11 Blogging Mistakes I Made Early On

Almost every blogger who has moved past the ‘journaling’ stage will tell you that they and all first-time bloggers massively underestimated the amount of work and dedication it takes to get a blog successfully up and running.  The truth is we have to be writers, marketers, negotiators, social media experts, SEO experts, pens for hire and mentors.  That’s only the roles that spring to mind.  It is complicated and at the start we all make mistakes, as part of my one year anniversary I’m sharing my 11 Blogging Mistakes I Made Early On.

1. Failing to Learn SEO

Part of building organic traffic to your site, is ranking your content on Google.  To do this you’ll need to know how are where to register your site, how to use links, how to use images, keywords, things that harm your ranking and so on.  There’s a lot to learn and it takes a fair bit of effort but it is vital to growing your business.

2. Not Building Backlinks

To quote wpbeginner.com:

Backlink is a link one website gets from another website. Backlinks make a huge impact on a website’s prominence in search engine results. This is why they are considered very useful for improving a website’s SEO ranking. Search engines calculate rankings using multiple factors to display search results.

Having good backlinks leads to a good Domain Authority (DA), MoZ.com describes this as:

Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). A Domain Authority score ranges from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank.

Clients looking for bloggers to promote their content will care a great deal about your DA, it will affect what work you can get and how much you will get paid.

Not taking this into consideration was a critical mistake, fortunately there are means to increase it.  Guest posts, crowd sourcing and following best practices with regards to links to begin with.

3. Putting off Regular Content Over Perfect Content

So many self proclaimed ‘writers’ (a writer and a blogger aren’t always the same but that’s too complicated for this post) trip up on this one.

I’d say, it’s one of the more common blogging mistakes, it hurts to be a perfectionist early on.

I was caught up with my day job and a my home life which led to me putting off content that wasn’t polished enough.  This however was a massive mistake.

To be clear; I’m not saying release sub-par content, no, far from it.  It is vitally important to release quality content but not at the expense of any content.  Especially, early on.

4. Ignoring Pinterest

I still don’t have Pinterest completely on-point but it does bring in regular readers.

Quite a few actually and yet I completely ignored it at first.

What’s more, is you should not only look into implementing Pinterest into your promotion strategy but look at the best practices regarding profiles, pinning and image sizes.

5. Taking Too Long on a Theme and Logo Rather Than Creating Content

A major blogger mistake is putting off creating content and working on their blog because the theme/style or logo isn’t right yet.

You should totally build a brand, have a consistent style and something that stands out and reflects the personality of your platform.  Just don’t sacrifice this over content!

My advice is focus on getting a couple of posts out a week at the start and work on the theme and logo between that.

6. Not Using Facebook Groups to Network with Other Bloggers

Blogging is not an easy means to financial independence, it requires you to be a writer, a graphic designer, (for some) a coder, a negotiator, a planner and much more.

There exists out there numerous groups for bloggers draw knowledge and support from.  On top of this there are means of increasing your backlinks, collaborative projects and social media boosting.

7. Failing to Treat My Blog as a Business

Don’t treat your blog like an online journal/diary if that isn’t what you set out for it to be!

A common early blogger mistake is not to anticipate revenue streams, to not have a business objective and not give potential customers or business partners an effective means of reaching out on the blog.

Have a long term goal, increase your social media presence, have a ‘work with me’ page, increase your DA and be prepared with a media/press kit before a client asks for it.

8. Writing Early Content without an Ideal Audience/Niche

This ties neatly in with treating your blog like a business. If your content is your product, then your audience is your customer. Know your customer!

Personally, I focus on a broad range of topics. Parenting, wellbeing, entertainment and Lifestyle. It is better though to focus on a particular niche or two though and expand over time.

Not all of my posts are written with the same audience in mind. My parenting posts for example are usually written for a younger me, that works because there are many younger, anxious first time dads out there who could relate.

9. Failing to Utilise Hashtags Properly on Social Media

I’m still guilty of this to this day and lots of people seem to have different theories.

I could easily write a post on this topic alone.

A common mistake is to over or under use, did you know that engagement on Twitter is higher with two or three whereas Instagram is with eleven or more. All this is also ignoring the importance of using current, relevant hashtags too.

10. Not Promoting Content

One of my earliest blogging mistakes was putting content out and leaving it be. Before, TBP I did this a lot on one of my old blogs. It isn’t surprising that blog died.

What you should be doing is promoting your content on as many social media platforms as you can manage. Don’t spam though, space your social media posts apart and don’t be afraid to call back to old content every once in a while.

11. Ignoring Trends/Timing

The best posts aren’t always the ones you planned months ahead, or that the client paid the most money for. Sometimes the best content comes from when you look on Social Media, see that today is World Awareness Day for a cause you believe in or International something or other Day and you just write what you feel.

Writing contend based on these events and engaging with them on social media might be the moment you blog makes it, or you find your community or niche. It could change the course of the rest of your life in ways you don’t expect.

Keep up with events and be a part of the conversation.

So, there we have it!  My 11 biggest blogging mistakes.  If you found  ANY of these useful or informative, why not follow, like and share on the social media platform of your choice.