Here’s the thing. I took the allusion from the Bible to let you know that as bloggers, you can commit such grave acts that can forever put your business to shame. Or should I say, put you to eternal damnation in the eyes of your audience?
As online marketers who thrive on blogging to keep their businesses going, it’s crucial that you know which mistakes you should avoid. Most of the time, we aren’t aware that we’re already committing this mistake and are already putting our reputation on the line.
Thankfully, after doing a good amount of research, I’ve prepared for you the 7 deadly sins of business blogging and how you can prevent yourself from falling for them.
1. Vanity
People don’t care about you. All they care about is themselves and how other people can help them. One thing you should never do is blog so much about you and your company. Your preachy ways won’t get you followers, much more loyal customers.
Fix: What you need to do is blog more about how people can benefit out of your products and services. They will understand the nature of your business better if you give them the benefits.
2. Lack of Creativity
This is one mistake you should never ever commit or else you may not be able to forgive yourself. The lack of creativity in your content is what makes your blog stale, boring, forgettable and useless. No one likes to read an article that’s poorly written and no one likes to watch a webinar that will just put them to sleep.
Fix: Be inspired. Read books, other people’s blogs, magazines, etc. Watch films that will ignite your thoughts. Moreover, understand that there are so many different ways you can execute your content and connect with your audience (e.g: infographics, short films, surveys, interviews, etc.)
3. Lack of Integration
So you have an official company website and a blog that talks about your company’s services/ products. How will this cost you a lot of losses?
If you fail to integrate your blog into your company’s official website, you’re basically tampering with the foundation and support of your business. Your business will lack a sense of unity. On the technical side as well, your search engine optimization is going for a very unpleasant whirling dervish.
Fix: Put your blog as a sub domain in your company’s website. In turn, interlink your website with your blog as well.
4. Lack of Promotion
If you have a blog and you’re not linking it to your social networking sites, then you’re committing one of the biggest mistakes of your blogging life. You must realize how much impact Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media have on your blog. To start with, once you promote your blog using SNS, you instantly branch out to bigger audience. Second, you are constantly engaged and interacting with your current and potential clients. So you see, it’s crucial that you know how to promote your blog in the social media.
Fix: It’s as easy as signing up for an account, constantly making posts, making a page/event/subscription and start to engage with people.
5. Obsession with your Competition
You know how certain people badmouth others just to make themselves feel good? This is a perfect example of other business bloggers obsessing about their competition. Instead of the highlighting what their business is really good at, the resort to unprofessional criticism and judgment against their fellow competitors.
I personally find this a very weak (and amateur) way to get yourself to the top. Wouldn’t it feel more rewarding if you know you didn’t step on anyone but managed to outrun all competitors?
Fix: Market your strong points to people. Use customer feedback to support your claims so you wouldn’t sound as if you’re bluffing.
6. Know-It-All Mentality
One thing you need to prevent yourself from doing is to be absolute about what you know. It’s not convincing when you impose your products and services to people and say you are the ‘best among the rest’. Understand that people appreciate humility more and that you will always, always have the room to improve and be better.
Fix: Focus on what you specialize in and bank on it. This is your strongest point so make sure you continue to develop it. Ask for customer feedback so you know how else you can improve your business.
7. Failure to Commit
When we say blog, it instantly necessitates making posts that are up to date, as often as you can and as creative as possible. If you fail to commit to posting to your blog as often as possible, you may lose the interest of your audience. Moreover, people wouldn’t really find you credible when they see that the dates of your blog posts are too far from each other.
Fix: Invest even an hour of your time maintaining your blog daily. Reply to your readers, as soon as you can, post updated articles, and share the latest news to everyone.
As a blogger myself, I have committed some of these mistakes but have learned from them. Ever since, I have been enjoying the benefits of successful business blogging. I wish the same for all you fellow bloggers out there.