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Many people think blogging is an easy way to make money. Many others think that blogging is a very difficult way to make money. No matter what you think, you should remember that blogging is a life-long process of learning, planning, strategizing and networking.
If you are ready to make the commitment, then you can decide to start a blog for yourself.
If you want to learn how to start a blog, click here to read through the ultimate guide on how to start a blog that makes you money.
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But starting a blog is the easy part. What does it take, in the long run, to grow and maintain a blog?
Blogging is not just about pushing out content multiple times every week hoping that people would somehow find your blog. You need traffic, lots and lots of it, to make your content visible.
But traffic is not the only thing you need to be successful in your blogging journey. You also need to have your presence all over the web, that means you need to have an email list, backlinks, dedicated and active social media accounts, etc.
As a new blogger, all of the factors that go into making a blog successful can seem overwhelming. New bloggers make all kinds of mistakes.
While mistakes are great learning experiences, they can also delay your journey in becoming a successful blogger. So it’s best to avoid as many mistakes as you can in your blogging journey.
Here are 10 major blogging mistakes new bloggers make.
1. Choosing The Wrong Niche
Many new bloggers fail at blogging because they choose the wrong niche. By wrong niche, I mean a niche that does not have a lot to talk about OR a niche that you don’t feel like talking about a lot.
Let’s discuss about a niche that does not have a lot to talk about. If you haven’t decided on a niche yet, you should totally avoid niches that were popular before but are not popular anymore. You will have a hard time getting people to read what you have written.
In addition, you should also avoid niches are too broad or too narrow. For example, you would not be able to find the target audience if you were to write about photography, but you would be able to find the right audience if you were to blog only about landscape photography, for example.
If you are having trouble finding the right niche, look up trends on Google to help you identify what trends are popular and evergreen and what trends you should completely avoid.
In contrast, if you are blogging about a niche that you don’t feel like talking about, you are most likely to quit. You should be absolutely passionate about what you are blogging.
2. Posting Inconsistently
Its very easy to become overwhelmed as a new blogger. If you are new to blogging, everything that you have to do to get your blog up and running can seem like a tedious and a hectic task.
New bloggers may initially be motivated and may post content several times a week, but may then feel exhausted after a month or a couple of months.
Posting inconsistently is a major roadblock for new bloggers. You have to be consistent in posting your blogs to build your credibility and to provide new and fresh content to your audience on a regular basis.
In order to post consistently, organize your days and plan out everything you want to do each day. By completing small chunks of tasks each day, you would stay motivated to post consistently.
3. Not Creating An Email List Early
Another major mistake new bloggers make is that they do not collect emails right from the get go.
New bloggers feel that their blog is still too small, too simple and still lacks enough content. This is perhaps the reason that they do not set up email lists. However, when it comes to blogging, realize that it is a journey rather than a destination.
Before I posted my first ever blog post, I set up an automated system to collect emails of everyone visiting my blog. Though my first few posts hardly got any views, I was able to gain some subscribers from the few views that I got!
So if you are new to blogging, you now know what to do first. If you already have started blogging, it’s still not too late to set up an email list.
4. Not Tracking User Behavior
There are a lot of elements involved in blogging. In order to become a successful blogger, you have to connect all the dots together. Tracking user behavior is one of those dots.
Tracking user behavior can give you insights on who your audience is, what they like and how you can improve your blog.
What I mean by tracking user behavior is that should keep track of how many people are viewing your blog, what country are they from, what actions are they taking on your blog, what posts are they reading the most, how are they finding your blog, etc.
But how do you keep track of user behavior? You do it using an analytics tool such as Google Analytics.
It is necessary to install an analytics tool right from the beginning. This will allow you to gather some very useful data. You can then use this data to take actions to grow your blog further.
Tip: You can find a step-by-step tutorial on how to install Google Analytics here. Just scroll all the way down to Step 3 and look for the “Google Analytics” section.
