.
After researching, consulting and listening to people and “experts”, observing the success of many, you also decided to create your blog or your company, but some time has passed and the result has not yet come.
And naturally came questions like: “What did I do wrong?”, or “what remains to be done?“, or yet “why doesn’t my blogO does it work?”.
The frustration is understandable, but these types of questions are also pertinent.
This type of question is the starting point for changing the situation and that’s all we’ll talk about here today!
Don’t people read blogs anymore?
Yes, people still read blogs. But it is also true that they no longer read them as they did in the past.
Knowing why requires seeing and understanding the context.
When we know the details of the evolution of the Internet, it is common to have a chapter dedicated to highlighting the role of blogs and how they are important pillars of content. In fact, blogs were the first promotional tools that put prominent characters on the Web, bloggers, or, if you prefer, digital influencers, in the spotlight.
However, this same story shows us that in the face of the great and rapid succession of facts, other content formats gained prominence, particularly videos. Yes, many bloggers began to prioritize the production of video content, especially on YouTube, which earned them an additional classification – “youtubers”.
In parallel, the emergence of social networks of all types and shaped around a wide diversity of characteristics, served as an instrument to present content that was previously only available in text format, in a much wider range – images, short texts, longer texts , audios (podcasts), “lightning” videos and, if you prefer, a little bit of everything.
Blogs have gained “competition” and we even addressed this, in the post entitled “Are blogs’ days numbered?”.
In short, if you like stroganoff, now in addition to the traditional presentation on the plate, you can choose to have it as a filling for pastries, pizza, inside a baked potato, in an escondidinho or whatever else you can think of.
Therefore, there are still those who read blogs and value well-written content with a more “traditional” presentation, but the variety of ways to present content also reaches those who are satisfied with an infographic, or a few images, or a 60-second video, or maybe an audio.
The increasingly powerful features of smartphones and the many social networks and their characteristics have allowed different generations and their respective preferences to be served well beyond the texts of the first blogs.
Today’s blogger also has an Insta, a YouTube channel and perhaps a TikTok account.
With this scenario in mind, we can now answer what brought you here…
The 7 most common mistakes made by a blog
In general, blogs that don’t work make mistakes that are common to many of them. Some are more decisive, as is the case with the first on the list, but in general the majority fail due to a combination of factors.
The first step is to adopt a critical and realistic view of which points you may be neglecting, so that you can know what needs to change.
1. Not knowing the persona
As basic as it may seem, this is a fundamentally important point. Probably the most relevant.
Knowing the persona for whom you produce content is the principle of any and all guides on the matter and, therefore, you should probably know who she or they are, when there is more than one.
But perhaps I missed a priority aspect in this regard. If she belongs to generation Z or Alpha, it is no exaggeration to say that it is almost a “mopping ice” job.
No, we are not saying that the new generations do not read. But they favor other, more dynamic, faster ways of presenting content. Furthermore, in just a few seconds they are able to decide whether content is attractive to them or not and prioritize who gets straight to the point.
An approach like this post is tedious and even unnecessary for the majority and they only read something like this if absolutely necessary, probably skipping to the points that interest them.
Therefore, if your persona belongs to the youngest, achieving success with a blog is a most difficult task and without a digital presence on digital networks, the result will be minimal.
2. Having no identity
The second common mistake is the blog not having an identity.
The blog’s identity is manifested among many things, through the way it is written. Some people call it style.
Successful bloggers who later become YouTubers, among many things, have their own characteristics, which are immediately recognizable by their followers. This is an aspect that is usually decisive in winning over your audience.
Imagine a blog about food, for example. There are countless, but lovers of pleasure at the table do not follow them all, but those with whom they identify and who use their own language that communicates.
Discovering the points that characterize you and printing them on your blog is essential as this brings together two unknown people in the digital world, but who have the same interests, in the same way that happens in real life, even if it is a company blog .
