Ten things NOT to do when blogging

Thinking of joining the social networking world of blogging?

Congratulations! Blogging is a powerful tool that allows you to interact with people from any part of the world! You are able to communicate and connect with people who have similar interests; who are existing customers or can be potential customers; or you can use it to simply express yourself and what you love.

Blogs enable you to build relationships with other people on a level that no other form of online communication tool can. The wide variety of different blog types available and the versatility of them are another two reasons as to why so many people have started blogging.

As technology evolves, blogging has also become a lot easier to set up and manage – thanks to all the different blogging software and hosting services available. However, regardless of how easy it may be to set up a blog in a professional manner, setting up and posting professional-looking blog posts is a little more tricky and should not be taken lightly!

Here a few things NOT to do when blogging:

1. 1. Don’t ‘drown’ your blog with advertisements – Depending on what type of blog you have, its main purpose is usually to interact with your readers. Seeing adverts will therefore have readers questioning the credibility of you and your blog; and what your blog is REALLY trying to communicate to them. No one wants to deal with someone who has alternative motives!
   2. Don’t ignore your readers – A blog is there to put your thoughts out into the world – and hope that someone enjoys reading them! Getting comments is a great sign that your readers enjoy the content that you are publishing therefore it is a good idea to encourage participation by asking questions – and then answering any comments that your blog posts receive in order to keep the conversation going!
   3. Don’t be the anonymous blogger – Although it may sound quite mysterious and exciting, people enjoy reading about or from someone that they can relate and ‘put a face to’. You don’t have to go as far as giving away your residential address but try and create a persona in order to make it a little more personal. There are over a million blogs in the world so you need to make sure that you give your readers something that they can associate to and remember.
   4. Don’t make your blog posts too long – Very few people have the gift of time these days, so keep your articles to the point and filled with good information and interesting images.
   5. Don’t use your blog just to moan about your everyday life – Times are tough so everyone is probably going, or has gone through, a bit of a rough patch. Try keep your posts light-hearted, and if you do have to moan, then try to conclude with a more optimistic ending or a ‘points to ponder’ section. You want people to enjoy reading your posts and challenge them to think in a different way – not depress them!
   6. Don’t focus purely on generating SEO articles that don’t mean anything to you – This will usually result in boring content that no one is going to enjoy reading. Be sure to write about things that you are passionate about – and then simply try to add SEO keywords and tags inside your articles in order to make them more SEO-friendly. Speaking of tags…
   7. Don’t leave out tags and categories – Ensure that your posts are easy for your readers to find! Tags and categories are the easiest things to use in order to help organise your posts chronologically and put them into certain themes and topics. By adding tags, you also allow your readers to easily find posts that are related to the particular one that they are reading.
   8. Don’t make it difficult for people to find your RSS button – You want readers to subscribe to your blog, therefore make it easy for them to find your RSS feed button. Make sure you put the icon either above the fold near your navigational bar; in the top right-hand corner or in the footer.
   9. Don’t assume that everyone has an award-winning author/copywriter hidden within them – Make sure your posts are filled with good, thought-provoking content that is easy to read. Eliminate the risk of publishing poorly formatted articles by always adding headings; sub-headings; paragraphs; introductions and conclusions; the right amount of punctuation; and bullet points. Make your posts easy to scan and always remember to read over them before publishing in order to ensure that there are no spelling or grammatical errors; and that everything makes sense and flows smoothly.
   10. Don’t go into the blogging world thinking that it is going to be easy – I thought it was quite appropriate to end off with this point as I am sure you have realized by now that it takes time and effort to produce content that is original and thought-provoking. It would be a cardinal sin to not dedicate this time and effort and would ultimately result in a boring blog with useless posts which give the impression that if you, the blogger, don’t even care about your own blog – then why should the reader?! Try to also keep your content fresh by writing a new post either once a week or month – depending on your time-constraints.

Have no fear!

Remember that everyone is different, so what may work for one does not necessarily have to work for another. Take time to get to know yourself as a writer/blogger; and what you and your readers like. By keeping this in mind, along with these ten tips, you should have no problem producing a quality blog that is enjoyed by many followers!