Blogging Mistakes You Won’t Make After You Read Here

 This is an absolutely perfect lineup of the do’s and don’ts for newbie to the world of blogging, so you have enough information to produce a good decent quality blog.

 This is just part of an absolute list of information that will work when appliied to you work.

1. Create blog posts that serve your larger company goals.
2. Write like you talk.
3. Show your personality; don’t tell it.
4. Make your point again and again.
5. Start with a very specific working title.
6. Use a specific post type, create an outline, and use headers.
7. Use data and research to back up the claims you make in your posts.
8. When drawing from others’ ideas, cite them.
9. Take 30 minutes to edit your post.
10. At a certain point, just publish it.
11. Blog consistently with the help of an editorial calendar.
12. Focus on the long-term benefits of organic traffic.
13. Add a subscription CTA to your blog and set up an email newsletter.

Mistake 1: You think of ideas that only interest you.

As much as you might read and re-read your blog posts after you publish them, you’re not the only reader, or the intended reader.

When you start blogging, ideas will come to you at random times — in the shower, on a run, while on the phone with your mom. While the ideas may come at random moments, the ideas themselves should never be random. Just because it’s a good idea in general — or something that interests you personally — doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for your company.

Solution: Create blog posts that serve your larger company goals.

The reason you’re blogging is to solve problems for your audience and, ultimately, to grow your business. So, all of your blog post ideas should help serve those growth goals. They should have natural tie-ins to issues in your industry and address specific questions and concerns your prospects have.

Need help figuring out what those goals are and how to address them? Chat with your manager about the larger company goals, and then schedule a meeting with someone on the sales team to hear what questions they get asked most often. After both meetings, you should know which goals you need to achieve and have some ideas on how to achieve them.

Mistake 2: Your writing is too stiff.

Writing a blog post is much different than writing a term paper. But when bloggers first start out, they usually only have experience with the latter. The problem? The style of writing from a term paper is not the style of writing people enjoy reading.

Let’s be honest: Most of the people who see your post aren’t going to read the whole thing. If you want to keep them interested, you have to compel them to keep reading by writing in a style that’s effortless to read.

Solution: Write like you talk.

It’s okay to be more conversational in your writing — in fact, we encourage it. The more approachable your writing is, the more people will enjoy reading it. People want to feel like they’re doing business with real people, not robots.

So loosen up your writing. Throw in contractions. Get rid of the jargon. Make a pun or two. That’s how real people talk — and that’s what real people like to read.

Mistake 3: You think people care about you as a writer.

It sounds harsh, but it’s the truth: When people first start out blogging, they think that their audience will be inherently interested in their stories and their interests … but that’s not the case. It’s no knock against them as a person — it’s just that when you’re new, no one is interested in you and your experiences. People care way more about what you can teach them.

Solution: Show your personality; don’t tell it.

Even though people don’t really care that it’s you that’s writing the post, you can infuse parts of your personality in your writing to make them feel more comfortable with you. How you do that is entirely up to you. Some people like to crack jokes, some like to make pop culture references, and others have a way with vivid descriptions.

HubSpot’s Director of Content Corey Wainwright is particularly good at this. Here’s an example from the introduction of one of her posts:

To infuse personality into your own writing, try looking for ways to relate to your readers on the topic you’re writing about — then write in the first person as if you’re hanging out with them and chatting about it. Make your tone personal, approachable, and engaging, just like you would in a face-to-face conversation.

This has been just a small part of a major writeup series that will teach you where you;ve been going wrong and how you will improve all you work from this time on.

Read, learn and prosper.

blog.hubspot.com