3. Love for themes
This error is also very common to be found in blogs that fail to gain an audience.
When you look at the history of every successful blog, the blogger is invariably passionate about the topics they present.
Anyone who is passionate about anything gives special treatment to the topic of their passion. He goes deeper, sees what most don’t see, cares about the details, finds unique approaches that are essential factors in differentiating himself from his competitors.
Loving what you do is fuel to always be motivated.
4. Content for robots
In the quest to conquer a place in the sun in the digital world, it appears almost like a “golden rule”, that one must pay close attention to search engine algorithms, the principles of SEO and the “commandments” of Content Marketing .
All this is correct and do not think that it is our aim to dispute anything about it, with the above paragraph.
What happens is that this true obsession with applying the set of rules in this regard makes content producers forget that in the first place the content needs to be consumed by people and not by internet robots.
Keeping the appropriate proportions in mind, it is similar to dishes created just for photos for advertising purposes. They are beautiful and attractive, but they are not suitable for tasting.
This could be your case, if your blog even manages to bring visitors, but has a high bounce rate, or who knows, it brings someone once, but they never come back.
5. Copying others
It is natural and even unconscious – or sometimes conscious – to do what others, especially successful people, do. “If it worked with Fulano, I’ll do the same”.
However, thinking and acting like this produces obvious and not so obvious consequences:
- The first is that copying what someone does, in the sense of imitating, does not produce your own identity and as we have already mentioned, it is a mistake. Try to discover everything that makes your blog unique and that will bring people looking for these characteristics;
- Another consequence that can be equally harmful is when the “copy” occurs in the field of content. The chances of content being plagiarized at some point are high. It is possible and necessary to focus on content originality, even when dealing with subjects that everyone addresses;
- The “success formula” of a Rock ‘n’ Roll blog is not replicable in an automobile blog. In fact, two car blogs can be absolutely different in their conceptions and both be successful or a new one tries to follow the same steps as the leader and fails;
- Whoever is “copied” is not necessarily the best. Furthermore, when copying you stop paying attention to those who are not being copied. In other words, do the opposite and try to win over those who don’t have his attention. This is even a principle of companies that have become known for creating disruptive innovations;
- Copying one or many will only make you another competitor and you will have to share the legacy with many people. Even worse, because it will be an unequal competition for those who are just taking their first steps. Whoever came out ahead has the advantage;
- Those who copy can even copy the “rights”, but forget that they will also be subject to hidden errors and problems that those who have already walked the path have had to face. Nobody comments on that.
6. Not evolving
Those who try to learn from successful blogs tend to only see their current stage, but they don’t see the first steps and all those that were necessary to get where they are today.
Evolution cannot be seen just as growth in the amount of content. In fact, they are not even synonyms.
The evolution of the blog means a series of other factors, such as:
- Updating blog content, especially evergreen content;
- New approaches and approaches to certain keywords;
- Creation of new features and/or improvement of existing ones through the adoption of plugins;
- Give more attention and depth to the topics that interest your audience most;
- Understand and work on the concept of pillar posts and satellite posts;
- Blogs must be dynamic and change according to trends, but above all, according to the manifestations of their visitors and which is closely related to the next error.
7. Miscommunication
Another factor in the success of blogs is the communication they allow. Yes, because until then websites, and especially content websites and institutional websites, were predominantly a one-way street, in the sense that they informed their visitors, but the content was little or not affected by them and their respective wishes and desires.
The blogger began to guide his content through the interaction he received from visitors, whether through the comments made on each post at first, or through the engagement observed (likes, shares, etc.).
Therefore, as every communicative process presupposes, information follows a two-way path. This feedback is often encouraged, as every influencer always asks: “Tell us what you think in the comments…”.
This communication is essential and should serve as a compass that guides the blog’s evolution.
Conclusion
Creating and maintaining a blog that converts, that retains readers and that, above all, is read, requires knowing and not making mistakes that are common to many of them.
.
