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7 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting a Blog

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There are various reasons why people blog. It could be out of their desire to share their thoughts with their followers, looking for a place to express themselves, or for business.

The first two purposes can likewise be converted into a business venture-but only when you’ve established yourself as an authority in your niche. Then, when you have enough followers to make anything you write viral, you can affiliate with brands and businesses.

In any of these cases, the most common concern is getting people to read your content and act according to your purpose. For example, you are in the eCommerce business, and you want to promote the beauty products you’re selling. But, before you can make people buy, you need to introduce yourself and persuade them that you’re the answer to their needs. So, how do you do that?

You can optimize your articles and other content to be informative and relevant to your target market while also encouraging them to choose your brand. The process may sound simple, but it requires technical know-how about SEO and the right message and channel.

Here are the top seven blogging mistakes you should avoid if you want to be an expert in the eyes of your target market and help your brand convert better:

1. Start blogging without a definite plan

Any endeavor or project should start with a clear and thorough plan. As pointed out in the Harvard Business School Journal, planning ensures that your strategies are executable and agile. When you plan, you need to provide answers to the following questions:

  • What is your purpose for blogging?
  • What is your niche?
  • Who is your target audience?
  • What is the message you’re trying to convey?
  • What strategies will you use to reach as many target audiences as possible?
  • What is the end result you want to achieve?
  • What are the measures to determine whether or not your blog is successful?
  • How will you monetize your blog?

Your answer to these fundamental questions will serve as the foundation of your blog. If your purpose, message, method, and goals are clear, there is a very high chance that your blogs will yield positive returns for you and your brand.

To help you out, here is a typical example of a plan that you can follow when starting your own blog:

  • Choose a blog topic that you are passionate about and know a lot about
  • Create an outline of what your posts will be about, including the tone and voice you want to use in your writing
  • Pick a name for your blog – this is important so people can find it on search engines
  • Decide whether or not you wish to make money from blogging. If you want to make money, you need to plan ahead. Many bloggers make money through affiliate marketing and if it’s something you’d like to do, you need to learn how to become an affiliate marketer.
  • Set up social media accounts for yourself as well as your blog
  • Start posting! Be sure to post regularly, so readers get used to seeing new content from you every day.

2. Write without researching

It doesn’t matter if you’re blogging merely to express yourself or sell your brand; you need to add value and be relevant to your target audience. By adding value, we mean you must provide them with information that makes sense to them. To be able to do this, you need to stock up on your knowledge by researching. Then, share information they don’t know yet, or magnify what they already know and package it differently.

Put yourself in their shoes. What do you want to gain when you read a blog about a topic you’re interested in? Would you like a blog that’s merely a rehash of generic information you can readily find online? Would you read a piece that’s full of unfounded speculations? You surely won’t because these types of content won’t add value to you. It’s the same thing for your audience. Never undermine their capacity to think and reason because that will surely be off-putting.

Even if you’re an expert in a specific niche, try to back up your claims with studies and statistics to convince people to believe in its veracity. If highly credible and backed with substantial claims, blogs can be the source of facts and data analysis.

If this happens, businesses and other brands can pick up what you write and even affiliate with you to help promote their product. Your audience will also believe you more, treat your words as facts, and even think of you as an authority in your niche.

3. Forget about the cardinal rules of SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the greatest tools available for writers, marketing experts, and business strategists. With SEO, you can bring your product, service, or idea to where your target audiences are. Especially when your purpose is to endorse a brand and convince prospective buyers to visit your website, you need to invest in SEO seriously. If you’re wondering how SEO can help you, think of this example.

For instance, you’re in the business of selling beauty products, and you just recently opened your online store. You’re wondering how to get your products to your target market. You’re also wondering how you can get people to visit your website. SEO can help you bring your beauty products to people who are interested in making a purchase.

How? First and foremost, SEO strategists working for you will study the market to determine your target audience. After identifying your target audience, they will also learn what niche-relevant keywords they use to search for items they intend to buy.

When these preliminary pieces of information are already gathered, you can now curate keyword-enriched content pieces that are fresh, unique, factual, and original. SEO specialists can also help you distribute and post the link of your post on various platforms like social media, article directories, and other niche-related websites that they can put a backlink on.

