7 Blogging Mistakes & How to Fix Them Fast
Finding success with blogging is similar to assembling a puzzle.
You learn by trial and error.
Below are 7 of the most common blogging mistakes that will inhibit you from finding success as a blogger.
7 Blogging Mistakes & How to Fix Them Fast
Mistake #1: Not learning from your mistakes and failing forward.
This is the biggest mistake of them all, so listen up.
If something isn’t working-if you find yourself repeating the same process and getting the same poor results-quit doing it.
In order to be successful blogging, you must be a critical thinker. You must be able to expand your capacity to think of new ideas to try if something isn’t getting you results.
When I reached a point where my traffic had plateaued, I looked to my main source of traffic to determine where the problem could be: Pinterest.
My Pinterest pins weren’t that great. So, I made a plan to come up with new designs and revamp older pin designs.
I paid attention the designs of popular pinners and pins in my niche for ideas, took a program called Pinterest Traffic Avalanche, and used Pin Templates to help me create better looking pins.
As I created new pin designs for older blog articles, I took a look at my SEO keywords and realized they were vague and terrible in serving their purpose: to drive organic blog traffic through keyword search.
Who was going to discover my article, 3 Morning Routines You Need to Stop Doing, with an SEO keyword like “morning”?
When I wrote those articles and set those SEO keywords, I was a newbie and didn’t know any better-but now I do, so I changed them.
As you gain experience as a blogger, it’s important you go back to older posts to make corrections where needed.
Sometimes the difference between where you are now and going to the next level is as simple as revamping old content.
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Mistake #2: Not getting started with email marketing immediately after launching your blog.
One of the best quotes I have ever heard regarding blogging is this:
“The money is in the list!”
I know it seems pointless to start with email marketing when nobody other than your mom is visiting your blog.
But eventually your traffic will build, and you need to be ready.
You cannot put off starting an email marketing list.
Even when I had barely any traffic, I would still get a few subscribers here and there, and it built up over time.
And you have to build up your subscriber base in order to successfully launch your own digital products or sell affiliate products.
Basically, you can forget about running a profitable blog without an email list.
Your subscribers opt in because they are interested in your niche and the value you have to offer them.
And over time, as you send them regular content via email, you build trust with your audience.
If you don’t start right away, you’re missing out on important Intel that helps you discover what products your audience needs to solve their problems.
Furthermore, you’re missing out on discovering who your audience is. This is key to understanding what topics you need to be writing about in your future blog posts.
If you haven’t gotten started with email marketing yet, I highly recommend ConvertKit.
Their program is easy to use and they offer a one-month free trial.
Check out Convertkit here.
Mistake #3: Not setting goals.
If you have nothing to aim for, you’ll miss every time.
Obviously, the ultimate goal of anyone who starts blogging as a career is to become financially independent, quit their day job, and work from home.
But it takes that first sale to get you on the map.
That first month making $1000.
The first month making $10.
That first day your traffic hit 100, then 500, then 1000.
The first month you had 10,000 views.
I set monthly goals for my blog, and if they’re not reached by the end of the month, I adjust my strategy and try again the following month.
Sometimes I hit my goal the first time around, sometimes it takes longer.
If I don’t hit the goal the first time, I strategize a new plan to do it the next.
When you set monthly goals for your blog, you have something specific to work for. This helps you determine priorities for your blog instead of aimlessly plugging away with no real end goal or specific desired result.
Clarity is everything.
I got in a rut where my email subscriber count plateaued. My opt-ins weren’t enticing anyone to join my email list, and I needed a solution. I set a goal to reach a specific number of subscribers that month and it became my #1 focus.
After trying multiple opt-ins to interest readers to join my mailing list, I finally found the one that worked. Needless to say, I reached my goal that month and have not missed my subscriber goal since.
If you want to become a successful blogger, you need to set small goals monthly.
You can’t make your first 5k if you haven’t even made your first 1k.
Mistake #4: Trying to master all social media platforms at once.
A jack of all trades is a master of none, and every social media platform has a different algorithm to master.
Pinterest is more of a search engine than a social media platform.
