4 Bad Habits You Must Avoid if You Want a Blog that Attracts Readers

October 31, 2010 by Daniel Sharkov|

In the last weeks I have been stumbling upon quite some bloggers, complaining about not
being successful . They say that since the start of their blog neither the traffic, nor their subscriber figures have changed towards positive direction.

Nevertheless those folks claim they have done everything right and have put tons of hard work. If they have done it right, why are they stuck in that situation? The logical answer is that… well they haven’t done it right.

It seems a lot of people these days believe that one can
become an expert , just by copying and pasting random articles in a blog.

The bitter reality proves to be far different from that unfortunately. People wiling to become full-time bloggers need to remember that doing just a single thing, which obviously doesn’t even work, is not going to lead to success. There is variety of factors that should be taken into consideration for a
better blog .

And in the ever-changing blogosphere one needs to constantly adjust, otherwise failure will be short to come.

The following article is made especially for the bloggers in the described position. The next paragraphs will go through some bad habits that should be avoided if you want to gain recognition among your readers and reach success (whatever success means to you).

You don’t Care About Your Blog Layout

Design is of a great importance and a lot of bloggers underestimate it, thinking that content is the king. Even though I can’t argue about the importance of quality content, the focal point for every first time visitor is the overall look of the blog and the feel to it. Having three or four sidebars, full of useless widgets is only going to make your visitors more confused. In order to make them stay longer, you should strive for simple, but easy to navigate blog. Always think twice before adding any additional coding to your site and ask yourself whether it will actually help your visitors.

Choosing color combinations wisely is another important factor for a successful blog. Everything flashy and bright should be avoided if your topic is something along the lines of business and marketing. It just seems unprofessional and irrelevant to your subject.

On the other hand, the less additional jpeg or png files, the faster your load times. And those do play a significant role for your visitors and now for Google as well. Recently the search engine added an algorithm, which measures a site’s speed thus a better loading time results in higher position in the SERPs. More on how to improve loading times: “ Blog Optimization– Tools that Helped Me and Tips I Followed”

You Tolerate Plagiarism

Being yourself
and coming up with original ideas is one of the ingredients for successful blogging. Copying someone else’s work is not going to do any real good to your business. You should instead perform a thorough research to produce quality and unique content. A blogger needs to have his own style – writing in general, structuring of the article, etc. So when someone reads two or more articles from you, it must be evident that they are deed of the same person.

On the other hand
drawing inspiration from other bloggers’ work is not a problem. You have the full freedom to go to your favorite blogs and start reading their articles. Checking out the comments section can also be a great source of ideas. Remember that if you want to become a recognizable face, you should stop copying the big players and instead try to be original.

You Don’t Have any Real Goals

In order to reach your desired goals your first need to have them set. Not having a goal is a common problem for many bloggers and a reason for failure. Setting realistic goals can be highly beneficial, since it serves as a great motivator for getting things done. I’m not talking about long-term goals like earning 300$ a month though. I for example try to set myself some very achievable weekly goals, such as reaching a specific number of comments on other blogs or submitting specific number of stories to social networking sites. Whatever the goal, it is always helpful to have one, as it keeps you from getting lost in the endless sea of tasks.

You Write Whatever is on Your Mind

Every blogger out there has a lot more interests than just blogging. Of course there is nothing bad in it. One just needs to keep in mind that the business blog he owns is NOT a diary and therefore it should be kept clean of everything else. For example my biggest passion except for blogging is mountain biking, but considering the fact that my subjects have nothing to do with it, I have no intention of including it in the blog. It is ok to add some more personal articles (very) occasionally and still knowing when to draw the line is a crucial skill that you must obtain for a
better blog .

As always feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section. What other bad habits can you come up with? Are the ones listed above valid at all?

Share on Google Plus

About Unknown