10 Blogging Mistakes To Avoid in 2021

Every writer has a story to share about the blogging mistakes they made at the beginning of their careers. Bloggers say there’s no such thing as a mistake, only lessons learned. Let’s put the words of wisdom aside for a second and help you to avoid some of mistakes in your digital marketing.

Blogging Mistakes to Avoid

1. Using Wix, Squarespace or Weebly Instead of WordPress

Starting with a blogging platform like Wix, Squarespace or Weebly might sound easy. These blogging sites have strong marketing campaigns and there’s a good chance that you’ve seen their ads on YouTube, through fellow bloggers or on your favorite podcasts.

And to be fair, sites like Wix and Weebly do offer free plans that make them enticing to new bloggers. On the flip side though, how much it costs to blog these days is getting more and more affordable—about $65/year for your basic costs.

While these kinds of platforms do have their perks—namely that they’re free and easy to use—they also have a lot of limitations and drawbacks. If you’re using the free hosting plans from sites like Wix and Weebly, you’re also dealing with their ads and branding on your site. It doesn’t create a very professional feel, and the free plans don’t give you much room to grow your blog.

As you grow your blog, you will undoubtedly outgrow Wix’s capabilities (even with a paid plan). Squarespace and Weebly share the same issues. These platforms are fun to play with and even develop your writing style, but they’re not a good long-term choice. To complicate matters, it’s not easy to migrate your blog from one of these platforms over to WordPress if you want to get serious about turning your blog into a business the future.

Instead of using these website builders, We always advise new bloggers to start their sites using self-hosted WordPress.

WordPress platform is Essential for blogging

Self-hosted WordPress is completely free-to-use content management system (CMS) that more than 34% of websites in the world run on. Your only costs for maintaining a WordPress blog are the purchase of a domain name and web hosting plan. Even if you’re on a tight budget that requires going with cheap hosting plans or low cost shared hosting plans—you’ll still own your own blog. You can also buy great plugins and themes to extend the functionality and features of your WordPress-powered blog, but your upfront starting cost is extremely low with this route.

Most importantly, choosing WordPress will give you so much freedom with controlling the future of your blog—hence why not using WordPress is the 1 blogging mistake here on this list.

When using WordPress, you can monetize your blog with no restrictions, customize it endlessly, promote your blog content and do anything else you want with it. It includes HTML coding capabilities for even more customization, and you can bulk up your site with plugins that keep it running smoothly and looking sharp.

2. Blogging Mistakes To Avoid: Identify what resonates with your audience.

Mistake: You forget about your persona.

If you want your blog content to perform well (i.e. generate traffic, leads, and sales), it must resonate with your audience and compel them to take action. One of the biggest mistakes is assuming that your content will perform if you haven’t actually considered your audience or the actions you want them to take.

Solution: Understand your persona’s pains and solve for them.

By defining your buyer persona and the things that matter to them, you can bridge the gap with your content.

If you’re not consciously thinking about your persona’s pains, you’re just creating content for content’s sake, which is a waste of resources.

3. Broad-Spectrum Topics

We get it; as a new blogger, you want to share as much as you can, trying to capture your audience with informative content. What the old-timers will tell you, however, is that readers enjoy bite-size chunks of information more. Your content should pack a punch of knowledge with as little words as possible.

Choose a precise and well-defined topic
Be concise and don’t play around with words to fill a page.
Give your readers value for their time and high-value links to your affiliates.

Some excellent tools can help you nail your blog topics, such as automated topic generators. Don’t be shy to use whatever is available to help you streamline your blog.

4. Spending Too Much Of Time Thinking About Domain Name And Hosting

You decided to start a blog. As you know for a blog or website you need domain name and hosting. You spend lot of time researching about good and funky domain name along with hosting for your blog.

In the end you choose a domain name which is difficult to remember and hard to pronounce. This is one of the common blogging mistakes that has ever exist.

Also you have seen many people spending hell lot of time to choose a web hosting. I know choosing a web hosting is important task but you can reduce your time ask your blogger friends to recommend you blog hosting.

