People make mistakes every day in their lives. It’s important to learn from these mistakes in the hope that they won’t happen again. I have seen many mistakes on blogs which are easily avoidable. I’m guilty of making some of these 10 blogging mistakes myself.
#1 Getting Lost in Translation
It might be obvious to someone who owns their own blog that this is a blog. If it looks, smells and tastes like a blog then it must be a blog, right?
Not all of your readers are going to know what a blog is or what the function of your blog is. Can you easily tell what the function of my blog is? Probably not.
When you visit cormacmoylan.com you get instantly directed to cormacmoylan.com/blog. My blog homepage does not provide any information about what this site is about or what its functions are. The first content a reader will find is my most recent blog post; that could be about anything! Is that post going to inform them of what my blog does? Maybe but more than likely not.
Ideally I should have content on the root of my website (cormacmoylan.com) which informs readers of who I am, what I do, what the primary focus of this blog is etc…
#2 Make yourself known
A few months ago I added a picture of myself to my sidebar in the hope that it would improve the sense of ‘there is a real human behind this website‘.
One of the most basic mistakes of any website, not alone blogs, is the lack of personalisation.
Not having a picture of the site author, no about me page, no contact page or no visible email address is a major mistake in my opinion. You need to show that there is a real person behind the site.
#3 What’s your Blog Comment Policy like?
What separates a blog from an ordinary website? There are a lot of things but the main thing, in my opinion, is the ability to leave comments on an author’s post. Therefore, having a positive and constructive blog comment policy is critical if you wish to appease your readers.
I wrote a few months ago about ignoring blog comments and how being an absentee bloglord will win you no favors. If someone goes to the bother of leaving you a comment, why would you ignore it? You may have read the comment but the person who left the comment won’t know that unless you actually reply to their comment. David Rooney put it best in the beforementioned post about ignorning comments when he said:
If you were in a pub talking to someone and when they try to put in their 2 cents and you ignore them, you’re going to get slapped! So why is blogging any different?
It shouldn’t be any different.
Commenting on blogs is another form of conversation. What’s the point in blogging if you hold your tongue when someone attempts to discuss something with you?
Another common mistake I have noticed with bloggers the way in which comments are moderated by the administrator of the blog. For a very long time I had no comment moderation in place other than Akismet (an anti-spam comment plugin for wordpress). While Akismet blocked a lot of spam from being published it didn’t stop idiotic comments from being published. I received a few ‘dodgy’ comments a while back which forced me to rethink the way in which I handle comments.
The first time you leave a comment on my blog, I need to automatically approve it. After you have an approved comment you can post replies to your heart’s content. The logic is that if your initial comment is a genuine one why would I think that you may return to spam my blog? I believe this to be a fair measure. It protects myself from unknowingly publishing possibly offensive comments, it provides a layer of support to Akismet and it shows that I respect the people who leave repeat comments on my blog.
There are a few blogs out there who hold every single comment for moderation. I believe this is a terrible blogging mistake. If I have commented a few times on your blog, why are my comments still being held for moderation? Don’t you trust me?
By implementing such a heavy handed approach to blog comments you are possibly alienating your audience and preventing a proper flow of conversation. I can understand some corperate blogs needing to moderate every comment in order to protect their brand but if you run a personal blog there should be no need to moderate every comment. You need to be able to trust those who leave comments on your blog.
#4 Know When To Take Off
When I started blogging I had no clear objective. I wrote on various topics which interested me. There was no clear focus.
Over time I began to get more interested in Apple Macs and Internet Marketing.
I noticed that a lot of my posts were related to these two topics. I decided that in order to make the most of my new found interests that I would branch those subjects away from cormacmoylan.com and write about these two topics on different websites.
#5 Go Full with your RSS
One thing which constantly gets my goat with some bloggers is their partiality with partial RSS feeds. There are some benefits to…
#6 Don’t go over board with Ads
Who is your audience?
How much does it cost to renew your domain?
Are your hosting expenses massive?
How many clicks do you receive on your blog?
I have some ads on this blog but I intend to go ad free once I redesign my site. I’m making about $5 a week from Adsense on this site. It isn’t an awful lot and it isn’t improving my quality of life in anyway. It does however, impinge on the quality of my blog.
The ads I have on this site cheapen the content.
If you are going to us ads then please don’t place them within the main text content area either. It makes you look far too money hungry. I didn’t come to your site to look at the lovely ads, I came to your site to read your content. So why are they mangled together?
#7 Overcrowding your Sidebar
When I jumped on the blogging bandwagon I added every single sidebar widget imaginalbe to my blog. I had widgets for my mostly played tracks, books, RSS widgets, RSS subscription widgets, widgets from Digg/Netvibes/Blinklist, the list went on.
By overcrowding my sidebar I was doing two things. Distrubing the design of the site and slowing down my page load times.
If there is no benefit to the widget, if it just provides that bit of ‘glitter’ then dump it in the bin. If the widget is somewhat usefull, MyBlogLog for instance, then maybe placing it within the footer might be a consideration? The footer generally tends to load up after the sidebar so this could curtail the visually slow load of your blog.
