If you want to make money online and have a successful Internet business, nothing is easier to run and maintain than a blog. However, there are several blogging pitfalls you are going to want to avoid if you wish to experience the ease and simplicity of making money with your blog. Since these are mistakes that even seasoned bloggers can make, it is important we look at them closely.
#1 - Lack of Consistent Content (Not publishing regularly)
Although it seems blogging has been around for a long time, it really is part of the whole social media revolution and always will be. If you wish to run a successful blog that will make money, you need to focus on producing quality content, and posting this content regularly. The idea is to make your blog a communal hub of activity for people in your niche. If you regularly post great content you will start to build a following. These people will look forward to your posts and make reading them a daily or weekly habit. They will also tell others about your blog by sharing your content, thus growing your readership. You should be making, at minimum, one post per week to your blog, otherwise you won't be providing your readers with enough of an incentive to stick around. You will be forgotten amidst the massive amount of information available online. By being consistent and posting regularly you will also boost your search engine rankings.
Blogging is all about maintaining momentum. Decide early on in the process what your "blogging rhythm" will be, because this will be the same rhythm your readers will become accustomed to. Once you get a rhythm established you are not going to want to waver too much from it. Once you set your readers expectations you can exceed them with explosive content that blows them away, but stick to a regular schedule with that content and your readers will always return for more. This leads us into our second common mistake.
#2 - Lack of Connection With Your Readers
Blogs and static websites are different. As I mentioned before, a blog is really part of the whole social media revolution. People that subscribe to a blog or visit one regularly are expecting a different experience than a static website can give them. They are expecting a more personal feel. This means that your readers will want to feel as if they are getting to know you. Don't be afraid to talk about your life a bit. The more real you are with your readers the more responsive they will be to you.
Speak in the first person often, using "I" whenever it is relevant to do so, especially if your product or service helps to solve personal problems. People want to know that there is a real person behind the information they are reading and not some giant company. It also helps to have an author biography section that describes a bit about you and why you started your blog, as well as a photo of yourself. Do whatever you can to make your readers feel that there is a real person behind the information. This is important in blogging and cannot be overlooked.
#3 - Lack of Subscription Option
There is truly nothing worse for your business than to build a blog that has great content and begins to bring in repeat visitors, but then offers those visitors no way to subscribe for updates. We live in a fast paced world and information flies in the faces of your readers constantly. It is not good enough to provide excellent content and build a solid readership. Eventually your blog will get forgotten amidst the onslaught of information your readers have to deal with. Don't make your readers need to remember to visit your blog. Instead, have a mechanism in place where you can gently remind them of new posts and content to your blog. There are several ways to do that, and the more ways you provide to your readers to subscribe to your blog the better.
The first thing you want to do is make sure you offer your readers an RSS option. Your readers will then have many different options available when it comes to how they will receive your content. Some people like to use a "reader" to view your content as it comes in, and others may prefer a different method. There are many tools out there that your readers can utilize, and by providing an RSS option you will cover most of them. Many of your readers would also prefer an email option. I would not only provide the RSS option, but also create a mailing list of some sort using a reliable autoresponder service. This way you can send an email out to your list when new content is posted. By providing both an RSS option and an email option on your blog, your readers won't have to remember that you are there.
#4 - Lack of seo
If you are regularly posting unique and quality content to your blog (as you should be) then you are not going to want to miss out on the benefit of having your posts and pages show up in the search engines. Blogs make it easy to optimize your content for the search engines. There is no end to the seo plugins available for the many blogging formats out there. You are going to want to find an seo plugin that helps you optimize your content and posts for the given keywords you are trying to rank for. This will drive quality traffic to your site and increase your readership.
#5 - Lack of Data Collection
Do you know what your readers like the most? Do you know what kind of content they prefer? Do they like bullet lists, a training series spread out over time, videos, or just plain text? What posts are the most popular on your blog and why? Is there a specific post or page where your readers seem to be leaving your site from the most? Knowing the answers to these questions will enable you to customize your content and posting frequency to match the needs of your readers. You can accomplish this with a simple analytics program like Google Analytics. You do not really need anything fancy and most analytics programs are free. This means there is no excuse not to use one.
Besides using a good analytics program, make sure that your blog accepts comments. You are going to want to use a plugin that allows you full control over what is posted (mainly to keep auto spam away) but for the most part you want to give your readers the opportunity to chime in and tell you what they thought about your content. Analyzing your comments can really shed light on what it is you are doing well and what you need to improve on for your readers.
#6 - Over Promoting and Selling
Make sure that your blog doesn't start to become one giant conglomeration of sales messages. There is nothing wrong with having links to good products and services in each and every post that are relevant to the subject matter of that post, but don't overdo it. Your readers know what a link looks like and if they want to click through to something from your post they can do that. If every post on your blog is a sales page you are not going to keep your readers. People want to read content that helps them solve their problems.
Just focus 100% on producing valuable content for your readers and then within that content gently link to products or services that will help them accomplish what it is you are talking about in your articles. To me this is the best way to do things and it is the method I use on all of my blogs.
When blogging for business you need to remember that it IS a business and that you need to treat it like one. Fix what you can when you make a mistake, provide value to your readers so they keep coming back, and test and track everything that is going on at your blog so you have good data to work with.
Blogging is a learning process. You won't be able to please everyone and that is not your goal. If you try and please everyone you will please no one. Your goal is to build a following of readers who enjoy coming to your blog to learn what you have to offer and who will act on your recommendations as a result of the trust you build with them. Give value and be yourself. The rest will follow.
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