7 Major Blogging Mistakes You’re Making

Your blog can be a powerful weapon in your marketing arsenal. It can generate leads for free and organically. It can be the keystone of your entire marketing strategy.

More often, however, the company blog is a major source of frustration for marketers. Posts are not updated regularly, post writing ebbs and flows. Content writers will produce posts for a few weeks and then become less consistent.

How can your blog transform itself from a useful pile of marketing dung, into a lead gen machine?

What are the 7 biggest blogging mistakes you’re making?

1) Not writing enough

This is easily the biggest mistake marketers make on their blog. They simply do not write frequently enough. Most believe that writing 1 or 2 posts a week will improve their marketing and generate readship.

This (unless you already have a massive following), is not true. Most companies need to write more–usually a lot more–in order to generate organic traffic.

What does that look like? How often should you write?

I don’t have a concrete answer for that, but here’s my rule of thumb: write 3x more than you do now. If you write one post a week right now, write 3. If you write 1 post each day write now, write 3. If you…well you get it…you know how to do multiplication.

It is impossible to overstate how big of a problem this is in the content marketing world. Most marketers simply don’t write enough. Quality vs. Quantity is an important inbound marketing argument to have. But, remember this: you have to create enough content to move the needle on Google organic search. Simply writing occasionally WILL NOT do it.

It just won’t.

2) Not writing enough

Yep. It’s this important.

3) Writing only ‘research’ posts

Every post will NOT win a Pulitzer. You don’t need to be a fantastic author to create a post. Not every post needs to be a doctoral dissertation. It doesn’t need to contain unique research or even be a terribly unique perspective.

When I was a TV reporter I was given some great advice by my first boss, “Every story will NOT win an Emmy.”

Why is that good advice? It’s good advice because perfect is the enemy of done. It’s good advice because, as General Patton said, ‘A good plan executed today is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”

Action is better than inaction.

So what should be posts be written about?

• The FEARS of your audience
• Mitigating the RISKS of your audience
• Providing your audience with useful INFORMATION
• TEACHING your audience something that will benefit them
• Showing them something BEHIND THE CURTAIN at your business
• Your REACTION to industry news, research, and events

4) Failing to generate leads

More precisely, this mistake should be: failure to TRY and generate leads.

I’m stunned when I see a blog post without a notable and useful call-to-action. Every blog post should include a clear, specific, and precise call-to-action.

You’ll notice that each and every one of our blog posts have a link to a White Paper, webinar or FREE trial at the bottom. (You should click on it).

5) Not newsjacking

Newsjacking is writing about news and pop culture subjects and relating them to a subject that YOU want to write about.

For example, the day after the AFC championship game, we wrote a blog post relating Peyton Manning’s changes at the line of scrimmage to a marketer’s changes after seeing campaign metrics.

6) Not writing in a conversational way

Would you enjoy reading this? Does it take effort to read?

Your blog posts shouldn’t require the intense and prolonged focus on your readers. It should be conversational, quick, and to-the-point.

7) Having unrealistic standards for your blog

You’re not going to get 30,000 readers each month within 3 months. You’re probably not going to get 30,000 readers each month within 6 to 8 months.

Have high but realistic standards for your blog.