There are countless posts out there touting how to write great blog posts and detailing what you should be doing as you construct and market your posts, but what about all the little things that people get wrong as they’re writing?
For everything you should be doing, there are just as many things you shouldn’t be doing as well. Here are five of the things you want to avoid while writing your next blog post:
Ignoring spelling and grammar
It takes five seconds to hit “spell check”. Five seconds… And yet many people skip taking the time to spell check their posts and read them through for grammatical consistency and accuracy. Having a post that is riddled with misspellings and grammatical errors, however, takes away from the credibility of your blog, so you want to make sure that you take the time to edit before publishing.
Closing your comments section
Closing the comments’ section effectively says that you are uninterested in what your readers have to say, but the whole point of writing blog posts is to provoke interaction between you and your readers, isn’t it? After all, you want to create a community on your blog – that community is a big part of what makes blogs successful! By disabling your comments’ section you are taking away the very thing that makes blogging such a great tool, thus discouraging readers from coming back to your blog.
Forgetting to format your posts
No one wants to read one big block of text, which is why formatting your posts before you publish them is so important. Be sure to break up large chunks of text by inserting paragraph breaks and utilizing subheadings to break up separate thoughts. Otherwise you will end up with the most boring post ever.
Promoting without adding additional substance
Most readers tolerate a certain amount of product pushing because they understand that it comes with having a blog and making a living online. However, if you promote products or services without also providing additional, helpful content, you’re going to end up turning your readers away from your blog.
Having no discernible purpose
Your blog needs to fall into a particular niche and your articles need to be focused on that particular niche, otherwise you’re only going to confuse your readers. Readers want to know what kind of content they can expect from a particular blog, which means you need to be consistent with your writing.
To truly succeed in blogging you have to approach this as you would any other business venture – intelligently and professionally. That means writing content that is focused, intelligent and keeps the reader in mind. When you only put a little bit of effort into your blog, you can only expect a little bit of profit in return, so take the time to formulate quality posts instead of rushing through them.
