Have you tried writing a blog then you find that nobody is reading it? For a minute, forgot about if there is traffic or not. Just imagine you have traffic flowing into your site. Then you look at your google analytics. And people are lasting only a few seconds on your page, then leaving without commenting either.
Writing blog posts can be super exciting and fun. But there are some common mistakes new blog writers make.
Complexity, Words And Too Much Information
Ok, so you’re a writer. And you take pride in your detail. But do consider the reader and audience? Maybe you’re blogging about data science or biology. Ok, be detailed and complex.
But if you’re writing about cooking, clothes, travel, or other subjects. Keep it simple – super simple and to the point.
Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things -Isaac Newton
Bloggers fail to understand readers who want to be engaged, educated, and compelled. They want to get the information they need.
Complexity can be in a few forms:
- Hard to navigate your post
- Long, long paragraphs without breaks
- Rarely used words in any language. Methinks you behoove my ideas. – URGGG? What?
- Over-explaining to increase the word count, not to help the reader understand the subject
- Confusing the user on your subject by going down thought processes that become irrelevant to the customer problem
You Aren’t Speaking To Your Reader, Too Much Self-Indulgence
You honestly don’t care about the reader, but you’re more interested in your self-indulgence. Meaning, you specifically are just talking about how great you are instead of providing quality information, even in story form for your reader.
You don’t understand who is reading your blog. You aren’t speaking to your customer needs. For example, if we only wrote about being broke instead of important steps in becoming a millionaire, you’d ask, why am I reading this article? Write to your audience need. Ask that question, “Why would anyone read my blog?”
You Only Write To Close The Deal, Not Provide Value
Earlier bloggers are very interested in closing a deal – getting the user to buy something immediately. They should be focusing on the considerable value they could provide to their reader. People buy because of their perceived value. For instance, this post is titled “Why would anyone read my blog? (Common Mistakes).” It should not contain a recipe to make a chocolate bar sandwich.
You Don’t Care
Don’t be offended, but if you don’t care about your readers and you’re copying and pasting other people’s blog posts then scrambling the words, maybe this isn’t a good profession for you. Or you’re lying, making up facts and figures. There are plenty of bloggers writing with a single purpose, to make up stories to convience you buy something. If you are genuinely interested in becoming a millionaire online, you have to write for a purpose — writing quality, honestly, and passionate.
My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style. -Maya Angelou
Readers know. We want you to become a millionaire, not just a part-time money maker. Have passion; your readers will flock to you.
You Aren’t Reviewing Your Posts
Some people are natural writers. Great posts are written by people who edit, re-read, and make changes. Be thoughtful before you hit enter and publish your post. A tip we do after reading and editing the post. We wait a day or two, then re-read the published post. Just giving it a day or two provides you with a fresh look. The best way is to subscribe to Grammarly. It’s not expensive, but it’s probably the best grammar program online. It works with any WordPress editor, Gmail, and other writing programs. Honestly, if you don’t do anything else, just buy Grammarly.
Not constantly writing
You posted twice this year. If you are blogging to make money, you need to be continually providing value to your readers. Otherwise, they won’t follow you. They won’t take you seriously.
Blogs need to be updated continuously, added too, and expanded.
Why would anyone read my blog? Because you wrote one and were consistent in keeping it updated and fresh.
Conclusion
Remember the Millionaire Mindset article; momentum is your key to success. Even though these are common mistakes, it should be in parallel to generating content. To summarize:
- Complexity, words and too much information
- You aren’t speaking to your reader, too much self-indulgence
- You only write to close the deal, not provide value
- You don’t care
- You aren’t reviewing your post
- Not constantly writing
My favoriate community for building blogs, getting feedback, and working with others who have a common goal is Wealthy Affiliate. We see people who constantly blogging and generating great incomes, not just a few thousand a month either.
We’d love to hear some other mistakes as well. Comment below with your ideas. And ask questions if you need help.
Thanks for the post, it has helped me rethink a little. Sometimes i try to start on paper and when i think im ready to use it as a guideline, I have only used maybe a third of what I had written on paper. And then I find later i could possibly have quite a few different things that i could write about, that at first was intended for one post. Thanks
Glad it helps. Writing is a habit, I know when I personally started, it took me a while, but I found that my blogs got longer, more detailed, and I ended up generating way more content in a single week than before. Keep up the great work!
Awesome tips–I’m a new blogger and am very encouraged by your advice. Thank you for taking the time to write this!
Glad the tips could help!
Thanks for this post! You’ve covered a lot of the important points. I think it’s essential to hone in on the fact that even if you have great SEO skills and can get yourself ranked well in Google, that won’t mean a thing unless your site and the content of your site caters to the needs of the audience! Thanks.
So true, just because you’re #1 on a page, doesn’t mean people stay.
Hi JB,
Great information and tips in this post.
It’s always important to write from the perspective of the people you want to reading your posts.
Don’t overthink things and try to make it perfect. Just write naturally and the more you write the easier it becomes.
I like the tip about re-reading the published post after a day or two. I’ve actually noticed the odd spelling mistake when re-reading some of my posts. I’ll definitely be using this tip from now on.
