9 Terrible Business Blog Mistakes That You Should Never Make

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A business blog is exciting to start up for beginners because they want to earn a reputation and money. Blogging for business is the foundation of your online entity as an industry expert. There are also people who want to make blogging their primary source of earnings.

[Tweet “Small business blogs are cheap and effective promotion tools for local businesses.”]

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If you are a full-time blogger and you are blogging for a living, people think that it is so easy when you are receiving a paycheck just by writing on the internet.

The real scenario is far different, and earning from blogging is not easy at all. The real challenge for beginners starts when they make their first few blog marketing mistakes.

If you follow search engine algorithm updates, you understand the invincible power of content marketing to gain more traffic and link building to gain more authority.

So having a blog on your website is a great way to display your information. It is like a traffic magnet for your business.

Compared with a few years ago, content marketing is the most powerful way of getting traffic to your site:

Content marketing data
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(Source: HubSpot)

Business Blog Mistakes That Cost Time & Money:

Mistake 1 – Idea generation in the wrong direction.

Idea generation in the wrong direction
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You can have the spark of an idea at any time of day. Whether you are driving, or watching movies, or speaking with your boss, an innovative blogging topic may hit you. But that does not ensure success. An innovative idea only has the proper implication when it perfectly merges with your business and/or brand proposition.

Solution: Let your blog serve your company goals.

As your business blog is highlighting some real life issues in the industry, a business blog post should share the common goal. Address industry problems and search out possible solutions.

To attain more clarity, you can chat with industry leaders, or at least your company manager and sales team, to understand the frequent problems they face.

It will help you interpret everything from the ground level and figure out the best possible solution.

This process makes your business blog more useful, and ultimately, more valuable.

Mistake 2 – Your writing style is very stiff.

Blog writing is not like book writing or research paper composition. At the initial stage, you may be very confused by the writing patterns. You must be aware of the fact that your blog is the solution to the problems that people are searching for online. If the writing style is very stiff, people cannot enjoy reading it.

Solution: Write the way you talk.

The writing style of blogs should be very conversational. This approach can make a reader relate the content in a much more comfortable way.

Even in business blogs, the reader must feel that they are communicating with real people, not robots.

Mistake 3 – You think people care about your idea.

Mistake
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I know this sounds rude, but it’s the truth. If you think that people are interested in what you have to say, you are wrong. Until you can create your brand, they don’t care about your content. Your readers only search for their queries, and they are only interested in the value they are earning.

Solution: Reflect your personality in your writing.

Whenever you are delivering information, try to imprint your own personal writing style. It can engage people more, and it becomes the branding point for your business blog.

For example, if you can insert humor in the midst of a serious business blog, people will find that content more engaging rather than a tedious research paper.

Mistake 4 – Don’t write about broad topics.

At the beginning of your career as a business blogger, you may have chosen broad topics:

  • How To Make Money Online
  • How To Start Blogging
  • Social Media Best Practices

It’s going to be difficult for you to really dive deep into these topics, especially if you’re only starting out yourself. If you do not also cover the minute details, your content quality will be very diluted. Don’t choose broad content ideas for a business blog.

Solution: Create specific content.

The best way to get attention is to be very specific. The engagement on your content will be more exciting and you will be able to convert more leads.

Mistake 5 – You are not using exact data.

You are not using exact data
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If you need to make an argument, you’ll need context. The validity of your point must be more credible, and that cannot be possible without sufficient data.

For example:

People are using Instagram more nowadays. In the U.S., Instagram usage is supposed to grow 10.6% this year, compared to the 3.1% growth of the social network sector.

Data-driven content is much more useful to root the trustworthiness of the points you discuss.

Solution: Use data and research to back up your argument.

To get reliable data, you must go through research papers and find out key data points to support your arguments. This data must be relevant to your content, and readers must be enriched by this data.

You can find free research papers here:

Mistake 6: You are careless about plagiarism.

After the Panda update, thin or duplicate content has been penalized heavily. Plagiarism was never rewarded in school, and it won’t be rewarded for a business blog.

Many bloggers who imagine escaping with a copy/paste process don’t know that Google bots are highly alert. They will heavily penalize your blog and rank it down in the organic search engine listings.

Solution: Learn to cite your sources.

Sometimes you have to refer to other content or stats to enrich the content’s logic in your business blog. You should learn how to cite content from another source on your site.

Things to do:

  • Quote the original author.
  • Give the credit for their idea.
  • Mention the source.

It is not at all super complicated. You just need to practice the process.

Mistake 7 – You forget to revise.

After writing a piece of content, most bloggers just publish it. No! You need to read it again.

Solution: Edit the content once more after writing (read about proof-reading here).

After writing content, invest 30 minutes more in editing that content. It will clean your piece from grammatical and sentence construction errors. You must fix the typos and check the flow of the content.

What you need to check:

  • Topic selection
  • Article structure
  • Copy editing
  • Supporting elements
  • Title selection
  • SEO friendliness

Mistake 8: You are not consistent.

You are not consistent
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You perhaps already know that the more frequently you update your content, the more visits you will receive.

This consistency matters a lot. If you have updated five blogs in a week, the next week the number cannot go down to one or two. It will confuse your readers.

