1. Your Visuals Are an Eye-Sore
An image is worth 1000 words. If your visuals are poor quality, your blog will struggle with scraping together two pennies.
Before anyone reads a word on the page they look at the picture to gauge the quality of the blog. If you didn’t both to find really nice and relevant images, any visitors you do have will flee the site.
Not only did this person leave; they won’t come back. But there’s more. When people leave your site like this it creates a domino effect.
Your bounce rate goes up. Search engines use bounce rate to judge whether your site provides a good customer experience. If they see a high bounce rate, they’ll lower your visibility in searches.
High-quality images don’t have to cost a fortune. In fact, there are many sites online like Pexels.com where you can find HD images for free to avoid these blogging mistakes.
2. You Expect People to Read Anything
No. We’ll say it again. No. No. No!
Around 5 million blog posts get added to the Internet every day. Chances are any topic that you plan to cover has been covered a million different ways. That’s even if you’re really creative.
To earn traffic, your content has to stand out by being:
- Intriguing/Motivational
- Intuitively organized
- Exceptionally written
- Very actionable
- Fluff-free
You may think that writing a 100 thousand word book is hard. In many ways, writing traffic-generating blogs is even harder. Blog readers aren’t willing to give you a chapter or more to ease into the story.
You have fewer than 7 seconds to demonstrate that your blog is worth reading.
3. You Write For Yourself
Successful blogs are strategic. The topics chosen are built around a target audience and specific measurable objectives. They use analytics to determine what to write about.
Are you just writing on a whim? Do you take a hiatus for a few weeks then post 5 blogs in a row?
Do you only write about topics that really interest you without considering your reader? You’re not likely to bring much traffic into your blog.
4. You Don’t Have a Personal Brand
Once again {emphatically} 5 million blog posts {end emphasis}. In order to generate traffic, you have to break through all of the noise. You need to connect with people on a human level.
Through your personal brand you build:
- Interest
- Trust
- Loyalty
Without a personal brand, each blog article just feels like a disconnected piece of prose.
People build personal brands by:
- Showing their personality
- Connecting with people on a human level
- Showing a consistent face to the audience
A consistent face is accomplished through a style guide.
Style guides include the kind of language you use. How you organize ideas. The kinds of images you display. Colors and fonts on your website.
The more consistent you can be with a polished brand, the more interest you’ll generate because people become familiar with you.
You feel like family, a friend, a mentor or whatever they’re looking for in their life.
5. You Don’t Socialize
One of the biggest blogging mistakes people make is thinking it’s a one-way street. They think they’re going “talk”. People will “listen”.
But if you’re not interacting with your followers, upvoters and fans, they’ll quickly find someone else who actually appreciates them.
Interact with your followers on social media. Even if you have a serious brand, you can still answer questions and be polite.
When people comment on your blog, be sure to comment on their comment. The social aspects of blogging are what keep many people coming back.
Share your posts on social media and work to build your following on key social sites to drive traffic back to your website.
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