Blunderous Blogging – 2014’s Worst Rookie Errors to Date

Bloggers at all levels always have and always will make rookie errors – all of which are important for the rest of the blogging community to learn from. Some are silly mistakes that never should have happened and others are more sneaky in the way they come around to bit you in the rear end.Hit the web for advice on solid blogging techniques and it’s more than likely you’ll be spoilt for choice with guides on what to do and how to do it. However, it can in many cases be a much more effective approach to take a step back and look at what you should not be doing in order to modify your way forward.  So with this in mind, here’s a quick summary of the most common and in some cases detrimental rookie mistakes bloggers have been making since 2014 kicked off:

1. Overdoing the Sales Stuff – There’s a time and place for telling the world you’re amazing and how they can’t live without your product…your blog isn’t it. Instead, your blog is about the people that matter to you, as in your readers.
2. Shameless Nameless – There’s nothing more disconcerting than reading an article, a blog post or anything of a similar nature that’s been posted by Mr. or Mrs. Anonymous. This just reeks of bad writing and bad practice in general, so be sure to put the real writer’s name to anything written.
3. Blog Posts too Brief – Tossing out a few words each day or week just for the sake of keeping your blog alive will eventually end up killing it.
4. Faking It – If you aren’t really into the subject you’re writing about, don’t try to pretend you are. You’ll do much better by either being honest about it or writing about something totally different.
5. Dodgy Ad Listings – Even if an ‘adult’ entertainment site promises to pay you well for adding their ads to your blog, you’ll immediately lose about 99% of your audience’s respect…unless of course this happens to be your niche.
6. Unbroken Text – A blog becomes boring as hell quicker than you’d believe possible if you don’t vary the media.
7. Overlooking Feedback – The point of your blog is to stimulate discussion and invite feedback, so what’s the point of blogging at all if you just ignore the responses and comments of your readers?
8. Overdoing the SEO – Stuff your blog half to death with keywords and SEO filler and it won’t just be your readers that backlist you – so too will Google.
9. Relying on Guest Posts – Guest posts can be great if they’re both high quality and relevant, but don’t ever think you can take the easy road by getting other folk to pretty much run your blog for you…you need to make your presence known.
10. Bum Links – And finally, as soon as your readers pick up on a link in your blog that’s either irrelevant, clearly been paid for or in any way deemed shoddy, the rep of you and your blog plummets. If you’re going to link to external sites and sources, make sure each link counts for something.