Here’s an astonishing statistic. As of April 2018, there are more than 400,000,000 blogs in the world. To put that into perspective, if you had everyone in the United States of America write a blog, all of Germany would have to pitch in to reach 400 million.
The reasons for starting a blog range from someone just trying to speak their minds and doesn’t really care if anyone reads them, or a marketing enthusiast selling a product or offering services hoping he gets contacted by his readers, or maybe a modern-day revolutionist wanting an audience to listen to his or her political and social views.
If you are creating a blog because you want people to read it, then you need to know these common mistakes to avoid wasting your time. Now, this is not an exhaustive compilation of errors in the history of blogging. This is merely a guide, and these 4 are probably the most neglected and taken for granted.
Casting a Wide Niche
You need to find a niche that you are an expert in. Ok, so now if you’re confused what a niche is, then stop reading this article, open another tab in your browser, and research “niche” for a few minutes. I’ll wait. If you were too lazy to do that, here’s a simple definition. Niche is something that you are comfortable writing about because you have extensive experience or knowledge about it.
Simply put, you need to be writing about something that’s close to your heart. A topic that you can easily flow with and not struggle to find the words to type into the computer. Don’t follow anyone else’s topic just because you see them effortlessly post daily blogs. They have found their niche, as the saying goes. You need to find and establish yours.
Too Formal, Sir
To be fair, there are websites and blogs that need to have formal content because that’s just the way they are designed. However, if you want your blog to be conversational and want the reader to relate to what you’re talking about, formality needs to go. Informal doesn’t mean impolite or tactless, it simply means you need to use words that people today will understand.
This is not to say that you go to the other extreme and start using curse language (although some websites take pride in doing that, I can never understand why). You need to write as if the person reading is right there in front of you. Use modern, relevant, contemporary vocabulary. The Old English words might sound cool in the movies, but by golly, those seldom work with your online readers.
Audience of Everyone
This is pretty hard to explain. When you write a blog post, you want as many people as possible to read it, correct? Well, that’s not always the way to go. You see, using similar logic in finding your niche, you need to specifically target your audience.
You can’t be trying to please everyone and offer a buffet of subjects and topics. Think of it as fine dining. You are serving your readers the particular dish that they want because you have done your research and you are absolutely sure that they will love this.
Why SEO?
This is not an exaggeration, you have to have at least a basic knowledge of SEO knowledge. By basic I mean, discover how to properly use keywords or key phrases, apply readability guidelines, and maybe even how to properly utilize the white space when applying images. These are not that difficult to learn. You just need to practice and practice some more.
Search engine optimization (SEO) simply means that if you write your blog post with some semblance of uniqueness and personal touch, apply some SEO into it, then people just might find your blog. You see, that’s what it’s all about. For people to read your blog, they need to find it first. And for them to find it, SEO needed. Are you getting the gist now?
Please don’t be discouraged after reading this article. Nobody ever starts out as top one on the search engines. On the contrary, this was aimed to stimulate and inspire you to start out right and to keep improving post after post after post. You never know, with enough effort and motivation, people just might actually read them, even if they live in Germany.