5. Blogging Mistakes: You Don’t Make Your point clear

Although you are invited to let your personality shine through in your writing, don’t abuse the privilege.

It’s another thing to create up too many personal experiences that bury the point you are trying to make, although it’s 1 thing to be yourself at the topic you’re covering.

Do not flow in these personal anecdotes and analogies too much. Your subscribers are not currently sitting before you, which means you can’t guarantee that you have their undivided interest.

They could (and will) rebound out of the article should they lose patience.

To prevent your writing from losing its audience, restate your purpose in most sections of this report.

The best blog articles commit to a message and send it expressing it multiple times.

6. Use data and research to back up the claims you make in your posts.

Mistake: You don’t use data as evidence.

Let’s say you’re writing a blog post about why businesses should consider using Instagram for marketing. When you’re making that argument, which is more convincing?

“It seems like more people are using Instagram nowadays.”

“Instagram’s user base is growing far faster than social network usage in general in the U.S. Instagram will grow 15.1% this year, compared to just 3.1% growth for the social network sector as a whole.”

The second, of course. Arguments and claims are much more compelling when rooted in data and research. As marketers, we don’t just have to convince people to be on our side about an issue — we need to convince them to take action. Data-driven content catches people’s attention in a way that fluffy arguments do not.

Solution: Use data to support your arguments.

In any good story, you’ll offer a main argument, establish proof, and then end with a takeaway for the audience. You can use data in blog posts to introduce your main argument and show why it’s relevant to your readers, or as proof of it throughout the body of the post.

Some great places to find compelling data include:

HubSpot Research
Pew Research Center
MarketingSherpa
HubSpot’s State of Inbound report

7. Writing for SEO Points and Not for People As Blogging Mistakes

You’re writing for people, not algorithms. It’s essential to stick to the blogging tips shared by SEO expert, but keep it real. Readers will know if you’re writing for them or only to maximize your affiliate marketing links.

When you write, imagine that a good friend is sitting across the table from you and using words that are part of your everyday vocabulary. Don’t try to sound like somebody you’re not. You won’t be able to keep it up, and your audience will see right through it.

8. Choosing a Niche Too Few People Are Interested In

This blogging mistake can be a bit more controversial. You want to pick a niche that you’re passionate about and where you have some experience, but not if there are only a handful of other people who share your interest in the subject matter at hand.

If you’re not going through the activity of creating a blog business plan that eventually ladders up to making money with your blog, then there’s no problem in choosing a niche without a large audience.

Write about whatever you love—and connect with the small community of other people who share your interests.

If you do want to make money blogging, however—you do have to consider the market value of your blog.

It’s good to have a narrow niche, but you don’t want to pick something so obscure that people simply don’t ever search for it.

If you want to know the search volume of your particular niche idea, check out Social media trends or Google Trends as starting point.

Be Sure to Use Google Trends

Google Trends is an easy way to discover what’s trending over a long period of time.

And beyond just that quick check, I also recommend doing some more in-depth keyword research to validate whether or not there’s a large enough audience for your proposed niche.

If your niche has had a moderate to high level of search volume at a steady rate for a long period of time, then it’s definitely a good option to blog about.

9. One Of The Blogging Mistakes: Giving Up So Fast

You lack motivation and determination or you are in a hurry. You want to get successful very fast.

I think you remember the race of hare and tortoise. In that tortoise wins the race by being steady and consistent.

Be goal oriented.

Failures are bound to come you may get clumsy at times but its your determination and dedication which will keep your blog going and making your path easy for success.

10. Not Collaborating With Other Bloggers In Your Industry

A significant blogger mistake is not collaborating closely together with other bloggers within your own industry or profession.

By promoting your peers and collaborating together, everyone else benefits from visibility and increased traffic. Everyone benefits!

You could put a blogging group together on your community business, or you can build friends from across the world with guest posting and commenting under posts!

Each group member will agree to discuss blog posts as well as promote posts through personal networks or websites.

Remember, there’s enough business to go around, and also you will need to get an abundance mentality so as to be a truly successful blogger.

This really is essential that most of us help one another grow!