The Unhealthy, Deadly, Greusome Sins Of Blogging

In order for your blog to make an impact with your readers, it needs to be excellent.  You’ve got to stand out over your competition.  Not just that, it needs to stand out where all other blogs (even those that aren’t your competitors) fail completely.

In order to avoid those same failures, there are certain “Deadly sins” that you need to avoid with your blog.

Using Jargon or Technical Terms

There are a lot of marketers out there and bloggers that feel like they need to communicate on the level of a physicist or nuclear tactician in order to get a huge following for their blog.  That’s really not necessary.  You don’t need to try to inflate how smart you are, people don’t care.  They want to be informed and entertained in a clear manner.  It’s a lot easier to get the point across when you write in layman’s terms.

Unless of course you’re really writing for a crowd of physicists – then you’re on your own.

Using Complex English Like A Fair Harvard Man

It’s tempting to want to gravitate toward large words that make us sound more intelligent.  It’s just like falling into the trap of using overly-technical terms.  Surprise – the average user online reads between an 8^th grade and 10^th grade level.  So everything you’re putting out with all that Anti-Hemingway flowery didactic – is putting people to sleep.

Especially when you use words like didactic.

Writing As If You’re Authoring a Textbook

A blog isn’t a technical piece of literature.  People hated school while they had to pay to go, so what makes you think they want to sit through a textbook instructive study on why blue widgets cast larger shadows during the day than at night?

Put personality into your blog.  Then people will be able to connect with you instead of just living with the feeling that they’re being “educated”.

There’s no fun in that.

Avoiding Keywords

Whether you do so indirectly or directly, you can’t leave keywords out.  You should try to get some kind of keyword use into your blog posts.  Even if you’re at the bottom end of keyword density, a little here and there is better than nothing to rank with at all.

Keyword Stuffing

So now we’re on the other side of the fence and you’re using too many.  Spamming keywords might get you some attention at first but who knows how long you can ride the gravy train before you get smacked around by Google.  You need to be careful about how you use keywords, where you use them and how often.

If you try too hard to rank based on keywords, you throw your content out the window and make it impossible for people to read it.

Lengthy Text

While people are willing to read online to a certain extent, they can only tolerate so much.  You have to make that easy for them by breaking your content up as you go along.  You have an enter key on your keyboard, learn to use it.

Keep your paragraphs limited to 3 or 4 sentences, use subheaders and try not to peddle everyone in one giant block of text.

Leaving Images Out

It’s true that content is king and people focus on writing over everything else but it’s important to mix in at least 1 image with your content.  More than 1 may be pushing it depending on the size and content of the blog posts.  You’re usually safe with 1, but putting nothing in is kind of a “blog suicide” move.  You start looking more like a textbook with images.

Get your building blocks right and blogging becomes a great method to market online and get more traffic to your site.  As long as you work to consistently improve your methods and style while avoid these common mistakes you’ll see a lot of success with your blogging.

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

Related posts:

1. Tips for Successful Blogging in SEO
2. Building Links through Guest Blogging
3. Does your Blog Suck?
4. 5 Powerful Pay-Per-Click Tips