BLOGGING MISTAKES MOST BEGINNERS MAKE

Did you know blogging is one of the best ways to drive traffic and grow your customer base? Blogs provide valuable information about your product/service and build your brand, ultimately establishing you as an industry expert. However, most businesses do not invest the time and effort required for blogging. The reason? 1) It’s time-consuming. 2) It demands good writing skills. 3) You don’t get immediate results, and the list goes on. While these might be partially true, the benefits outweigh the minor inconveniences or troubles one has to go through while creating blogs. 

The primary purpose of blogs is to educate your audience, improve search engine ranking (this is THE MOST IMPORTANT REASON), and develop credibility. 

A blog increases your chances of ranking higher in search by 434%. (Source: Optinmonster)

A well-written blog can build a stellar reputation and create loyal customers by addressing customer pain points in ways that no other digital marketing method can. However, businesses often fail to drive results despite investing in blogging due to rookie mistakes. Such errors stop blogs from finding the right audience, causing businesses to ditch blogging altogether. 

This article lists the 10 mistakes stopping your blogs from bringing traffic to your site. Let’s go over them one by one. 

Blogging mistakes you need to steer clear of

Once you start creating blogs, you will encounter numerous challenges - from selecting the right topic to structuring the content properly to posting consistently. It’s natural to feel overwhelmed and commit a few errors due to a lack of experience. However, you don’t have to necessarily commit a mistake to learn the right way of doing it. I will help you prevent those mistakes and create perfect blogs without wasting your precious time in experimentation. Let’s get going!

1. Plagiarism

You read your competitors’ blogs and want to write something similar for your brand. You get a little too inspired, and now it’s hard to differentiate between you and your competitors. This is how you fall into the trap of plagiarism. Plagiarism means copied content. Copying content from other websites and publishing it as your own will have negative repercussions for your brand. Google could penalise your website and all your efforts will go down the drain, not to mention the impact on your hard-built reputation. It’s a good idea to invest in plagiarism-checking tools like Copyscape to ensure your content is 100% original. 

2. Not including stats to back up your claims

Let’s say you are a marketing agency. In that case, most of your blogs are likely to revolve around the importance of marketing. But you can’t establish its importance without including some data to back up your claims. 

Here are two statements. A. Articles with images get 94% more views compared to those with no visuals. B. Articles with images get more views. 

Which one seems more credible? 

Obviously, the first one. Including stats solidifies your claims and tells the audience that you have done your research right. 

3. Using stats/reports without giving credit

Let’s say you wrote a blog from scratch. But you want to include certain statistics or quotes from another source. The best way to include such information is to cite the source. You could link the content to the original source or simply mention the source without linking. This way, readers know the source of data, and you won’t face any legal consequences for not giving credit to the original owners. 

4. Ignoring SEO best practices

Blogs mostly gain traffic organically. This means your blog shows up in search results when potential customers insert relevant search queries. The whole point of writing blogs is to appear in search results when prospects are actively seeking information. This is why you need to incorporate search engine optimisation (SEO) best practices into your blogs. SEO is an extensive topic that needs to be discussed at length.

However, here are a few SEO tips to get you started if you are a novice:

1. Include relevant keywords in the blog

2. Optimize the title and subheadings 

3. Focus on user experience

4. Include images/videos in the blog

5. Add internal and external links

5. Inconsistent posting

You posted a blog today, and one or two months go by before you post another blog. This is a classic case of inconsistent posting. Your brand can create a loyal community only if you are consistent with your marketing efforts. 

Publish at least 4 blog posts a month (one post weekly) to keep your audience engaged. Create a schedule for publishing blog posts. For example, you can publish a blog every Tuesday and stick to the schedule strictly so you don’t disappoint loyal followers who actively look forward to your blogs. You can also create a buzz on social media channels during the days leading up to the publishing date to encourage the audience to read the blog and share it in their circle. 

6. Forgetting CTAs

What do you expect from your customers after they finish reading a blog? Just forget about it and move on? Of course, not. 

Include a strong call to action (CTA) at the end of the blog to gain some tangible results from your blog. Here are a few examples of CTAs that you could incorporate, depending on your product/service and target audience relevance:

1. Explore our products

2. Book a demo

3. Start a free trial

4. Download now

5. Subscribe to our newsletter

6. Partner with us. Send a message now!

This is a simple yet powerful way to nudge the prospects into taking a desirable action. 

7. Poor editing and proofreading 

Never publish the first draft without thorough editing and proofreading. Your first draft is likely to have errors and oversights. A blog riddled with errors will directly hit your reputation. 

“A brand that doesn’t have time to check its content certainly is not capable of serving its customers well” - this is the first thought that comes to a prospect’s mind when they stumble across a poorly written blog. 

Write the blog, revisit it after a day or two, edit unnecessary information, refine it, avoid grammatical and spelling errors (use tools like Grammarly) and cross-verify all the facts and stats before you hit ‘publish’. 

8. Not updating your content

Blogging requires ongoing efforts. Your job isn’t over after hitting the publish button. Stats may become outdated, and you may need to relook at some of the facts/features mentioned in the article. 

For example, if you have written an article about social media channels, it’s recommended to revisit the article and make necessary changes if there have been new updates on social media after the article was published. 

9. Only focusing on self-promotion

When a prospect clicks on your blog, they most likely want to learn something new and stay informed about trends and events. So if you are planning to blow your own trumpet, a blog isn’t the best place to do it. Choose topics relevant to your industry, but do not indulge too much in self-promotion. 

If you are a spice manufacturing company, you could write informative blogs on the health benefits of spices, recipes that make the best use of spices, etc and subtly insert your product information into the blog. This way, your target audience has the opportunity to gain valuable information without compromising on the user experience. 

10. Ignoring analytics

This is a common mistake most brands or individuals make at the initial stages of blogging. Tracking KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) like overall visits, traffic sources, and conversion rate is crucial to know whether your blogging efforts are driving results. Follow up on your blogs to check what is performing well and what areas require improvement. Google Analytics, Semrush, and HubSpot are a few analytics tools that will help you track the progress of your blogs. 

In a nutshell

According to Semrush, 9 out of 10 marketers use blogging to attain their content goals. 

This statistic alone is enough to understand the importance of blogging in today’s competitive digital landscape. The benefits of blogging extend beyond providing value to customers. Search engine algorithms favour sites that frequently publish high-quality blogs, thus positioning your brand as a thought leader in the industry. 

Perfecting the art of blogging will help you find success sooner than your competitors. 

Let’s quickly recap the rookie blogging mistakes discussed in the article to refresh your memory:

1. Writing plagiarised content

2. Using information without giving credit

3. Not including any stats 

4. Neglecting SEO

5. Posting without consistency

6. Not including Call to Action

7. Publishing without editing

8. Never revisiting old content to make updates

9. Focusing only on self-promotion

10. Not tracking progress 

Bonus tip

If you made it till here, here is a bonus tip. Keep the comment section open for your blogs. Let people express their opinions. This is a great way to build engagement and know what your target audience thinks of your content. You will get first-hand feedback that will guide your blogging efforts in the future. 

If done right, blogging adds immense value to your marketing efforts. It is a great way to gain your customers’ trust and gives a cue to search engines that your brand is active, reliable and trustworthy. 

Have a brand waiting to unleash its potential? Let’s collaborate to bring your vision to life! 

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