Whether you are just starting to blog or you have been blogging for a while, I’m sure you have pondered the question “Why do some blogs fail?” The answer to this question can be just as important as “What makes a blog successful?”. I’m pretty sure that most bloggers do a little research on how to make their blog successful before they start to blog. I wonder if just as many contemplate on what could cause their blog to fail. I speculated on it and did a little research to educate myself on what can keep blogs from being successful. I found some common mistakes that can cause some blogs to fail while others follow the path to success.
I’m certain when someone decides to start blogging, they want everyone to be interested in what they have to say. When you are sharing valuable information about something that you are passionate about, you naturally assume there are other people passionate about reading about it as well. So you usually start blogging with the mindset that you have much knowledge about your passion and you want to share it with everyone ready to learn about it. How could everyone not be interested, right? This is most likely true but it’s also sound thinking to follow a few guidelines so you will be blogging in a way that will make people want to read it without growing bored or disinterested. You also want your writing to be easy to understand and follow. It’s important to think about why blogs don’t fail as well as why they do fail. I have listed a few common mistakes that can cause a blog to fail and ways that you can prevent it.
Not having a sense of purpose or proper direction
This is why it is important to take the time to examine what topic you want to blog about and select a “niche” before you establish a website. You don’t want to blog about one topic this week and blog about something totally different next week. You want each blog to have relevance to the prior one so your blog has a direction. Then your readers can gauge what type of content they can expect in your future blog posts and you will hold their interest so they will return to experience your upcoming blog posts with great enthusiasm.
Having a website that is cluttered and hard to navigate
You want your website to be organized, uncluttered, and easy to navigate. The first page your visitors see is your homepage. Your homepage should contain what’s on your site, where to find it, and how to contact you. You want your website easy for your visitors to navigate and find what they want to read quickly so they don’t have to click on a million things to get to the content they are interested in. Taking the time to set up your website properly is definitely worth it in the long run.
Not being consistent about the frequency of your blog posts
Whether you decide to post daily, weekly, or even monthly, you have to be consistent in the frequency of your posts. If your readers expect your blog to be updated at specific intervals and they return to find nothing new, you will lose followers because your readers will think your blog is dead and won’t bother to return. So random, sporadic posts are not a good way for your blog to become successful and will ultimately cause your blog to fail.
Having titles that are irrelevant to the articles themselves
Sure, you want to capture your reader’s attention but you want to do it with an interesting title that relates to your post. That way, your post title will attract your reader while also having relevance to the content. If your reader doesn’t feel the content delivers what the title promised, they will lose interest.
Poorly written posts
By this, I’m not speaking about content but about writing form. You don’t want your post to be filled with grammatical errors, such as word misspellings, improper word forms (such as their vs there, your vs you’re, and its vs it’s), and poor sentence structure. Your visitors want the content they are reading to be clear, concise, and easy to interpret. If your posts are filled with grammatical errors, your readers won’t bother to finish reading them. It turns me off to encounter misspelled words and improper word forms when I’m reading something. I end up focusing more on the grammatical errors than the content itself. You want your message to come across clearly. So, you should proofread 2 or 3 times, use spellcheck, or have someone reliable read it before you post it. A set of fresh eyes might notice something that you missed. I feel this is one of the most important tips to follow when writing your blog.
Not making your content easy to share
This one should be a no-brainer. When your followers read something valuable and interesting, they want to share it with friends, family, and co-workers. Make it easy for them. Include relevant share buttons for Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Lots of people will share on Facebook as well as “Like” it. Make sure these buttons are easy to access. Sharing with social media is a great way to expose your blog to new audiences and gain new followers.
Not engaging your readers
Try to follow up and reply to every comment, if possible. Responding to comments can help you gain loyal followers because they will relate to you on a more personal level. Also, acknowledging helpful comments will send your readers the message that you feel their input is valuable and makes them want to return to your blog.
Losing interest and motivation
I realize it’s hard to stay motivated at times especially if life gets busy. But if you want your blog to be successful, you have to be ready to put in the time and effort. You should ask yourself a couple of questions. Am I totally ready to commit the time to making my blog successful? Am I up to date on the topic I’m blogging about? How can you hold your readers interest if you are losing interest yourself? Make sure you are committed to having a successful blog before you start. And give it time to gain a loyal audience. As your fan base grows, your blog will get livelier from comment activity and get more traffic from social media shares. Then the rewards will be more evident. This can help you stay motivated to blog, so give your blog time to build an audience.
In closing, starting a blog about something you are passionate about can be an enjoyable experience, for both you and your readers that follow it. You get to share what you enjoy and your readers get to discover valuable information. One of the keys to a successful blog is to gain a set of loyal followers that will return time and time again, knowing they will experience fresh, interesting content on a topic they have grown to enjoy. If your blog offers your readers this, how can it possibly fail?
Article by Salah Messaoud
Hi, I am +Salah Messaoud. The founder and owner of AwesomeBloggers.com. My goal is build a community where awesome bloggers can all come together to share their ideas and thoughts with the whole world.