Solution: Use an editorial calendar.

You must make writing your blog a consistent habit. You have to plan your content in advance by making sure it is consistent with your marketing strategy.

Mistake 9: You are writing the wrong thing.

You are writing the wrong thing
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Bloggers, beginners or pros, are very conscious about traffic. After the initial spike that comes from publishing new content is over, many bloggers start to wonder why that traffic is not steady.

It is very natural for you to lose hope when you find that your old blog content is not aggressive enough to draw in more traffic.

Solution: Focus on the cumulative potential of organic traffic.

Rather than focusing on the short-term traffic, you must focus on the potential organic traffic of the future. Your content selection must focus on evergreen content.

This will generate long-term traffic. This will help even out the spikes.

Just make sure that your content is relevant, laser-targeted to audiences, and is information-rich.

And don’t forget to add a call-to-action in your content.

Bonus: 5 Mistakes To Avoid To Become A Successful Blogger

Blogging mistakes
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Mistake #1- Blogging Without Your Own Domain

Blogging Without Your Own Domain
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Most bloggers start off with a free domain from a free platform like BlogSpot or WordPress.com.

The main reason why people don’t buy a custom domain is that it would cost money, and people don’t typically like spending money on things.

But if you want to make money as a blogger, you should be willing to spend some money. This will give you a professional appearance.

You should also be aware that with platforms like BlogSpot and WordPress.com, you will never gain complete control over your blog. So I suggest new bloggers start a blog with their own domain name and their own hosting.

Mistake #2- Irregular Posting

Irregular Posting
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Regular posting is the key to success in the world of blogging.

  • You should always avoid irregular posting.

Lots of bloggers start up with a lot of passion. They end up writing every day (sometimes even multiple times a day), but after a short amount of time, they stop.

The reasons they stop are varied, but burnout is a likely cause. This is not a good sign for the readers of your blog. Avoid irregular posting, and post regularly.

It doesn’t matter if you post once a day or once a week, but whatever you choose, you need to maintain that schedule.

Mistake #3- Too Many Ads

Too Many Ads
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Lots of bloggers think that they can earn money overnight from their blog by putting up a ton of ads.

But this will irritate your readers and will cause any amount of advertising revenue to plummet.

Now, I am not against putting ads on a blog (even in the early days), but you should not put too many on your blog (especially in the early days).

Also, using too many ads may affect your search engine ranking according to the latest page ad layout algorithm by Google.

I recommend you to refer to an AdSense heatmap to add ads in suitable places on your blog.

Mistake #4- Choosing The Wrong Niche

Choosing The Wrong Niche
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This is one mistake I see all the time.

People read about the success story of some other blogger and they start doing exactly what that famous blogger is doing.

The problem is, these wannabe bloggers have no interest in the thing they’re blogging about. This causes a lot of fatal problems.

Firstly, you’ll run out of ideas to blog about in a short amount of time. Secondly, no one will want to listen to you (i.e. you won’t be able to build up your authority). Both of these things will cause you to fail.

Always make sure you’re blogging about the thing you want to be blogging about.

Mistake #5- Giving Up Too Early

Giving Up Too Early
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Everybody wants to earn money online, and they start thinking that blogging can make them rich overnight.

But when they start blogging and they don’t immediately start making lots of money, they stop.

When they don’t get any comments (that aren’t spam), they stop.

When they don’t get lots and lots of traffic, they stop.

Everyone who wants to become a blogger should keep in mind that blogging is not as easy as it looks. 

It takes a lot of hard work and patience. There is no such thing as overnight success in blogging.

Don’t give up. If you work hard and have patience, then you will find blogging success.

Business Blogging Mistakes

After you’ve written long enough about your topic, you’ll start to become more knowledgeable about what works and what doesn’t work.

You’ll start to understand that the mistakes have been guiding you toward taking the right action all along.

Learn from the mistakes of many business bloggers before you and start running your business blog with the right content, the right schedule, and the right attitude.

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Authored By
Editorial Staff at ShoutMeLoud is a team of writers led by Harsh Agrawal.

28 thoughts on “9 Terrible Business Blog Mistakes That You Should Never Make”

  1. Zaini

    “Rather than focusing on the short-term traffic, you must focus on the potential organic traffic of the future.”

    So true about this statement. We can get instant traffic to blog in short time (with social media) but the main point is sustainability. Organic traffic is the main objective because they are targetted.

  2. Arnold

    “Remember that, most online readers just don’t read the content, they actually SKIM.”

    Harsh great point! 🙂

    I fully agree. Nowadays readers are not interested to read long articles eespecially BIG paragraphs. Its Twenty20 / Twitter period so everybody is expecting short and exact information. so your point is really valid. Even I had written about this while ago.

    Giri

  3. Michael

    Mr. Debojyoti, your article is very good and and pointed on some of my mistakes… Thanks again, keep on posting such articles in future.

  4. Very helpful tips for new bloggers. I found that when I started my first blog in 2014 I made all of those mistakes and this caused my old blog to fail. This time around I seem to be doing things right and it’s all thanks to great tips like these!

  5. Lori Bachman

    Thanks for sharing these amazing points, I have started focusing on my blog but they don’t seem to reach of lot of audience, your tips will help.

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