Thanks and Best wishes,
Michael
You’re absolutely right, you need to write from the perspective of the people. I’m glad you reiterated that point.
Hey there! These are some awesome tips you’ve laid out about getting people to read blog content. I agree that it should be easy to read and understand. I used to try to make things sound so complex to try and demonstrate my knowledge but people would get confused and stop reading.
Thanks for sharing!
Marlinda
Keeping it simple! That’s the key. Thanks Marlinda.
I appreciate this post. It gets to the heart of why most people do not stay very long at a blog or website. Too many bloggers and writers go on and on just to create a large word count.
Valuable content that helps the reader is key and your article speaks volumes to this!
Thanks JB
Dallas
Thanks, yet bloggers need to connect to their readers, not just throw words on a post.
Hi JB!
I’ve personally seen many of the mistakes you’ve mentioned, and I’ve even made quite a few of them. I’ve been blogging now for 3 years. When I first started, I was working on a Christian Lifestyle site and I really had an obsessive interest in dissecting biblical scriptures very deeply. My writing style was complex and I was writing inconsistently. Over time and practice, I began improving what I was doing, and when I joined Wealthy Affiliate, my learning curve sped up drastically. I recommend WA to anyone who wants to improve in internet marketing. Great and informative post.
WA has been a lifesaver for many bloggers. I’m the post glad it resonated. Blogging for a wider audience is different than writing details. Readers need to connect, and to connect, they need to read it simple. Thanks Tiffany.
You’re right, some of the tips you’ve shared point to the self-indulgent writer (which most of us are guilty of at one time or another). And I get so eager to publish that I forgo the editing process and then regret it! No matter how many articles I’ve published, I still need a checklist to remind me to edit and re-edit.
I use a checklist as well. It keeps me honest.
This is an excellent look at the worries behind most bloggers and webmasters in modern day internet.
I’ve often ended up in the hole you cover here – slipping analytics, comments on posts drying up – why is my work so unpopular all of a sudden?
Do you feel that a lot of the time, online content publishers get a little too worried about their work’s popularity too early, i.e. the don’t give it enough time to rank and spread across the internet enough?
Great question. Yes. I would say the main reason failure happens, people give up way to quickly. Most of us have this dream that we write one post, it goes viral, and thousands of hits happen in a single day. The reality, we write a good post and eventually people read it. The only way to get those thousands of reads of day is to write hundreds of articles and overtime accumulate the following and immediate traffic. If we don’t have traffic, it’s quiet. Time, hard work, and great quality gets the high hits of traffic. But when a post does get traffic, then it may be time review again, even if it’s in a few months from the time of posting.
You definitely practiced what you preached in this post. It was simple and to the point.
I am still relatively new at WA and still finding my way.
* Things are better by not trying to provide too much information.
* My blog speaks to the reader with very little to no self-indulgence.
* In the beginning I was trying to close the deal. I had AdSense all through my posts to the point it annoyed me. If I was annoyed my readers had to be too. AdSense has been discontinued altogether. So overall I’m doing much better in not trying to close the deal.
* Not reviewing my post thoroughly enough happened a couple of times. That was due to being in a rush to publish. I corrected that quickly.
This post has been a great review for me and I appreciate you for writing it. WA is the greatest if we use the resources made available to us.
All the best,
V. Pearl
I’m glad you’re getting value. I think most bloggers do the same thing, try to close the deal quickly without thinking about who is reading. There’s nothing wrong with a little direct – Click Here. But ultimate quality content rules the reader.
Hello JB,
A very interesting question, why should people read my blog? Your answer the truth makes everyone think that we are dedicated to creating content on our sites.
For me it is a new profession that I am learning, taking my first steps. I love to understand what I read (it’s not always like that). The simple and clear are the most important characteristics.
Writing for my readers will be my premise, time will tell. Thank you very much for sharing. Regards!
Claudio
Good luck! I’m glad you got value, it’s important to always think about who is reading it.
Thank you for this article, very much great information in it.
Special I think too many make the mistake that doesn´t speak to the readers but instead to Google. in probably understandably because you won’t get the attention of the Google ranking to get to exciting readers. But at the same time when you write like that, it will in at least many cases be uninteresting for the readers. Particular, if you are writing the same keywords again and again.
But I would, if it is ok, to ask you about your opinion which troubles me a lot when someone is writing about an offer to me, like courses for example. I have the feeling that most of them come from the USA so maybe its something in the culture there which works there.What I have in mind that they talk about course you have interesting about. And to get your attention, many times, directly. To convince you this is a great offer they add more and more statement (testimony or similar) so you need to go very much down in the article to see the prices. Most of the times now I skip it, because I know it, to see the price before so I now wasting time to get to it. But when I look at things like that I get the feeling that they, writers, are afraid about the offer cost too much.Are I´m wrong in your opinion that this strategy could be added to the mistake in writings?
You bring up a good point. There is a strategy and psychology to long sales pages. The main part isn’t the price, its your investment as a reader. When you read through the entire article, you’ve invested your time, so the price is irrelevant, you’re ready to click on it. It’s a formula for sales letters. Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of the format. I prefer to give quality content. And be upfront. Allow intelligent readers to make good decisions.