Mistakes New Bloggers Make

It’s thought that there are over 440 million blogs in the world and 2 million posts are published every day. Yet, despite the increasingly saturated market, new bloggers come on to the scene all of the time. Sometimes researching carefully and making a plan before they start but often launching without a clue what they are doing, thinking that they’ll make it big and take on the world.
Unfortunately, even those bloggers that have done some research often find that blogging is much harder than they expected. It takes much more work to get noticed, and in the start, very few people will read what they’ve got to say. This can be upsetting, demoralising and demotivating. The sad truth is that 95% of bloggers give up within the first few years. Often because they either don’t have time to give their blogs the attention that they need, or they feel like they are putting a lot of effort in and getting nowhere.
Many brand-new bloggers, launching their first sites make the same mistakes. Even established bloggers who earn a living from their sites now will often tell you that they cringe when they look back at their old posts. Let’s take a look at some of these mistakes and how you can avoid them.
Poor Writing
Writing is a skill. To be a blogger you don’t need to be an English graduate or the next Dickens. In fact, it’s much more important that you are able to write in a friendly and personal tone without confusing language and fancy metaphors. But, you do need to be able to write fluently and get your point across.
If you haven’t written much since you left school, you might find that your early posts are poorly written. You may make mistakes when it comes to spelling and grammar and struggle to find your own voice. You may even find yourself trying to imitate other writers that you admire, even subconsciously.
The best way to overcome this is practice. The more that you write, the better you will be. Don’t be self-conscious, try to think of your writing as a personal exercise and forget that it’s out there on the net. Write in an informal voice, so that read aloud it sounds like you are speaking to a friend. You may also want to use a tool like Grammarly to help you spot and correct any mistakes.
As your blogging journey continues, your writing will start to improve noticeably. Just keep at it.
Too Much Text
Too much writing is another common mistake. Or at least, too much uninterrupted writing. New bloggers often write hundreds of words, with nothing in between. This can be tremendously off-putting for your readers. A large page filled with text is overwhelming and looks like hard work.
Instead, break things up. Use photographs, infographics, subheadings and paragraphs to make your writing look more appealing and easier to read.
Poor Photography
Next, to writing style, photography is the most obvious difference between new and established blogs, as well as good and bad blogs. Most new bloggers snap the odd picture on their phones to put into posts, without taking the time to think about quality or composition.
These look amateur and won’t grab viewers’ attention. They certainly won’t get clicks from social media channels. More established bloggers, take better photographs. They take the time to think about their topic and take relevant pictures. They spend time perfecting their shots and often have a basket of props and professional equipment.
However, this doesn’t mean that you need to rush out and buy an expensive DSLR camera. You may want to eventually if you start to take your blogging more seriously, and it would be an asset. But, you can get by perfectly well with your iPhone, to begin with as long as you start thinking more about your shots and read up on iPhone photography hacks.
If you are struggling to take the right pictures for a post, or don’t have the opportunity to get the images that you need yourself, stock sites are an excellent option. Just make sure the photographs that you use are free and don’t require accreditation. Don’t just grab them from
Google images or you could find yourself in trouble.
Ignoring SEO
Search Engine Optimisation is critical to bloggers. But, it’s something that many new bloggers know absolutely nothing about. When they do start learning, they already have many posts published with no SEO at all.
SEO is how your site talks to and is viewed by search engines. Without it, the chances of someone finding your pages in their search results are very slim; there’s a lot out there, remember? Read about Google Website Optimisation and take some time to get it right. This can be simple things like using keywords, adding alt text to your photographs and using subheadings, but it’s always a good idea to get it right from the very start so that you don’t have to spend time going over your old posts later on to make changes.
Thinking it’s Easy
Perhaps the biggest mistake that bloggers make is thinking that it’s easy. They see themselves blogging for a few hours a day, or when they fancy it. They imagine thousands of people reading what they’ve got to say and offers from brands for paid work coming in within weeks.
This very rarely happens. It can take years to build up to this, and even if you do, they’ll be rejection along the way. If you want to make it as a blogger, you need to put the work in. Try to stick to a routine, so that you are publishing a post consistently, on three days of the week. Knowing that you’ll need to work hard will stop you being disappointed when it doesn’t all come easily.
Being too Broad
At the end of the day, it’s your blog, and you can write about whatever you want. No one can stop you, and to be fair, many “lifestyle” bloggers do well without a specific niche, sharing their views on a range of topics. But, it’s usually the bloggers with a niche that do well. If you find that you are struggling to get viewers, try making your posts a little more specific.
Not Promoting
A massive mistake many bloggers make is writing a post, pressing publish and thinking that their work is done. This is why no one reads it. You need to promote. It’s believed that you should spend one-third of your time writing content and two-thirds promoting it. Share your work on social media, advertise it in the real world, send emails, add links to forums and get the word out as much as you can in as many different places.
Not Building an Email List
Bloggers often focus on social media and new readers. But, relying on new readers means that you have to find them, all of the time. It’s equally important to keep your old readers coming back. This makes your job much easier.
The best way to do this is by growing an email subscribers list. Give your readers plenty of opportunities to subscribe and start sending out a newsletter.
Staying Anonymous
Many new bloggers are nervous about telling their friends and family about their blogs. They worry about what they will think and so try to keep things anonymous. This is often a mistake. Your friends and family could be your first readers. They could share your content and help you promote your work as well as offering valuable feedback. Just be brave and tell them straight away, they’ll probably be impressed.