5. Avoiding Social Media
I can understand your issues and concerns if you are not active on your personal social media accounts. But avoiding social media for blogging purposes is an absolute no-no.
Social media platforms are great way to connect and interact with your audience and your followers. You can really get people talking about your blog using social media. It allows you to connect with people, sometimes even on a personal level.
Social media is also great as it lets you promote your content. It lets you drive traffic to your blog, and traffic is the key to success.
So don’t avoid social media. Embrace it and use it to your advantage. Be active on social media platforms and use them wisely to grow as a blogger.
6. Not Networking With Other Bloggers
Networking with other bloggers is absolutely essential. You can only learn so many things by yourself. For other things and to know more about what others are doing, you have to network with other bloggers.
Networking also presents collaboration opportunities. You can collaborate with other bloggers and write guest posts for them as well as have them write guest posts for you.
There are several ways you can network with bloggers. There are Facebook groups, like Blogger Hub, that you can join to connect with other bloggers. You can also consider going to local events and meetups, such as WordPress Meetup to network with other bloggers.
Blogging is a journey, as I mentioned earlier too. You can only go so far if you are going alone in this journey of yours.
In order to be productive and efficient, you absolutely need to network with others. In addition, networking with others would build your credibility in the blogging community.
7. Not Organizing The Blog
Many new blogs have content all over their website. There is no structure and there are no dedicated home, contact and blog pages. They also have way too many ads.
Promoting a blog with no structure only creates a bad reputation for them in the blogging world. You do not need to include a lot of content in your pages. If you include a simple introduction about who you are and what your blog is all about and organize this information effectively, a lot of people would actually be interested in your blog.
When I started my blog, before I ever promoted my blog, I made sure that there are no broken links and that my pages are well-organized. I also made sure that I have a contact form to enable anyone to reach out to me.
So if your blog is currently disorganized or if you are about to launch your blog, take some time to figure out and organize different elements that connect your blog together.
8. Thinking Too Much
If you are thinking too much before posting that new blog post or before even launching your blog, then stop thinking!
Don’t think too much and just do it. A lot of people don’t even get started because they think about what they have to do to be successful in blogging. Then they think about how they are going to do it. Then they start to feel overwhelmed.
In my early days of blogging, I too thought about a lot of things. It got me nowhere. However, once I decided to learn things along the way, everything changed. I was consistently posting and learning about ways I can further optimize and grow my blog.
Plan out your days and decide what you are going to do on each day. You perhaps take 3 days to write a blog post, so take 3 days to write a post and post twice a week. This way you can at least publish 2 posts every week. Plan out all the other tasks in this way and you will be well on your way.
9. Publishing Low-Quality Posts
What do I mean by low-quality posts? Low-quality posts can mean a lot of different things.
If you are hitting the publish button with grammatical mistakes in your post or with information that is not really useful to other people, you would end up publishing a low-quality post.
A low-quality post is also a post that doesn’t have enough words. In my opinion, a good-quality post always has at least a thousand words.
Focus on producing great quality content that solves peoples’ problems. This will really build up your reputation as a blogger in the long run.
10. Not Optimizing For SEO
Some people get discouraged when they hear ‘SEO’. This is because they feel that there’s already a lot of information out there and that there blog would never be found on the web. If you think that way, then your blogging journey would end before it even starts.
To build your presence on the web and to appear in such results, you have to optimize all of your pages for SEO. This happens over time. So don’t be discouraged when you hear the term ‘SEO’.
Make sure to optimize each page and each post that you publish. You can optimize the title, meta description, permalink, etc. using a plugin called Yoast SEO.
Instead of fearing it, get used to optimizing for SEO. Once you master it, you will only take a few minutes to optimize each post before publishing it. This will really help you grow your blog in the long run.
Final Note
So there you have it. As a new blogger, there are a lot of things you need to take care of first. Take care of these things while making sure to avoid the aforementioned 10 major mistakes that most new bloggers make and make your blogging journey a success story.
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