Writing a blog post is not an easy process, and you are likely to experience some challenges while going through this process. This is because you need to stay focused all the time, which is a difficult task.
Don't worry; you are not alone in experiencing this struggle. Everyone newbie faces these problems when writing a blog post. There are many common mistakes made by newbie’s while writing a blog post. However, most writers are likely to make these mistakes when starting their first blog post.
Post creation is one of the most important aspects of any successful blog. Blog posts bring traffic, build relationships, and encourage people to comment. They also help search engines understand your site's content. That is why it's important to use your blog appropriately.
Writing your first blog post can be very intimidating if you are a newbie blogger. Not because of the medium and writing process itself. But because, as most of the newbie bloggers believe, writing good quality blog posts could involve more work than they thought.
Writing blog posts is an essential part of your SEO campaign, but making mistakes will hurt it. Let's discuss the eight most common mistakes newbie’s make while writing blog posts.
Common Blogging Mistakes Made by Newbie’s
Newbie bloggers are full of potential. They're enthusiastic, they spend a lot of time on their blog, and they want to make it big. However, they often suffer from being new and not knowing anything. This leads them to make common mistakes that harm their chances of success in the long run.
Here are the eight common mistakes that you need to know so that you can avoid them:
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Not Having a Specific Goal Before Starting
Before writing a blog post, always make sure you know exactly what you want to say and how you want to say it. If you don't have this down before you start typing, your readers will likely get confused.
Having a clear goal is crucial if you want to come through with flying colors by publishing a quality blog post. Planning takes a little time, but it can play a critical role in pushing your posts up to rank better in SERPs.
Another important thing to note here is that you should not bombard your readers with information right at the beginning of your blog post. This will cause them to become overwhelmed and stop reading altogether. Make sure you have a clear outline before writing your blog post.
Not writing an outline first goes hand in hand with setting a goal for your blog post. You've got your keywords in mind, and now it's time to start writing your post. But wait, you shouldn't just jump into it. You should write an outline first. This will save you a lot of time and effort. Furthermore, you will have a clear track to follow down the road.
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Not Knowing How You Will Engage Your Readers
Writing blog posts is not a difficult task. All you need to do is to follow certain rules and avoid some common mistakes. However, one of the most common mistakes that fresh bloggers make too often does not know about user engagement. They have no idea how to engage with readers through words.
How do you get this sorted? Start following your favorite bloggers and see how they engage with users on a personal level. Their blog posts directly address the reader. As a result, the reader feels privileged and responds to the writer's intent by reading the entire article.
When you start knowing how to engage with your readers, soon you will achieve blogging goals.
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Not Proofreading Your Write-up
One of the biggest mistakes new bloggers make is not proofreading or editing their work. You don't want to start a bad habit of posting subpar content just because you didn't spend enough time on it.
If you really wish to become a pro blogger, you have to spend time proofreading each piece. You should develop an understanding of the importance of checking your work for potential errors. If a blog post gets published with mistakes in it, you will not get the desired results. Both Google and users will get an impression that you have written unprofessionally.
Proofreading a thousand-word blog post and making corrections should not take more than half an hour. However, the time spent on proofreading is worthy.
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Not Planning Your Blog Post
This goes hand in hand with setting the objective of your post. One of the biggest mistakes that newbie’s make is not planning their content. Sure, you are excited to start a blog and write posts, but this does not mean that you should just write about anything in your mind. You need to plan things ahead before putting your hands on the keyboard.
To plan your content, you need to understand your target audience. What are they interested in? What are their needs? What are their questions?
Each part of your blog post should be good enough so that it can attract tons of visitors. The conclusion of your post should be just as strong as its beginning. This is where you get to wrap up all of your thoughts in a nice little package for your reader.
It's almost like giving them a gift! And don't forget about that call-to-action at the end of your post. Make it as powerful as possible so you can keep your readers engaged and coming back for more interesting stuff.
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Not Researching Your Keywords Beforehand
Before you start writing your blog post, you need to know what words people are searching for that are related to that post. That is what we call keyword research. You have to look for the right set of keywords that you can use to reach the target audience.
You can use Google Keyword Planner to find out what people are searching for online based on a specific keyword. This will help you come up with ideas on what topics to write about and the specific keywords to use so that your posts will be found on search engines.
Aside from Google Keyword planner, there are many other keyword research tools that you can use to get a slew of potential keywords for your blog post.
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No check on word/character limit
This is another grave mistake on the part of beginners where they believe that simply putting up piles and piles of text inspires readers, they believe that the writer is so well versed about the said topic and maintains a strong knowledge base. This is a total fallacy, an entirely wrong perception.
In this transformed busy world, readers barely find time to read articles, mostly love watching graphical and video representations. Only those who love reading get inclined towards written articles. Now this is all about guts, writing style and substance in your content that keeps your reader intact and goes through the entire write up.
We know that most social media channels and even websites follow a certain pattern and a standard limit of word or character count on their forums. Given this standard restriction, you cannot beat about the bush and blacken the pages for nothing. So keeping a strict check on your word/character limit is very smart and meanwhile essential.
To overcome this hassle, there are a number of online character counter tools available online that come pretty handy without any inconvenience of installation, subscription, or even sign up.
All you need to do is find a credible character count online, paste your text there and it will instantly show up a detailed count of your words, characters and a lot more additional details that will help you limit your writing within the confines of standards.
These online character counter tools are a literal blessing since they help you a lot in writing and meanwhile they do not charge you a penny, sounds great right? Still the best part is that you do not need to download and install any software, nor do you require any sign up or subscription. All you do is visit, count characters, and simply go.
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Don't Expect Your Blog Posts to be Perfect
Another mistake that newbie’s make is trying to be perfect. I know it's hard to expect perfection from yourself when you're just starting out but don't worry too much if you made some mistakes because we all do. Many bloggers still make mistakes while writing even after years of doing this, but hey, it's okay as long as you learn from them, right?
No matter how experienced you become over time, mistakes are likely to come along the way. But the good thing is that you should not stop learning from them. In fact, you cannot say any blog post is perfect since there is always room for further improvements. New things become part of the blogging process, and bloggers need to use them to be able to keep up with the latest trends.
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Not Learning from Experienced Bloggers
As with anything in life, the only way to get better at something is by learning from others' mistakes and successes.
Many bloggers start blogging with the impression that they will write flawlessly. They follow their style and stop looking at other professional bloggers. This is not a healthy practice to follow, especially if you want to become a prominent name in the blogging industry. Not learning from experienced bloggers is a big mistake that fresh bloggers make.
Life is a continuous learning process, and you can never say that you have learned everything. Therefore, you should start following professional bloggers and read their blog posts. This will help you learn a lot from them and eventually take your writing skills to the next level.
Conclusion
Blogging has become a mainstay of digital marketing, which means that there are more people creating content than ever before. With all that competition around, you want your blog posts to stand out from the crowd.
We have seen many newbie’s making these mistakes, and many are still doing it. I know it's not easy for newbie’s to avoid these mistakes because they're new in the field and have no idea about the basic rules of writing a good blog post. But, if you can understand what mistakes you're making, it will help you avoid them in the future.