Amateur Blogs: How to Grow Your Blog & Mistakes to Avoid

With the right strategies, amateur blogs can grow into popular, influential blogs. There is actually no absolute rule when it comes to blogging. Blogging is considered fun since it does not always have to be serious.

You can turn your ideas and thoughts into writing that perhaps indirectly inspires others. You can also get benefits from blogging. For example, if your blog is popular enough, some brands would like to endorse you and you can make money from that.

You can also use your blog to do something fun, like sharing your experience or traveling stories to your readers. If you want to start to be a blogger, there are several things that you have to know. Such as mistakes to avoid, how to grow your blog, and others. In this article, we will let you know anything about blogging.

Why You Should Start Building a Blog

As it is said before, there are a lot of benefits that you can enjoy from blogging. Below are the reasons why you should consider building a blog and being a blogger.

A blog can quickly become a medium of communication to share popular news and information. Given the thought that there are so many online blogs nowadays, you should be able to make your blog standout by offering something unique and different.
A blog can be the media to express yourself and share your thoughts about certain topics.
You can grow your writing career by writing articles or reviews on your blog.
You can also make money and profits by monetizing your blog.

Amateur Blogs: Blogging Tips for Newbie Bloggers

If you have your own blog, you will have more control over various things. For instance, the themes, topics, niche market, schedule for uploading articles, and details such as the website design. But in order to effectively upload your creative ideas, you should still consider several things. Here they are.

1. Write About What You Like

Do you love writing about culinary or reviews about foods? Or do you prefer to discuss the newest games? Or do you perhaps prefer to talk about books or movies? Whatever topics you want to bring on your blog, make sure it is something you love. A blog is the result of the representation of the blogger’s ideas.

Therefore, think again about what you want to write on your blog. If you intend to write about more than one topic, you can categorize your writing.

2. Be Different from Others

There are probably so many other blogs that talk about the same topic as yours. But do not let this make you hesitant or even give up. But you can still find gaps to accentuate the uniqueness of your blog. For example, if you love to write about handcrafts, you can provide a module or online class for training on your blog. Do research and take a peek at other blogs that are similar to yours.

Then, find their weaknesses and turn them into your blog’s strengths. If your blog is about cooking tips or recipes, you probably can ask your readers to subscribe to special recipes. Make sure your blog is unique and different from others.

3. Talk with Your Readers Instead of Talking to Them

When you are writing an article on your blog, try to talk with your readers instead of talking to them. This way, you can make your readers immersed in your writing. Make your sentences sound livelier. One of the ways you can try is using descriptive sentences that illustrate a situation or a place clearly.

Then, do not forget to insert what you feel from your senses. For example, the taste of the food, how cool the weather is, and so on. Moreover, you are suggested to use more active sentences than passive sentences.

4. Good Content is the Key

Put yourself in your readers’ shoes. Do you think they are interested in your writing? If they are not, there are probably several things that you must improve first. So, you will be able to draw your readers’ attention. If you are confused, you can learn about 10 news values and place them in your articles.

Some of them are significance, impact, conflict, proximity, and uniqueness. Once you have understood these 10 news values, you can apply them to your next writing.

5. Ability to Choose Visual Appearance

Besides writing skills, you also have to improve your ability to choose visual looks. It is because attractive and relevant pictures to your articles will be very beneficial for your blog. If reliable writings are not supported by attractive visual appearance, not many readers will be attracted. People prefer to read articles with nice images. If you cannot take photos yourself, you can use photos from free photo providers like Pinterest.

Or if you want to, you can also start to develop other skills like designing or illustrating.

Do not be ashamed if you are still running amateur blogs. As you know, everything starts from zero. One day, you can also be a popular, influential blogger as well. Focus on growing your skills and blog, then you can reach your dream to be a popular blogger.

Mistakes to Avoid in Blogging

Though there is no absolute rule about blogging, including what is wrong and what is right, there are still several things that will make it harder for bloggers to grow their blogs. Below are the big mistakes that every amateur blogger and that can reduce your audiences’ interest in your blog.

1. Not Knowing Your Target Audience

One of the most common mistakes amateur bloggers make is not knowing their target audience. They create content about various topics and discussions without caring if their readers will be interested in their writing or not. Before building a blog, it is better for you to have an idea of ideal readers you are aiming for. Starting in terms of demographics, behavior, to their interest in something. Then, do research about what they like or need and become the solution to their needs.

