Along the journey, the traveler learns precious lessons and they become her story to tell. This is why we’d like to share with you all those blogging mistakes we learned and still learning about as we blog. You will definitely improve your own content if you keep an eye on these not-that-deadly-okay-somehow-deadly-sins of blogging:
- No Call-to-Action’s (CTA’s): There is a reason why we underline the lack of CTA’s: Your readers want to interact for more goodies. It’s human nature to be curious and explore, especially if there is a promise of something more interesting. Make sure you insert your CTA buttons in correct points.
- Rambling: Bla bla bla, and bla. This sentence made you want to stop reading, didn’t it? Put yourself in the shoes of your reader. Think twice before you churn out long entries; reduce the noise as much as possible. Anything “unnecessary” should be anything “not included”.
- No images: Blog entries without images are like silent films; silent films died in the 1930’s. Don’t be shy in putting images in your content. GIF’s and JPEG’s are your best friends in capturing your audience’s attention. Just make sure you don’t spam your blog entry with too many visuals.
- Clickbait: Clickbait is like the Adderall of blogging. It’s so tempting. Use clickbait titles/images and get couple hundred more clicks. We even used a clickbait title for this entry. The reality doesn’t work that way though. Each time you use clickbait and get more clicks, you lose credibility in the eyes of your readers. Don’t do this to yourself; aim for long term conversion based on relevant content and titles. (We just had to sacrifice ourselves to make a point, didn’t we? Sigh…)
- Typos: tyops Are annying. Typos are like mini stale horror-movies that make your readers roll their eyes and drop your piece immediately. Even if your theme and overall composition are great, typos are unforgivable.
- Sales-pitch: Putting in sales-pitch somewhere in your blog entry is something everyone does time to time; we do it too (confession!). What matters the most is placing sales-pitches only very sparingly in those entries where pitches actually make sense.
- Unprofessional content: Look, no one expects an elegantly composed masterpiece full of Victorian era language and nun-level prude content. And if your content creation focuses on um, less professional type of content like colorful backstage lives of musicians, it’s detrimental for you to write like Jane Austen. But, even then you have to keep up a certain level of professionalism in your work. Don’t repulse your readers; treat them respectfully by having writing standards and avoiding off-color or racist jokes.
This was a short guide to becoming better at producing content. It isn’t meant to be ultimate answer to cracking the code to perfect content. So, learn what you can and do your best to avoid these 7 mistakes. We can’t wait to see your progress.
Hubspot’s great entry was our main influence, check it out here.