When you regularly supply your audience with credible, well-substantiated, and relevant posts, it won’t be long until they get convinced that your brand is what they need. Along the way, you also get to establish yourself as a niche authority.

4. Writing without understanding your reader’s pain

People are naturally drawn to other people who can empathize with them. Empathy allows one to feel what the other is feeling and resonate with them. So when we meet people who show care and consideration towards our feelings, we grow fond of them. We think that they’re taking our sides and that we’re in the same boat. And since we develop an attachment and positive feelings about them, we readily accept them.

This happens when readers come across blogs that sympathize with their struggles and provide solutions to ease their burden. They believe that blog, not because they were forced to, but simply because they can relate to what has been said.

Evoke positive emotions from your audience by showing that you understand their struggle and present a solution to end their pain. Follow this pattern when blogging and see how easily you can sell whatever you’re marketing to your audience.

5. Not quantifying your results

You always have to measure your performance and success. By doing this, you’ll know how well your blogging campaign is going through. You can utilize such measuring tools as the number of organic site visitors, overall blog visits, conversion rate, number of subscribers, and site interactions.

  • Organic site visits : Through this measuring tool, you get to know how many people visit your sites. If you index your website and craft every webpage based on the most searched questions on your niche, you can gather as many site visitors as you can. This can help you rank better in Google searches.
  • Overall blog visits : This measure focuses explicitly on the number of visits your blog gets in a month. To increase this number, try sharing your posts through social media accounts, send copies and links of your blog to your leads by email, or create user paths that will lead to your post.
  • Conversion rate : If you’re specifically guiding your readers down the sales funnel, you need to know how many of your prospects get converted into paying leads. This measurement tool will help you identify if you’re hitting your sales goals.

Aside from these three tools, you can also monitor the number of readers and leads interacting with your brand or blog. To get this number, all you have to do is make a complete list of all your customers and leads and add one qualifier to your filter that picks on ‘customers that visited a page of the blog.’ Lastly, you can also take a look at the number of subscribers your blog page has amassed. This is also a great eye-opener on the performance of your blog.

6. Fail to proofread your post

It doesn’t need an expert to explain why proofreading your blog is a necessity. You write to convince people to believe in the idea, point of view, service, or product you’re selling. How can you expect them to take you seriously if your blog post is full of grammatical and typographical errors? How can you expect them to view you as a niche authority when you can’t even get your thoughts and writing straight?

You don’t need to use highfalutin words to be considered reasonable. For as long as you can clearly and seamlessly present your proposition, you can command readership. But, according to a writing primer released by Stanford University, you need to write in a way that your audience will have an easier time following and comprehending. Otherwise, they’ll lose patience and interest. When this happens, you can also say goodbye to the chance of converting them into paying leads. So, wow your readers and give them a run for their time and money by always taking time to proofread your blogs before posting them.

7. Forget the CTA

The call to action is an essential part of any writing piece as it closes the article. It’s that part of the article wherein, after explaining everything about the product or services, you persuade the reader to purchase what you are selling, believe in your point of view, or simply do something about what they’ve read. Without the CTA, what do you expect your reader to do with the information they just consumed? It’s like a story without a denouement or a resolution.

As a rule of thumb, always end your blog with a conclusion and a call to action. By this, your readers won’t have to figure out what you want them to do after reading the whole piece. Instead, it’s like giving them closure after you raised an issue, discussed its merits, and provided a solution.

Takeaway

Writing a blog is easier when you know exactly what to do from start to finish. Before you start typing, develop a plan and allow this plan to direct your subsequent courses of action. Be clear on what you want to achieve with every copy you finish. Learn how to leverage tools like keyword research apps, social media calendars, grammar and plagiarism checkers, and analytics. They will help you come up with content that will surely rank better and encourage conversion. And in the process of doing so, ensure to steer clear of the mistakes we mentioned above. Good luck, and we hope to see your blog page on the first pages of all search results.

 

Kossi Adzo is the editor and author of Startup.info. He is software engineer. Innovation, Businesses and companies are his passion. He filled several patents in IT & Communication technologies. He manages the technical operations at Startup.info.

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