Both companies and individuals are turning to blogging in huge numbers. Businesses are told that blogs will keep fresh content on their sites and that this will help to catch the eyes of the search engines and bring more traffic to their main pages as well as to the blog. Individuals have many different reasons for blogging.

No matter what the motivation for starting to blog, one thing has become exceptionally prevalent: bad blogs. As more and more people and companies take up blogging, the landscape has become more competitive, while much of the content falls flat. It turns out that there are many mistakes that can turn a blog into a waste of space or worse.

Here are the top five Blogging Mistakes to Avoid:

1. Being boring. Many companies stick to a style that they believe is more “corporate” or “professional” than it needs to be. The end result is dry, boring posts that no one will bother to read. While it’s true that too much “personality” can make the blog seem too informal for a company site, it does need to have enough space to show that the writer isn’t a robot.
2. Being too broad. Blogs work best when they are tightly focused around a single subject or small group of closely related subjects. This ensures that your audience can be sure that they’ll always find posts about what interests them.
3. Posting too much. In the early days of blogging, many sources suggested publishing a post every day or two. Now that blogging had been around for a while, bloggers have learned that this is usually too much posting. The audience will get sick of seeing the blog’s posts if they are constantly clogging up the timeline in a feed reader or on social media sites. It turns out that one or two posts a week is best.
4. Posting inconsistently. Blog readers like predictable posting schedules so that they can make a point of checking in on the right days. No matter how many days a week you choose to post, make it consistent.
5. Writing poorly. The ease of the technical aspects of blogging has given the activity a reputation for being something that anyone can do. This causes some people to be sloppy in how they go about it. In reality, nobody wants to read posts that are full of spelling and grammatical errors, formatting glitches, and other problems. Be sure to proofread all posts, run spell check, and preview them for formatting issues before they go live.

These are just five of the most common mistakes new bloggers make. Another big one to look out for is the temptation to make a blog all about yourself. While a few people have gotten plenty of people to follow along as they try to lose weight or do some other common activity, this rarely works. It’s far better to keep yourself as a supporting character and use a more defined subject as the star.

This same general rule goes for corporate blogs, as well. Broaden the scope of a business blog to include posts related to the category in general instead of keeping an overly tight focus on the company itself.

With these tips in mind, you’ll be able to avoid some of the most common mistakes new bloggers make. As you gain more experience, you’ll be able to finesse your own blog so that it has no mistakes at all.

Related Reading:

• 5 Blogging Mistakes To Avoid
• Spider Bots on Twitter
  
• The 50 Best SEO Tools
• Content Distribution Strategy: How to Promote Your Blog Posts

This blog post is about:

• Blogging mistakes to avoid
• Blogging tips
• Blogging examples
• How to start a blog

Originally published: August 4th, 2014.
Updated: September  13th, 2021.