Top 5 Blogging Mistakes
Blogging is fun. Blogging is also a lot more than that for many people. Whether your blog is primarily a personal journal or a site you intend to monetize and draw income from, there is a basic formula you need to utilize in order to draw a regular audience. It doesn't matter how talented a writer you are -- if you make these basic blogging mistakes it will be very difficult to build your readership and therefore very difficult to move up in the world of blogging. That said, you don't need to be a fantastic writer to have a hugely popular blog at all, you only need to be good at giving your audience what they want. So whichever category of writer you find yourself in, be mindful of the following tips to ensure your readers aren't put off by other things along the way.
1. Clutter
This may seem less significant than you think, but I assure you it is not. If your blog looks like an advertisers marketplace and every bit of free space is occupied by an ad, you are going to turn people off. Not only because they'll think your main priority is selling them something, but because it's not easy on the eyes. Ads are fine as long as they are tastefully arranged. If your readers can't focus on your writing because all they see are ads, you're going to put them off. Same goes for having millions of widgets and cute little buttons all over the place. No one is going to spend an hour perusing your blog widgets, believe me. And if they do, you've got to work on improving your blog content.
2. Slow Loading Graphics and Gadgets
If it takes 2 minutes to load your blog, people are going to back out and find a faster blog to read. Doesn't matter if you're Hemingway's ghostwriter; people don't have the patience for that sort of thing. The average internet surfer makes an ADHD child look like a patient Chinese monk. If your graphics are huge, or if you've got too many of them on your page, or if you've got javascripts that don't work well, or if you've got too much of anything on your blog it will slow the loading process and you will lose the impatient readers.
3. Difficult to read posts.
This could come in the form of many things. If you've got crazy background/text color combinations that hurt readers' eyes, people won't read you. And you can't blame them, as no one enjoys a headache. If your fonts are too wacky, too small or too difficult to decipher, people aren't going to read you. If your posts are 5 miles long, people aren't going to have time to read you.
4. Snobbery
If you can't be arsed to interact with your readers you will put some of them off. Not the ones who like to adore and worship you, but those who want to be treated with some measure of reciprocal respect. If you're very famous most of your readers will probably worship you and it won't make a big difference if you reply to comments and interact with readers. But if you're a newbie blogger, it will determine whether many or few continue to read your writing.
5. Dull writing
You don't have to be a great writer, but you do need to have something valuable to say. Value can take on many forms and could simply mean that you share your daily thoughts and experiences. Lots of people enjoy reading reality blogging of this sort. But don't be one of those people who narrates a trip to the supermarket and has nothing interesting to say whilst describing the dairy aisle. Would you write that in your personal diary? I would hope no one is that boring.