#8 Mingle
There is little point in starting a blog if you don’t mingle with other bloggers yourself. Leave comments on blogs which interest you. Add them to your blog roll. Subscribe to their RSS feeds.
If you find your blog roll is becoming too big then moving it to a standalone page might be a good idea.
The subscribe to comments plugin for Wordpress is a decent extension which improves the ‘mingle’ factor on Wordpress. This extension alerts commentors about replies to comments and can thus improve the discussion within your blog posts.
#9 Unique Blog Design
I have been using themes on this blog since day 1, approximatley 18 months or so ago. I should have really designed my own blog by now in order to stand out from the crowd that bit more.
#10 And finally..
What’s your own opinion?
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thank you for visiting! Cormac
17 responses so far ↓
1 Dave Davis
// Jan 30, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Absolutely LOVE point 5! Genius.
2 Jens P. Berget
// Jan 30, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Great post. I agree with everything you just wrote.
I have done all of the above mistakes myself, and just recently I have become a better blogger. Well, according to myself.
I think it’s very important to focus on a niche when it comes to blogging. If you are blogging about everything, the only people that will be interested to read it will be your family and your close friends.
3 Gamma Goblin
// Jan 30, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Some interesting points but I’m not sure how you can class these as mistakes though, annoyances perhaps but hardly mistakes. Unless youre out there trying your best to aquire as many readers as possible you should just do what feels right to you, its your blog afterall, not some compitition. If you want to put flashing neon gifs all down your sidebar then just do it. People might not come back but it as long as youre happy with it then its fine.
It doesnt really matter what a blog looks like anyway. Look how popular bebo and myspace are… and they thrive on people filling their pages with as much crap as possible.
Well thats my #10, do what you like with it
4 Philroche
// Jan 31, 2008 at 5:31 pm
I agree with all of your points - especially point 5 :).
@Jens, I agree, I tend to have phases of techy posts and then phases of personal ones. My traffic peaks and I get the best comments when the post is techy and not personal.
Due to this, I’m sometimes tempted to only post techy posts but as Gamma Goblin said - It’s my blog and I’ll do whatever I freekin well want and feel like.
I digg’d this btw, http://digg.com/tech_news/10_Common_Blogging_Mistakes
5 Cormac Moylan
// Jan 31, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Thanks for the Digg, Phil.
Gamma, I suppose it all depends on personal taste.
6 Louie
// Jan 31, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Nice work Cormac. Very well put…
7 Niall Doherty
// Jan 31, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Regarding #3: What’s your Blog Comment Policy like?
I’m still unsure how to handle the comments on a site I’m building and soon hope to launch. I want people to register and be able to leave comments under a unique username, but I don’t want to exclude unregistered visitors, because it bugs the hell out of me when I want to leave a comment on a blog but I’m forced to sign up first. That said, requiring registration is probably THE best way to prevent comment spam.
Any thoughts?
8 Cormac Moylan
// Jan 31, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Requiring registration is probably the best way to avoid ALL comments. That approach is too much of a hurdle in my opinion.
Personally I hold each first time comment for moderation and then give them the benefit of the doubt from there on in.
9 Niall Doherty
// Jan 31, 2008 at 11:39 pm
I think I need a hybrid of both approaches. People can register so only they can post a comment with a particular username, but unregistered users who post a comment would have to await moderation.
10 Amanda
// Jan 31, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Cormac-
I first saw this article on Digitalpoint. Just wanted to thank you again for this list.
I’d like to know your opinion on categories. Do you think its better to have uber specific categories for your entries, or just to keep things general?
11 Cormac Moylan
// Jan 31, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Hi Amanad,
When I first started blogging I found myself creating a new category nearly every week. As things stand at the moment I think I have posted in the same eight or so categories for the past six months. If you think you can maintain a category with posts then sure, create it.
12 Amanda
// Jan 31, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Thanks
13 extreme webmaster
// Feb 1, 2008 at 10:22 pm
A much needed list. Great info for anyone who is a beginner blogger.
14 Blogging a new beginning … | I Accept Cookies
// Feb 4, 2008 at 10:39 pm
[...] Cormac had an interesting post over on http://cormacmoylan.com/blog/wordpress-blogs/10-blogging-mistakes.eire [...]
15 matu
// Feb 10, 2008 at 5:41 pm
well I have to say that was good reading and some good points made there.
deffo worth the digging
16 matu
// Feb 10, 2008 at 5:49 pm
I shouted it out to a load of people that woul be interested in this.
17 Rick Beckman
// Feb 10, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Great tips! I especially like #8, to the point that I’m irritated that I cannot easily subscribe to posts’ comments on many blogs. Platforms like WordPress provide comment feeds, but I really don’t like the idea of cluttering up my feed reader with countless comment feeds; besides, clicking a checkbox for email subscription is much easier.
“Subscribe to Comments” gets installed on just about all WordPress installs I manage.
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