Are these blogging mistakes dooming your efforts from the start?
Most businesses have heard the buzz generated about the benefits of blogging. While blogging can be an immense help to finding new customers and generating new business, there needs to be a strategy in place.
It’s imperative to understand what success looks like. This may seem funny, but there are a lot of gray areas. For instance, how quickly are you expecting to see a traffic bump? With blogging, it can take awhile to grow a steady stream of traffic to your website.
Avoiding these blogging mistakes can help you maximize your writing efforts, and connect with your audience. No one wants to be leaving money on the table.
5 Common Blogging Mistakes to Avoid:
Your writing is too stiff – The purpose of your blog is to inform and to entertain. You want your reader to find value and take action. You want your reader to like you and trust you.
Stale writing void of any personality will fall short of that goal. It won’t do much to set you apart from the competition online, and it’ll be tougher to build your community that way.
The alternative is to liven it up. Throw some personal detail in every once in awhile. This will serve as an icebreaker with new clients and customers down the road. Write how you talk. Your writing can be informal and conversational, while still being professional. Picture yourself at coffee with your ideal customer, and write how you’d talk to him.
There’s not enough value – Businesses still err on the side of not giving information away, which can be a mistake. The problem with that approach is that what you deem worth charging for, the guy with the next search result is giving away for free.
Just because you show people how to do something on their own, doesn’t mean they won’t want to hire someone to take care of it for them. Believe me, if I found a post about how to fix a leaky sink, you better be sure I’m calling the author before I pick up a wrench.
Go ahead. Tell people how to do something related to your business. Give away trade secrets and make it as easy for them as possible. It does more to establish you as the expert than threaten your business.
You’re done when the writing is done – This is one of the most common writing mistakes to avoid. Once you’ve written your 500 words and copy it into WordPress, you still need to load up an image. You should take 10-15 minutes to optimize your post for search.
Make sure that you’ve read your post, and read it again. Have someone else read it, or hire a copy editor – especially if it’s an important message. Spend some time making sure the headline is just right. That’s the single biggest factor in whether someone will read your post or not.
Make sure you are doing everything you can to promote your post as well. Publish links on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, Google Plus, and any other relevant source.
Your writing is not professional – With blogging, that “publish” button is always looming to the side of your post as you work. It’s tempting to hit it quickly and move on to the next thing. But hold on.
Your blog post can very be someone’s first exposure to your business. They may have discovered you through search or the social media channel that they discovered it on. Make sure it’s not riddled with spelling and grammar errors. Make sure the information in your post is factually accurate, and truly useful.
Give your readers the same professional courtesies you would give them if they were in your office sitting across from you.
Ignoring Your Marketing or Business Goals – Do you have a busy season? Do you have a product or service that you like to stress more in certain seasons? Make sure your blog is in tune with the cycles of your marketing and business plan. Make sure that your blog topics are truly beneficial to your business.
Let’s say you are the plumber in the above example writing about how to fix the leaky sink. The reader who finds that, and surrenders to call the plumber, would be an ideal customer.
The topics, and the problems you choose to solve on your blog should be addressed at your ideal customer.
Wrapping it up…
Are you doing everything you can to engage your readers and eliminate these kinds of common blogging mistakes? You don’t have to be a prolific writer to be successful with your business blog. But you do need to make a commitment to doing it well.
What do you think? Let me know in the comment section below.
Matt Brennan is a Chicago-area marketing copywriter and copy editor. He is also the author of Write Right – Sell Now.
