7 Deadliest Blogging Mistakes You Must Avoid to Build A Massively Popular Blog

I’m not a perfect blogger.

In over 7 years of blogging I’ve made a TON of blogging mistakes. And the best part is I learned so many things that helped me to boost my search traffic and sales.

Mistakes happen especially when you’re just starting out.

Here’s where you should remember one thing: don’t give, learn and evolve. That’s how successful bloggers make a living from their sites.

If you’re looking for ways to build a massively successful blog, I highly recommend you to read this post where you will discover some of the dumbest yet costliest blogging mistakes most people make.

Are you ready to find them out? Let’s dive into the details.

#1. Blogging everyday and covering too many topics

Gone are the days where you can get massive traffic from search engines by posting daily.

Daily blog posting sucks (unless you’re running a technology or news related site).

I know that every blogger puts a ton of hard work in the initial days with lot of enthusiasm.

But if their blog doesn’t receive any traffic, they give up. Out of curiosity, most of the newbies publish content every single day. If you are also doing that, then you should definitely take this point into consideration.

Never ever cover too many topics. If you cover vast number of topics, then your blog will lose potential audience. Now, you may be wondering, how many posts to be published every month?

4 to 12. Yes. You can post 2-3 times a week or once in a week. Whatever it is, make sure that you always maintain consistency. Quality beats quantity. Always remember that.

Take good amount of time for creating content. Do enough research. Research, writing and editing content takes pretty good amount of time and it’s definitely worth.

#2. Choosing a wrong niche

Choose what you are really interested in. The biggest mistake most of the bloggers do is choosing the niche which they don’t know anything about it. If a blogger is interested and passionate about fashion but tries to blog about spirituality, then it will never work.

One of the reasons for choosing niche that you are passionate is, you will get enormous topic ideas and you can give the best content as you know it better. You can always add value to your readers with your awesome content.

Choosing a wrong niche costs you these five:

• It will waste your time and money.
• You will lose your focus and opportunities.
• The success of building a profitable blog is having enormous motivation. If you choose wrong niche, you will lose motivation.
• You will get trapped into a business that you hate.
• One of the reasons some business fail is targeting a market that doesn’t generate money. So, choosing wrong niche doesn’t generate income.

One sign of choosing wrong niche is you can’t find any new topics and visit other blogs for topic ideas. So, don’t just pick a niche that doesn’t interest you at all.

#3. Not collecting Emails from day 1

If you are not collecting emails from the day you started blog then you are losing enormous amount of money and also traffic. Yes. Money is in the list. Collect emails from your visitors. When Google does algorithm update, there is a potential chance that it could change everything of your website. It can drastically bring out changes in the traffic.

While collecting emails, never annoy your visitors. Here are some tips that will help you to collect emails without irritating visitors.

• Offer freebies: Usually, people give their email addresses when you offer something for free that is useful to them. This could include e-books, podcasts and email courses.
• Call-To-Action(CTA): Give a clear cut instruction to your reader what your email subscription offers. Use compelling language and create a sense of urgency whenever it’s possible. Insert your CTA on the side of the page or even in the middle of a post because lot of readers scan articles and many don’t even make it to the end of a blog post.
• Write media-rich content: Provide a blog post that solves the user problems. Your content should give excitement to your readers to see more of such posts from you.

So, start getting those email addresses from your visitors immediately.

#4. Not having a self-hosted blog

Most of the bloggers start with WordPress.com platform that which hosts blog on the WordPress website. The problem with using WordPress.com is that you will not have full control over customization.

Free blogs appear less professional than self-hosted ones. It also limits your advertising options which is very hard if you want to make money from your blog. If you self-host your blog with the WordPress software, then you can download plugins to expand your website’s capabilities.

WordPress.org is referred as self-hosted WordPress. If you don’t have self-hosted blog then you are missing these benefits. By choosing WordPress.org to build your website,

• You can customize your website design and add any free or paid WordPress theme that you want.
• You can also create completely custom designs or modify anything that you want.
• You can actually make money from your WordPress site by running your own ads without sharing revenue with anyone.
• You can create membership sites and sell memberships for premium content, courses, etc and build an online community around your website.
• You can use self-hosted WordPress to create an online store to sell digital or physical products directly from your website.
• You can use powerful tools like Google Analytics for custom analytics and tracking.

