While blogs can be an easy way to communicate with your target audience, there are many common mistakes that people make when taking on such an endeavor.
Underestimating the Time Commitment
One of the biggest mistakes people make when deciding to start a blog is underestimating the time commitment. While it’s convenient to know that blogs can be updated from anywhere, it is more important to know that they have to be updated.
Blogs should be updated at least two or three times per week, and you need to have the discipline to keep it current. That means at least two or three times every week you have to research your topic or put your thoughts into words in a way that is interesting to read (both very time-consuming tasks), and post them online.
Overestimating the Marketing Impact
The second biggest mistake people make when deciding to start a blog is overestimating the marketing impact. It takes time and effort to build an audience for a blog—again, when was the last time you bookmarked a blog and went back to it on a regular basis? And if you did, did it influence you to make a purchase?
Irregular or Infrequent Updating
Users must be able to anticipate when and how often updates to your blog will occur. People are busy and they do not have the time to keep checking your blog to see if it has been updated—always provide an RSS feed.
Your readers need to know that everyday, or every two days, or whatever the case may be, there is going to be a new post they can read. Otherwise you will lose many of your readers. Pick a posting schedule and stick to it—a blog that isn’t updated regularly will simply be ignored.
Writing for the Search Engines and Not for the Blog
There is the growing tendency by many bloggers to write for search engines rather than focusing on the needs of their “human” readers. Putting search engines first rather than putting your readers first will almost certainly lead to bad decisions that will make your blog less usable, even if it is optimized for search spiders.
While blogs can be a great way to speak to your target market and keep them up to date on all the latest news on your business products and services, you must determine if there is a more effective, time-efficient way to communicate.