use come up with unique and attention-grabbing blogging ideas, so you have no excuse for making this blogging mistake.
Your content must be 10X better than that of your competitors if you want to stand out as a serious and professional blogger.
Suggested reading: 15 strategies you can use to come up with fresh and unique blog post ideas
5. Not engaging with your target audience
There are two ways you can commit this blogging mistake: ignoring your target audience and not encouraging them to engage with your blog content.
Ignoring your target audience means not being there to respond to their comments, emails, messages, mentions, follows, subscriptions, concerns, complains, recommendations and any other form of feedback or communication.
If you are doing that, you are sowing a seed of doubt in them, and this means that they will never buy from you or trust any recommendation you give them.
On the other hand, not encouraging engagement from your target audience means lacking channels for engagement on your blog and other platforms.
For example, not having a comment section on your blog posts, not having social media pages and profiles for your blog business and not collecting emails from your blog and many other blogging mistakes.
Recommended reading: 15 ways you can encourage engagement with your target audience on your blog.
6. Having wrong unrealistic expectations
For example, thinking that all your blog posts will go viral, imagining that you will make 6 figure income in the first months or you assume that your traffic will continue to increase all the time.
High and unrealistic expectations is a deadly blogging mistake because it can easily kill your morale and increase your chances of giving up.
Therefore, get real and accept that the journey of starting and building a blog is similar to that of other businesses with high and low moments.
Sometimes you will make losses and other time profits-what is most important is keep moving and winning is short-term goals.
7. Being like everyone else
You write the same content as they do, you have a similar blog design, you make the same mistakes they do, and your unique selling proposition is just a photocopy of theirs.
So if become a copycat, why will their target audience choose you over them? Of course, they will not, and you will become one of the many bloggers failed stories.
According to live internet stats, more than 2 million blog posts are published daily, too much competition and screaming noise right?
Unfortunately, if you do not offer something unique, you will get lost in the noise and become just a statistic.
8. Not promoting your blog
Have you heard of the 80/20 rule in content marketing which states that you should spend 20% of your time and energy producing content and 80% promoting it?
Yes, you may have fantastic blog posts and a unique writing style but if no one knows where they exist all that is in vain.
Therefore, not promoting your blog posts widely across multiple platforms, such as social media, forums, bookmarking sites and influencer outreach is one of those fatal blogging mistakes.
Identify the platforms that work best for bloggers or one where your audience spends the most time and master it.
For example, most bloggers including me will tell you that Pinterest is the best traffic driver for most of us. Therefore, if you are a new blogger looking for a recommendation, you can never go wrong with choosing Pinterest.
There are many resources out there you can use, such as this fantastic eBook Pinteresting strategies, which has helped me to double my Pinterest traffic in a few months.
Recommended reading: How to promote your blog in 8 ways
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9. Neglecting SEO best practices
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making your blog posts easily found and indexed by search engine crawlers through performing all on page and off page optimization practices.
Yes, it is true that SEO benefits take long (around 6 months plus) to mature for bloggers, but this is no excuse for not performing SEO from the beginning on a brand new blog.
Imagine going back after six months to optimize your old blog posts for SEO, why not start doing it right from the beginning?
This is one of those blogging mistakes you should avoid because you can miss out on search engine traffic for ignoring SEO altogether.
Suggested reading: How to optimize your blog posts for SEO
10. Using a wrong writing style
Does your writing style has some of these characteristics?
- You do not use subheadings
- You use long sentences and paragraphs
- No white space between your sentences and paragraphs
- Your copy is not clear and does not have logical thoughts.
- Your copy has many grammatical errors
- You’re too rigid or serious in your writing
- Do you use boring headlines
- Using hard to read fonts
- Using too many colors
- Using crappy photos
This is one of those blogging mistakes you should avoid because it puts off your readers.
11. Choosing the wrong blogging resources and tools
The good thing about the blogging market is that there are many free/paid blogging tools and resources out there that you can use.
The problem is that not all are right for your niche, target audience or blogging goal.
For example, not all web hosting company providers are right for bloggers. Most bloggers I included will advise you to use Siteground or Bigscoots when starting out. Check out my Sitegrond review here.
Similarly, one of the common blogging mistakes bloggers make is choosing a free theme instead of a premium one. Unlike a paid theme, a free theme is likely to have bugs because it does not have active support working hard to improve its functionality.
I use the Divi theme from Elegant themes, and you can read my full review on the 20 reasons why I love Divi WordPress theme by following that link.
Kadence, Generate Press & Trellis from Mediavine are the other options I highly recommend if you want a theme that is fast and passes Core Web Vitals.
In summary hosting service provider and blogging, theme is just two out of the many blogging resources you should choose right.
12. Not monetizing your blog well or early enough
Some bloggers wait until their blog gets traffic and engaged audience before they monetize it.
This is one of those blogging mistakes you should avoid because it’s like throwing money out of the window.
So will you go back to the old posts and begin monetizing them after you get the traffic? Is that not a waste of time?
In short, there is nothing wrong with putting in place money making opportunities on a new blog, such as adding affiliate links on every post.
Also, you should choose the right monetization methods which work best with your audience and blogging model to messing up with your reputation.
Recommended readings: Do bloggers make money or is it all bullshit? & 8 ways to make money from a blog.
13. Failure to network with other bloggers
Have you heard of this saying that walking alone is safe, but if you want to get to your destination faster and earlier you need to walk with others?
Not building a rapport and collaborative network with other bloggers is one of those blogging mistakes you should avoid.
If you keep in touch though commenting on and sharing their blogs posts or asking them questions, you will eventually win their hearts.
Once you win an experienced bloggers heart, you are one step away from success because they can recommend your posts to your writers and also share shortcuts and wins with you.
14. Not investing in yourself
Similar to a journalist, a blogger must stay updated and informed to remain relevant.
Therefore, you are making those big blogging mistakes if not investing in reading more books, enrolling in courses or attending conferences which will build you as a blogger.
All you need to do is get over these blogging fears and begin to invest in your success and personal development.
15. Not having a user-friendly blog
Your blog is your primary marketing tool, and it can break or make your success.
Here some of the blogging mistakes that are common in blogs which are not user-friendly;
- They load at a slow speed
- They are not mobile friendly
- They are hard to navigate
- Use too many colors, fonts, crappy photos and other putting off elements.
- It is not responsive on different devices
- It is not easy to find content in it
Blogging Mistakes Conclusion
There you go, it is over to you now!
Have you been making any of these blogging mistakes? If you are you should correct them because they can quickly ruin your blog and all the efforts you have invested.
Starting and growing your blog to a money making business is a process, which you must make the right decisions along the journey.
Feel free to leave a comment asking a question, sharing any mistake I might have left out or your own experience and better suggesting a piece of content you would like me to write about in the near future.
This blog post is very easy to study and understand. I would recommend anyone trying blogging as a career to check this out for guidance.
Thank you Catherine. Am glad it helped you.
Your post is really excellent with strategies that I am anxious to try. I haven’t started a blog yet, but I am in the early research stages. Skipping some of the hard-knocks lessons is really useful. Thank you!
Am glad it helped. I wish you all the best in your blogging Journey.