2. Inconsistent

Many bloggers start their blog enthusiastically. Then, along with time, they lose their sparks and become inconsistent in writing content. Some even accidentally reduce the quality of their content since they have less passion. This is a mistake you have to avoid if you want to be a professional blogger. So that if you seriously want to build a blog, have a nice plan for several times ahead.

Manage your schedule and tasks realistically so that you will be able to figure out what to do. Create a monthly editorial calendar consisting of keywords for several months at one time.

3. Not SEO-Friendly

Most mistakes on amateur blogs do not really care about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). When discussing SEO, there are 2 different groups of bloggers. The one that writes only for the benefit of search engines and the one who does not care about search engines at all. However, these are not absolute because you can still divide your content into categories, whether you want it to be SEO-friendly articles or not.

If you are interested in applying on-page SEO on your blog, perhaps you can start to learn about it first. You can also use SEO tools like Yoast SEO to check the level of SEO friendliness of your content.

4. Solely About the Writer

Both as an individual or company’s representative, a lot of bloggers make mistakes by talking too much about themselves. In fact, readers want to read information that is useful and helpful for their life. In a nutshell, they look for value from your writing, not only about your daily activities or experience. But it does not mean that you are not allowed to insert your personal story or opinion in your own writing.

Just make sure that it is still relevant to the context and do not talk about yourself or opinion too much, unless the article is about explaining your identity. Things are the same for blogs for a business. When you are writing content for a business, you can create an educational article instead of one with a specific topic that only discusses your product.

Your readers need educational information that can introduce and convince them about your brand and why they should buy your product.

5. Weak Niche

One of the mistakes that most bloggers frequently make is becoming everything for everyone. They write articles about health, food recipes, book reviews, movie reviews, games, and many more. As a result, their blogs do not have clear directions and purposes. Therefore, it is important for you to determine the niche you want to use and limit the topic you want to discuss in your blog.

But it does not mean you are only allowed to use one niche. Find topics or sub-categories that are still relevant to the market niche you have already chosen for your blog. For example, if your blog is about food reviews, you do not have to add topics about investment or politics. Instead, you can make sub-categories in your blog consisting of food recipes for your readers. Do not forget that if you want to add relevant categories, make just enough numbers of categories. Do not add too many.

6. Not Committed to the Process

A lot of people start to write a blog thinking that they will receive immediate impacts for their business. Search engine visibility and traffic will increase, then they receive a lot of money. But unlike pay-per-click advertisements, creating a blog requires effort and time.

More than just writing, you need to write an article with relevant, persuasive keywords. Do not forget to write interesting titles as well. You can plan and write content to be posted within 2 months or 3 months simultaneously in order to check how much impact you receive.

7. Focusing on Quantity Instead of Quality

Many bloggers focus more on quantity instead of quality of their content, and this can lead to mistakes. If your blog is about the latest news and you are able to make bite-sized content in large quantities at a time, this might not be a problem.

But it will be a problem if you post many articles thinking that your blog will always look up to date. In fact, it takes a lot of time to research, create article structures, add pictures, and review your own articles.

Not to mention when you need time to rest and think for a moment. Moreover, too many articles with low quality will increase the bounce rate, which is not good for your blog.

8. Unattractive Writing

The next mistake that is frequently found in amateur blogs is unattractive writing. The aims of bloggers are the same as other writers, which are to gain and maintain readers. But most readers leave a blog because of one thing: unattractive writing. This mistake not only makes an article hard and inconvenient to read, but also fades the message you want to deliver, making readers leave your blog.

Interesting writing is not only about attractive titles that make people curious. But it is also about good article structures, correct punctuation, as well as grammar that is easy to understand. If you have problems with typo, you can use tools like Google Docs or Spell Check.

But the most important thing is to spare time to research ideas, facts, and concepts that you still doubt. And do not forget to read your content again before posting it on your blog.

9. Unattractive Titles

Besides pictures, unattractive headlines or titles can also affect the traffic of a blog. It is because readers will see the title first to determine whether they want to click and read the blog or not. And most newbie bloggers do not use a title that summarizes the content of their article. When you make a title, make sure the characters are not more than 65 letters.

Moreover, create a communicative title that leads to specific targets so that potential readers feel that your article is meant for them.

Those are mistakes to avoid and tips to grow amateur blogs.

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