If you are a blogger and want to make money from your site, then it is recommended to use the self-hosted WordPress.org as tt gives you the freedom and flexibility to grow your website the way you want.

But, if you are just exploring the blogging world and not very serious about blogging or If you are a personal blogger and don’t care about making money from your website, then go with the free WordPress.com. You can check more in detail here if you need more reasons to choose self hosted wordpress blog over blogger blog.

#5. Not promoting your blog posts

Well, you have done a good amount of research while writing post and published a great content on your blog. But that doesn’t mean you will get traffic automatically. So, what should you do?

Promote your blog posts extensively. Here is what you should do when you publish your blog post.

• Email your subscribers: Announce your blog posts in the emails you send to your subscribers.
• Share on social networks: Promote your blog on all major social media network sites like Instagram, Pinterest and Google+.
• Advertise on Facebook: You can drive paid traffic through Facebook advertising.You can use Facebook Carousel Ads to promote multiple blog posts.
• Ping your guests: If your posts link to other blogs or contain quotes from other bloggers then ping them and ask for a share.
• Linkedin Groups: Find LinkedIn groups that are relevant to your industry as well as the topics you discuss on your blog and join the discussion. Promote your blog on LinkedIn is by sharing content in relevant LinkedIn groups.
• Forums: Use forums to share blog content. Establish an active presence on Internet forums such as reddit and Quora. You can find your target audience by subscribing to subreddits or Quora topics relevant to your field.

Whether it’s short or long written posts, infographic posts, videos or podcasts, you can use social media to host the bulk of the campaigns. Promote your blog post to make your content available for maximum number of audience. If no one reads the content that you framed after spending good amount of time and energy then what is the use anyway?

#6. Not using compelling headlines

If you can’t attract readers with your post title and in the first 100 words, then probably it won’t be reached to the potential audience. So, it is very important to engage readers with a compelling title and an opening statement or question that supports it.

Only when the title and first very few sentences instill excitement in the minds of the readers, then only the remaining content is willingly consumed.

Here are the few simple tricks you can use:

• Use numbers: It doesn’t matter if it’s a fitness magazine or any other, using odd numbers to start off the headline drives good results. Usually, viral blog posts will have odd numbers in the headlines
• Unique headline: Always make headline unique. Your headline has to be different from others.
• Ultra specific: If you can provide them with an ultra-specific headline and the answer to their questions, you can convert them into loyal readers and customers.You can use words like for beginners or for business people or hacks to learn anything in 10 minutes etc..

Put your time and start focusing on using compelling headlines to get people to read the first sentence.

Pro tip: Use free tools like Portent to come up with a ton of incredible headline ideas for your blog posts. It’s a fantastic tool to write magnetic headlines that attract more eyeballs.

#7. Not responding to your blog comments

The one biggest mistake that most of the bloggers do is, not engaging with their readers in the comment section. Responding to your readers in the comment helps in building stronger relationships. You should take the time to respond to comments thoughtfully and interact with readers.

However, there are some users who leave spam comments. And you can stop comment spam with the help of Akismet plugin (it’s free and awesome).

Without readers, any blog is a mere waste. Some bloggers see blogging as a unidirectional means of communication. If you don’t take active part in conversing with your readers then even though your content is interesting, you will lose potential readers. If you are serious about making money through blogging then you should start responding to your reader comments.

Sometimes, readers will ask great questions that will help you to realize what readers are interested in hearing more about in your future posts.

Remember, readers who feel that they are getting response to their questions or comments are likely to come back. They are the ones who become loyal customers in the long run. So, interact by responding to comments and questions if you want to build a thriving community around your blog.

Conclusion about blogging mistakes to avoid

Profitable blogging is all about learning from mistakes and growing every single day.

Successful bloggers are successful because of one reason: they continue to hustle despite their failure. If you want to build a wildly successful blog, make sure to grab every opportunity and don’t give up when you don’t see the great results.

So what are your thoughts? Are you making any of the blogging mistakes that are shared here?

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