It is very easy to get carried away as a new blogger, make mistakes and lose focus on the things that truly matter. When I think of my days as a new blogger, I always think about a roller coaster ride and its blend of emotions. I wasn’t aware of the lessons of blogging 101. I thought I just had to write and publish a post, and instantly attract subscribers and fans. Well, this kind of naivety led me to make many mistakes. Here are 6 mistakes I made as a new blogger.
1) Starting a blog with a free theme
This mistake is made by many new bloggers. I started with a free theme and later switched to a paid theme. I wish I had started with a paid theme from the very beginning. Since I was still learning the ropes of blogging, I didn’t know what I was missing until I switched to a paid theme. The free theme did not have many features and functionality that I wanted, wasn’t adaptable to my style, and it was not unique.
2) Lack of Consistency
When you start a new venture, there’s a lot of excitement. You have all this energy and ideas as if being in turbo mode. You’d never think you’d run out of ideas. And you publish couple posts a week. I was like that too-Then burnout and writer’s block happened in quick succession. I took a break.
Okay, many inconsistent breaks. This lack of unpredictable publishing cost me an audience. Now I commit to publishing one post every week, usually on Wednesdays. My advice would be committing to what you can and do it consistently.
3) Keyword and SEO
As a new blogger, I didn’t know anything about SEO or keywords. SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization and Keywords are important to rank in Google. Your articles have to be SEO friendly to do well on Google. A good SEO article should have long tail keywords, headings, and subheadings with the keywords, more than 300 words, adding links, optimizing your images. Having the Yoast Plugin helps out tremendously.
4) Obsessed with statistics
The importance of statistics in a blog cannot be downplayed. However, as a new blogger, I made the mistake of becoming obsessed with statistics. Google Analytics was literally my homepage. Like I said, while it’s important, it can also be quite discouraging to a new blogger! Too much of everything is clearly poisonous. I had to shift my focus to writing good content, promotions, networking and not become obsessed with page views.
5) Lack of promotion
So having great content but not promoting it on social media, is a big mistake new bloggers can make. As a new blogger, this is one mistake you cannot afford to make. People will only know your blog exists if you promote the blog on social media. Create a Pinterest business account and Facebook page for your blog. Join groups on Facebook and on Pinterest. Make sure to have images fit for these platforms as well.
6) Email List
Start building your email list from the very beginning. The subscribers that you gain will become your raving fans, friends and in the future, possible clients. Design and create an awesome opt-in and use that to attract subscribers. I’ve learned a lot about building an email list through this awesome course. Heather walks you through all the steps to build and nurture your email list.
As a new blogger, your experience can be likened to a roller coaster ride. If you commit the above mistakes you will be screaming and thinking of jumping out of the blogosphere ride. However, if you avoid the mistakes I made as a new blogger, you might as well lift your hands and enjoy the exciting ride of blogging.