Whether you’re a seasoned blogger or a beginner, it is easy to fall into blogging pitfalls. These pitfalls impede your ability to see the results you want. If your blog isn’t the success you hoped it would be, maybe you have fallen into one of these blogging mistakes:
1. Are you committed to the process?
Consistency is key to a successful long-term blog. If you promise your audience two blogs a week, you must deliver on time.
Establish a process around creating your blog. Identify responsible parties and enforce strict deadlines so you can deliver the content you’ve promised to your readers. Help your bloggers with tips or training to make it easier for them to deliver.
Consider outlining a content workflow schedule to keep your content creation on track. Developing a content workflow will convey the progression of tasks across the parties involved and the timeframe. Leaving the process undefined opens up the possibility of work getting put on the back burner by team members who are unsure of their responsibilities and how much time may be required to complete content in order to meet the final deadline. 1
2. Too product or company focused
Your blog is not meant to be a sales pitch. Too often, blogs can become self-serving content, focusing on yourself and the product you sell.
The content you write should be audience-focused – what is it they want to know and what useful and educative information can you provide to answer their questions? Your blog needs to build trust before it can pitch a sale.
Get to know your audience. Decide what topics are most important to them and what questions they want answered. Take the next step in designing an editorial calendar around delivering this information.
This is a great opportunity to develop thought-leadership pieces. Educate your audience and speak to their pain-points. They will come to you as a subject matter expert, with a relationship already established.
3. Missing opportunities to promote your content
Guilty as charged. We’ve all been there. You write a great blog but you don’t give it the justice it deserves by sharing on your social channels and with your email lists.
It can be difficult to get above the noise, so in addition to be keyword optimized for organic search, self-promotion is necessary. Best practice would be to incorporate a social promotion plan for your blog post as you’re defining your content workflow. Your audience will be pleased that the content they were looking for found them.
What do you think are some of your biggest blogging mistakes? Share with us.