teachaWhether you’ve only just decided to launch a blog for your business or you’ve been blogging for a while, this blog will help prevent blog writers from falling victim to some of the most common business blogging mistakes and teach you how to fix the blogging mistakes you might already be guilty of making.

Mistake 1: Not integrating your blog with your website – your blog is published on its own domain, separate from your company’s main website. Even worse: your blog is published on a free blogging platform’s domain such as Blogger.com, wordpress.com, or Typepad.com.

plusEasy Fix: SUB-DOMAIN our recommendation of the ideal home for your blog is on a sub-domain of your main website (e.g. http://blog.website.com). OR WEBSITE FOLDER

Another good alternative is to put your blog in a folder of your main website (e.g. http:// website.com/blog). Both of these options will allow your corporate website to benefit from the search engine optimization advantages your blog will generate.

Mistake 2: Publishing too much product-centric content – The content you publish on your blog is too heavily focused on you – your products, services, achievements, and why you’re awesome – and it’s seriously lacking thought leadership.

plusEasy Fix: Change the way you think about content for your blog. Instead of creating product-focused content that is unlikely to get shared, consider spending more time on educational, data-driven, or especially thought-provoking content relative to your industry. This type of content has a much better chance of attracting readers — and spreading.

Mistake 3: Publishing infrequently / inconsistently – you have a blog, but you don’t publish posts on a regular basis, and when you do post, you’re not publishing enough articles to make your blog effective.

plusEasy Fix: Make a commitment to the upkeep of your blog. The most common frequency we observed for business blogging is weekly, so start by striving for at least

one blog post per week and work your way up. If time or bandwidth is a major concern or deterrent for you, consider other ways to source content for your blog.

Mistake 4: Publishing off-topic content – Your blog is unorganized, all over the place, and lacks a concrete, unified theme.

Easy Fix: It’s about time you decided on a focus/topic for your blog. Spend some time figuring out what that is, and keep that focus in mind every time you create blog content. Tips for defining your  blog’s focus:

  • Think about the goals of your blog. what are you trying to accomplish by publishing a blog?
  • Generate a list of keywords that describe your industry, products, or services, and see if that helps you come up with a focal point. 3
  • Is there a specific industry-related topic on which you or your business can share expertise or knowledge?
  • what does your audience want? ultimately, you’re trying to attract
    a certain audience for your blog. Think about the persona(s) of your ideal customers and consider what information they might be looking for that might lead them to your blog, and ultimately, your product/ service offering.

Mistake 5: Offering no content variety – your blog is a monotonous stream of the same type of content, offering no variety and boring your readers to death.

plusEasy Fix: Variety is the spice of life, so blog writers start spicing up your blog by introducing content variety. Think outside the box, and brainstorm a style bank of different types of content you can create for your blog. The following page provides a solid list of ideas to get you started.

Mistake 6: Failing to encourage engagement – your blog is a one-way platform for your ideas, offering no way for your readers to engage in conversations, interact, and provide feedback or insightful commentary.

plusEasy Fix: Remember that your blog’s readers are critical to the success of your blog, and treat them as such. By publishing a blog, you’re also creating a community of potential customers, and these prospects like to be heard. Take the following steps to make sure your fostering interaction on your blog:

  • Keep comments open
  • Monitor and reply to comments
  • Don’t moderate comments
  • Ask questions
  • Listen to feedback

Mistake 7: Neglecting to optimize for search – you’re not actively doing anything to take advantage of your blog’s power to help you get found in search engines.

plusEasy Fix: The number of terms that a website can rank for is directly related to the size of the site. More often than not, the difference between a 50-page website and a 500+ page site is a blog. Because of this, blogging is an absolutely essential practice for SEO and traffic-building. More indexed pages mean more opportunities for keywords, so develop an SEO strategy for your blog and implement that strategy for every piece of content you create and publish on your blog.

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