People go there to actively search for information.
Because of this, Pinterest is the best “social media” platform to use when you’re first starting to drive traffic to your site.
If you try to simultaneously master Pinterest, Facebook, Instagam, Linkedin, Twitter, etc, you will likely end up frustrated.
Mastering even one of these platforms is a full-time job in itself.
The shelf-life of a Facebook post is a few days, unless you’re sharing cat videos that go viral.
Unless you have pretty images and understand Instagram’s algorithm, your Instagram posts won’t bring you hordes of traffic.
In the blink of an eye, your tweet on Twitter is already lost in a sea of tweets spouting 120 miles a second.
Master Pinterest first.
Then, when you’re successfully driving oodles of traffic to your blog, try your hand at another platform.
I recommend the Pinterest Traffic Avalanche course to learn and master Pinterest, and Tailwind to automate your pinning strategy.
Mistake #5: Doing things in the wrong order.
You can’t sell products to an audience you don’t have.
One of the biggest mistakes bloggers make is creating digital products too soon and trying to sell them to an audience that isn’t interested in them or, worse, selling them to an audience that does not yet exist.
You have to cultivate an audience first AND learn what their problems are.
This is why starting email marketing immediately upon launching is so important.
You’ll learn what your audience needs help with and it will inform you of the types of products they’d buy from you.
Another problem related to doing things in the wrong order: some newbie bloggers focus more on monetization with affiliate products or Amazon Associates vs. driving traffic to their blog.
Again, if you don’t have the audience, you won’t get the sales.
Sure, it’s smart to write articles with monetization and sales in mind, but content creation and driving traffic should be your first priorities. When you have the content and the traffic, the sales will come.
I took the Launch Your Blog Biz program when I was first starting out and this course teaches you the correct order to do things in. You can check out the course contents here.
Mistake #6: Not optimizing everything for SEO.
Sure, it can take months for your content to rank for Google SEO.
But there’s this little thing called Pinterest SEO, and you need to optimize for it to get your content seen on Pinterest.
You’re much more likely to rank for Pinterest SEO before you will ever rank for Google SEO.
Before you write anything, you need to search your topic on Google and Pinterest to see what keywords rank highest.
Your blog title, keywords, Pinterest pin descriptions, board descriptions, etc all need to be optimized for SEO. The more you can optimize for SEO, the better your chances of ranking.
This is key for driving traffic to your blog.
If people can’t find you by searching, they won’t find your website, either.
Again, I cannot recommend Pinterest Traffic Avalanche enough. You’ll become a Pinterest rock star with this program.
Mistake #7: Giving up too soon.
The sad reality is, most people quit before they’ve truly gotten started.
Blogging is not an overnight thing or a get-rich-quick scheme.
It can take months-or longer-to get that big breakthrough.
How quickly that big breakthrough comes depends on you.
Your determination and self-discipline.
How hard you work, every single day.
More than that, it takes the belief that you can.
The people who become successful bloggers don’t just get the luck of the draw-they have the belief they can be a success and they take action to make it happen.
Most importantly, they fail-forward.
They don’t make failure mean anything about them and use failure as a strategy.
I’m fully convinced those who quit just don’t want it bad enough.
And those are the people who aren’t cut out for blogging.
You have to be resilient and take setbacks, mistakes, and failure in stride, pick yourself back up, and keep going.
Final Note
Becoming a successful blogger isn’t easy.
But if you stick with it and see the hard times through to the other side, it’s 100% worth it.
When you find a sense of accomplishment in your blog despite the setbacks, when you truly enjoy solving the puzzle that is blogging, I believe that’s when you know you’re in the right place.
Are you stuck in your blogging journey?
How can I help?
Here are the two courses I took from Create & Go that put me on the path to blogging success:
Launch Your Blog Biz-Learn how to build and launch your blog in 30 days + how to get started with traffic and monetization and make your first $1000 a month blogging.
Pinterest Traffic Avalanche-Learn how to drive free traffic to your blog using Pinterest.
Where are you at in your blogging journey?
Let me know in the comments below.
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