Salah has written 12 awesome articles for us at Awesome Bloggers
Twitter: @salahmessaoud | Facebook | Google+ | Blog → Awesome bloggers
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{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
Twitter: GrowMap
January 16, 2012 at 7:35 pm
These are some very useful tips on what to avoid. Equally critical is an expansion of the point you made in your First Mistake: your direction. Bloggers need to understand that the very best niche is your geographic location (or a major metro you are familiar with – ideally near you but it could be where you once lived or frequently traveled) PLUS a strong niche.
For example, it is easier to become one of these: “THE” most recommended blog for:
Home Improvement New York
Healthy Living Seattle
Home Schooling Albuquerque, New Mexico
Hopefully you get the idea. Most think they want the widest possible niche because the Internet is international – but what you REALLY want is to be the very best choice you can be for a very specific audience because then your blog will be shared locally and by reaching a local audience you position your blog as a great place for local small businesses to buy advertising or hire you to write about them for blog outreach, or show them how to be visible in your location online and off.
If you are one of 1000s of the home improvement blogs why would anyone recommend you regularly? Ah…but when you are THE home improvement blog that covers the best local sources for recycled lumber and who the best local contractors are and why they are so widely recommended and where to buy lighting, or bricks or construction products that are seconds, end of year closeouts, etc. –
NOW you have given your readers a great reason that local people will share and recommend you! AND for them to regularly check out your blog because you might share a deal they could really use!
Even better bloggers should consider setting their blogs up as group blogs and recruiting the very best other bloggers to contribute. All successful blogs end up publishing more and more guest posts – so why not do that early on and grow your blog faster. More writers means more regular high quality content than you can personally write and more influencers to share what you’re doing. More on that in the post I’ll share in CommentLuv.
Gail Gardner recently posted..Why We Need Group Geo-Targeted Niche Blogs
Twitter: salahmessaoud
January 19, 2012 at 10:42 pm
Gail, thanks for the comment. And thank you for expanding on the tip about creating a strong niche. I agree, inviting guest bloggers is a way to create new traffic to your blog and expose your content to more readers.
In fact, why don’t register and be one of my first guest bloggers?
Salah Messaoud recently posted..How I choose my Wordpress theme
Twitter: GrowMap
March 4, 2012 at 9:05 am
Hi Salah,
I just came across this post again and didn’t want you to think I was ignoring you. My email is so slammed I never see anything in it (but I may have found a solution to that – I’ll use that link in CommentLuv in this comment).
I have just been so super busy that I rarely can make the time to guest post but I would love to guest post for you if I can just find the time. Any particular topic?
Gail Gardner recently posted..MUST HAVE Social CRM Nimble Brings All Your Contacts and Major Social Media Activities Together
Twitter: BrianHumek
January 23, 2012 at 4:12 am
Loved this post and agree about the grammatical errors. I read a post the other day on a highly ranked blog and when I read it I thought it was written by someone who was not a native English speaker. I researched further and found out this person was from Texas, born and raised there too. Even their about page had an error or two. To me, that really made the blog second rate.
Brian recently posted..A Life Saving Example
Twitter: salahmessaoud
January 31, 2012 at 8:50 pm
Brian, thank you for the comment. I am glad you enjoyed the post. I agree, it does make an article look second rate if it is filled with grammatical errors. If you want your reader to focus on the message you are sending, you want your writing to be clear and easy to understand. Definitely one of the best tips when writing.
Salah Messaoud recently posted..What Makes Up A Good Blog
Twitter: GrowMap
March 4, 2012 at 9:11 am
Texans are at an extreme disadvantage because the schools here are really not very good. The teachers are a product of the school system and a very large percentage of Texans live their entire lives in the same area, so every generation it gets worse.
I am fortunate that I loved to read and back when books were mostly accurate when it came to spelling and grammatically correct (Tom Sawyer aside). Reading a lot makes mistakes much more obvious because they just don’t look or sound right.
It also helped that the high school I attended in California wasn’t all that great either. It had no advanced math or science classes and the business teacher was impossible – if you missed a class or test no matter what the emergency you got an F. I suspect dying would not have been an excuse.
That meant I took German, Journalism and English every semester all 3.5 years I attended – and then I went to college and took more German and English. That makes my grammar and spelling far above average (tested 99th percentile going into college) but I know it is still far from perfect.
I wonder how people with even better English skills than mine got that way? That is one of those things that makes me go hmmmm.
Gail Gardner recently posted..MUST HAVE Social CRM Nimble Brings All Your Contacts and Major Social Media Activities Together
Twitter: adriennesmith40
January 27, 2012 at 5:14 pm
Great post Salah and boy did you cover a lot.
The ones I see most people make are not being consistent with your blogging schedule, not making your posts easy to share and not engaging with your readers. Those are huge mistakes people make and then they wonder why no one wants to visit their blogs. Of course everything else you mentioned are just as crucial but even when you are doing some of it right, the rest also has to fall into place.
Great tips and I will be sharing these with my friends as well.
Have a great day!
