5 Ways Serious Bloggers Can Fail

I often wish I had this effort­less abil­ity to just post when­ever I wanted and peo­ple would just come flock­ing to my site. Or just my name alone would inspire mass amounts of traf­fic from peo­ple dying to read what I had to say. While I do have great read­ers I haven’t achieved that level yet and even when you do achieve it you have to sus­tain it.

Unfortunately despite what Internet mar­keters may say you can’t set your blog on autopi­lot and be a viable blog­ger. Blogs require a human touch to attract peo­ple. Not only that even when you are actively involved with your blog there are things that you may do that is detri­men­tal to your efforts.

How do you rec­og­nize the things that keep read­ers away?

If your blog read­er­ship has become sketchy and even to the point that your blog seems to be fail­ing here are five rea­sons why this might be hap­pen­ing:

1. Scarce or irreg­u­lar updates

Imagine that you had a job and you showed up to work any time that you wanted with no set sched­ule. Your boss wouldn’t know when to expect you so he may not even look for you to come in. Your blog is the same way. If you rarely post or just blog when you feel like it it doesn’t inspire con­fi­dence in your read­ers.

Yes, there are times when you take a break, but being con­sis­tent is key

2. Bad Content

This is a no brainer. No blog­ger wants to admit it, but some­times our con­tent just down right stinks. I have read some posts that weren’t spell checked at all. Or that seemed that there was no fore­thought into what was writ­ten. And that was on my own blog.

Sometimes we have to step back and read what we write through the eyes of some­one else. Or ask our­selves how does our writ­ing com­pare to oth­ers? It is very hum­bling, but it is a must do. If we have the atti­tude that either peo­ple will like it or they won’t, then they prob­a­bly won’t. The result: blog fail­ure.

3. Not writ­ing for an audi­ence

Blogs to some are syn­ony­mous to an online diary. They very well can be to every­one except for the seri­ous blog­ger. The blog­ger who desires adver­tis­ers to spend money invest­ing in allow­ing them to write about their prod­uct. If your blog posts are often pro­fan­ity filled rants or coded per­sonal exposes this is a def­i­nite don’t do. Imagine if news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines didn’t keep in mind their audi­ence they would have no read­ers.

Your blog is your per­sonal vehi­cle to get your ideas, views, and opin­ions into the minds of other peo­ple. However, you can’t do that if you don’t write for your read­ers.

4. Not mak­ing good use of your time on social net­works

I fol­low sev­eral blog­gers on Twitter. However, for some it was weeks later that I even real­ized that they had a blog. The URL on their Twitter pro­file led to a Facebook page and not their per­sonal blog. Their fre­quent updates were about any and every­thing but their blog. I could tell you what hap­pened when they found out their ex-​boyfriend was dat­ing their cousin, but noth­ing about their blog. Failing to use social net­works to ben­e­fit your blog can lead to fail­ure.

While social net­works can be used to pro­mote what­ever you like why not wisely use it to pro­mote your blog?

5. Snubbing your read­ers or other blog­gers

This one has a bit of a gray area. There are some blog­gers who seem to snub the so-​called lit­tle peo­ple and have plenty of read­ers. It’s kind of how the pop­u­lar girl in school ignores every­one yet every­one still wants to be her friend. But let’s be real. These are usu­ally busy well estab­lished blog­gers who may not have time to respond to every per­son who wants their atten­tion. If you are still try­ing to estab­lish your­self and get an HUGE ego (although, blog­gers need an ego and I’ll be post­ing about that later this week) because you have a cou­ple of reg­u­lar read­ers it can lead to fail­ure. While blog­ging can be soli­tary you need peo­ple.

Learn to net­work and build rela­tion­ships that can poten­tially help you get your blog where you want it to be.

Every blog­ger who sets out to make a fig­u­ra­tive mark on the vir­tual world won’t suc­ceed that is just the truth about the com­pet­i­tive nature of blog­ging. But, don’t hurry your­self into becom­ing a casu­alty by not doing your best to suc­ceed.

Thanks for read­ing,