10 Blogging Mistakes to Avoid as a Beginner Blogger

Sitting down and writing your first blog post can seem like a daunting concept. As with starting anything new, mistakes happen and that’s ok, they can be learned from along the way. But wouldn’t it be great if you knew how to avoid making some of those mistakes before they happened?

We’ve compiled a list of tips on how to tackle the common mistakes that first time bloggers make.

1. Make sure that the blog post is the right fit for your company and of course, your audience!

Blogging is a key part of any effective in-bound marketing strategy and an effective blog should serve to help expand your business, so it’s important to make sure that your blog post ideas help to achieve those development goals before you sit down to write them. It’s important that you focus on the quality of your blog posts over the quantity – we’ve all seen a blog post that has been written to fill up space, rather than serve a purpose.

Start by thinking about your company’s wider goals or what questions customers commonly ask, to use as an initial guide to your writing.

2. Writing a blog article is not like writing an essay

It’s important to make sure that your blog post is written in a style that’s easy to read as you will find that most people are likely to skim through it. Many first time bloggers are experienced in essay writing which requires a formal tone. The difference with blogging is that blog posts usually employ a softer, less structured tone. When writing, make sure that your tone of voice sounds friendly. Make your writing more relaxed and colloquial, consider how you would talk, use words that you would when chatting to a friend. A more informal style will make your voice ‘real’ – this is the type of content that audiences find easier and more attractive to read.

3. Make sure that you create specific content that answers the point of your blog topic

So you’ve got a few ideas about what you want to write but your topics still feel a bit too big to tackle. It’s best to avoid broad topics as these will lead to blog post titles that are hard to answer and even harder to optimise for. Why not consider breaking a big topic down into a series of blog posts that deal with each element of the topic separately? These smaller, specific topics are ideal as they attract better targeted audiences, so start by working out how to break your concept down into its component parts. . Perhaps plan out an outline or spider diagram using topic headers for each of your key points – avoid just writing in a stream of consciousness and remember what your junior school English teacher said, it has to have a beginning, a middle and an end!

4. Using data as evidence makes your arguments look more credible

Wherever you can, back up your claims with genuine, referenced data and research. It’s important to use data to support not only your main argument but your other smaller claims throughout the rest of your content. Your points will be a lot more convincing, not to mention interesting.

5. Learn how to cite others to avoid plagiarism

This is very important as people often get caught out with plagiarism, it’s usually by accident, and most don’t fully understand the consequences that it can have. Don’t think that you can just get away with copying and pasting another writer’s work. Aside from the all seeing Google being able to spot it instantly and marking down the ranking of your content, it’s pretty easy to tell when content has been copied as it won’t sound like the voice you are developing for your brand.

If you get caught stealing content from other people, then Google may penalize your site which can damage the organic growth of your blog. Make sure when you first start out that you learn how to cite other’s people content correctly. Check out Hubspot’s article for more information.

6. Don’t skimp on the editing process

You’ve just finished writing up your content, but you’ve not finished your blog post yet. It’s important to check through the final draft of your work carefully for typos and grammatical errors, as these can look unprofessional and have a negative impact on the authority of your blog. You must also read through your work to make sure that your article flows well structurally and gets across the meaning that you intended. For a second opinion, why not ask a colleague to glance over your work before it goes live.

Once you’ve finished proofreading your content, don’t forget to select images to add to your post. Visuals make blog posts a lot more appealing and it’s important that you carefully select your images so that they are attractive to look at, as well as relevant to your blog post topic. Once you’ve chosen your images make sure that you have permission to use them, providing attribution if needed, finally don’t forget to tag the images so that Google can recognise them effectively.

7. Learn to let go

Remember that not every post that you write will be 100% perfect and sometimes it’s important to learn when to let go. You could spend hours revising every piece that you write but remember, an article could always be better and you can always update the post later on even after it’s published. Get something out there and build on making each next post a little bit better, your blog will grow and develop organically alongside your skills!

8. Make sure that you blog consistently

Just as the quality of your articles is important, so is the quantity that you post. You need to make sure that you manage to strike a happy balance between posting frequently enough to have the impact you are looking for and posting so often that your readers feel overwhelmed and start to leave you.  Developing a planning strategy will help you get the balance right. Once you’ve decided how often you will post (this varies for each company – once or twice a week to once a month) scheduling your posts into a calendar is a brilliant way to track how frequently you’re posting and what topics you’ve covered so far There are several online platforms that can help with this such as Google calendar for example.

9. Focus on cumulative rather than daily traffic

Don’t be disheartened if immediate traffic from a new blog posts dies down after a while. Instead you should focus on organic traffic that builds over time which happens when your blog post is found by search engines. To ensure that this long-term traffic stays loyal to your blog and continues to build, you need to be creating content that will be constantly relevant, informative and useful.

10. Make sure you are growing your subscribers

Remember, blogging isn’t just about gaining new visitors to your site/blog and building authority for your brand, it’s also a way to build up a following of loyal email subscribers. These subscribers will give your blog hits an initial boost that will then help your articles continue to be successful in the future. Set up a welcome email for new subscribers to sign up to your blog and a ‘call to action’ or sign up form for subscribers to opt in at the bottom of each blog post.

Follow these guidelines and you’ll soon reap the rewards of a great business blog!