~Adrienne
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Twitter: salahmessaoud
January 31, 2012 at 8:55 pm
Adrienne, thanks for the comment. I always enjoy reading your comments because I value your opinion as a great blogger very much. Thanks for sharing my post with your friends! I hope you have a great day as well!
Salah Messaoud recently posted..Top Awesome WordPress Plugins You Should Be Using
Twitter: AllBloggingTips
January 29, 2012 at 4:22 pm
Loved this post and agree about the grammatical errors. It would be much better if you use a heading according to paragraph instead of 1, 2 ,3 etc Mistakes
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Twitter: salahmessaoud
January 31, 2012 at 8:56 pm
Ammar, thanks for the helpful comment! I also thought it would look better with headings after I thought about it so I am editing it per your suggestions. I’m glad you enjoyed the article. Thanks again!
Salah Messaoud recently posted..Why Do Some Blogs Fail?
I am taking my time looking for the niche that I know will interest others as well as me. It is easier to be motivated and interested in my work if I know I like the topic I am writing about. I agree on the writing consistency frequency, it is better that our readers will already know when they’ll be able to see a new post.
Mostly some of the bloggers commit this kind of mistakes. Also replying on some comments on your blog is a great way to communicate to others that will urge them to come back to your blog. Losing interest and motivation, Some bloggers has this kind of problem. Awesome post Salah Messaoud this will surely help me and the others.
chanikacha recently posted..Effective Ways on How to Learn French
I find it useful Salah, your post is packed with great information and really helps a lot. Yes I do agree on your statement above about the common mistakes. Some of us committed such mistakes without knowing. Glad to know about sharing this topic will help lots of blogger to prevent such mistakes. Thanks for sharing this informative post of yours.
Farrel recently posted..XHTML Linking
This is probably accurate for blogging in its original sense, as a source of viral awareness, social engagement, interaction etc, but it definitely doesn’t apply to another (arguable more valuable) benaefit: direct traffic generation, especially for long-tail keywords. We advise all our clients who have the capacity that they should be blogging. It generates traffic and the improved publishing frequency is a ranking signal. If our clients don’t have the time to write, they can get good material from external writers.
Earl Dickerson recently posted..Project Management Software Online
Great post Salah, you have hit some good points that all of us could learn from. My favorite is that you talk about having poorly written posts and grammatical/spelling errors, yet there were a few comments posted to your article that are definitely struggling with those 2 points.
Twitter: plrnetmarketing
March 8, 2012 at 5:20 pm
Hey Salah, this is my first visit to the site, and I see plenty of familiar faces here in the comment section, so it’s probably a site I’ll enjoy for sure!
Another one I’d add is failing to set goals and plans for yourself. Not only that but we need to continually be monitoring each component of our blogs to make sure we’re actually getting a return on our investment (time or money). I recently looked at how I’m spending my days because my focus has shifted now that I’m entering my 3rd year with my blog, and I’m spending more time on Misc. Business stuff (email, backing up data, etc.) than I should be considering this falls closer to the bottom of my priorities list!
Have a great day Salah, and I’ll see you again!
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Twitter: techo_talk
March 9, 2012 at 5:48 pm
your post is packed with great information and really helps a lot. Yes I do agree on your statement above about the common mistakes. Some of us committed such mistakes without knowing
rohit kothari recently posted..3 Popular Skincare Apps for Your iPhone
Not only some bloggers fail but most of the people who starts their own blogs fails.
I agree with most of your statements but I would like to add some few more:
- People chose niches where they don’t have enough passion
- Blogs get too general and people loses interest because they were interested in something more specific. This is why I remove most of the blogs from my RSS reader.
Steven recently posted..Vocabulary Level E Answers
That was really gold mine article. Strategics for blogging specially creativity in presenting one’s topic is very crucial. Agree with Steven, one should blog in line with their passion or else everything will go south. Got a handful of tips and learning here. Learn from others mistakes and develop a strategy to combat and avoid any of that.
I like the title of this blog. What make our blog more successful. Blog must be meaningful, creative, full of information,post aren’t poorly written and much more. These all points are basic and very helpful.
Ayesha recently posted..Best free Photoshop Actions
Many people start blogs without realizing how much work they are. It takes a lot of time and effort to come up with blog post ideas and write them. The content needs to be high quality and provide value. It’s also important to blog on a consistent basis. Posting a few times a month won’t get you far.
I personally have a problem with consistently blogging. However, I must say that I have also fallen victim to publishing hard to read posts in an attempt to make them keyword-rich and SEO friendly. I’m really starting to get away from this and hope that I continue to progress through the rankings even though I’m writing less than optimal posts in terms of what Google is looking for.
Richard recently posted..Post Finals Interview With Kyle Dake
Twitter: Elena__Anne
April 1, 2012 at 4:45 pm
Great post I have always liked posts that tell people what they may be doing wrong in their post because I read so many posts at so many blog sites that have those problems. I think to myself if they would just change a couple things they could have success and content that I would enjoy reading.
Elena Anne recently posted..Insomnia and Nutrition
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