by admin
Mistakes people make when creating a blog
2:02 pm in Travel Blogging Tips by admin
It took 18 months for Travel Rants to start receiving comments and mentions on other blogs and the media, and if I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently. It’s those early months where most bloggers start to lose interest; when traffic is low and there’s no one commenting.
Learning from experience
On My Life in Leeds it took me 3 weeks to get a mention in The Times, Guardian and on the BBC Leeds website. See what I mean? That’s partly because of the people I have built relationships with online, but, it took me a while to realise networking online is vital to any new blog.
Today, I want to highlight common mistakes that I have noticed on blogs.
Permalinks
Within WordPress there is a feature called Permalinks, which makes the web addresses more search engine and human friendly, so instead of zyx.com/?p=4343 it is zyx.com/nice-keywords-here. All you have to do is switch on the feature, but it’s something I see a lot, especially on corporate blogs.
Blogger and hosted blogs
I believe if you are serious about making money or using a blog to promote your company then you need to self-host the blog. Don’t sign up to the likes of Blogger. Nowadays it’s cheap to buy a domain and hosting, and you have complete control over your content.
No interaction
One travel company emailed me a few months back and asked why didn’t their blog have any one leaving comments. When I took a look it was because they were not asking any questions. Don’t create a blog just to promote your products you can do that on any web page.
Lack of images
I know I know, they are no images on this blog post, but seriously, I love to see photos, especially on Travel Blogs; use your blog to inspire people. Add a few photos, or a video. In my opinion there’s nothing worse than reading a travel article with no images. Inspire me.
Be a human
No corporate talk please, it bores me. If your aiming your blog at a consumer, then, write like a human, try not to use loads of jargon. Cut out the buzzwords, and just tell it plain and simple. I think that’s what more people want when they are reading a blog post.
I would like to thank Kevin Gibbons of SEO Optimise for asking this question on Twitter this morning, it inspired me to write up a post about the mistakes that people make when creating their first personal or corporate blog.
Please add your tips in the comments.
Good article Darren. It’s important that people take note of this kind of advice. There are a heck of a lot of blogs out there so you must do everything you can to ensure people actually read your content.
I’ve seen some great blogs on various subjects with brilliant content, but all to often these blogs seem to slowly die off, even if the content was great. This is probably down to low traffic and low interaction, as you say.
Well, here is a comment from me anyway!
Saw your 4am tweet Darren, Travel Rants looks great! Agree with all this. Another thing I’m beginning to learn is the importance of (as Gary Vaynerchuck says) ‘hustle’. You need to spend at least, if not longer promoting your content as you do writing it.
Darren, this post is extremely helpful to me. I will explore WordPress more. Thanks for the great tips!
@ Gotpassport
No problem, glad I could help a little. This site is all about sharing information about people’s experiences using blogging and social media. I am always happy to help.