Blogging is an exciting adventure for new bloggers. There is the joy of your first Google views, your first post, and when your first Pinterest pin goes viral. However, you’ll inevitably have to deal with stressful blogging mistakes new bloggers make.
Even pro bloggers make mistakes. So don’t be too tough on yourself!
Yes, blogging mistakes add stress to your workday. They can cost you time and money, and even cause burnout.
My first blog caused me daily stress because of my blogging mistakes. I was upset and frustrated and ended up quitting blogging for two years. I was DONE!
This time around, I focused on fixing these stressful blogging mistakes so I could succeed. And my experience with my new blog is entirely different!
The stress is gone. I love my new blog – With Love, Me – a self-care and mental health blog for women – and I am in it for the long run. I help women create a life they love by teaching self-care skills to improve their mental health.
Blogging is the best part of my day. I even write on my blog to relieve my own life stresses. Goodbye blogging mistakes, hello world!
And today I’m helping new bloggers conquer common blogging mistakes to help relieve some of your blogging stress.
Your first blog should be a joy-filled time, and I want to guide you down that path. These mistakes listed below are quick and easy fixes that will help set new bloggers up to achieve their blogging goals.
DISCLOSURE: This post contains affiliate links, meaning if you click on a product or service, and decide to purchase it, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. All recommended products and services are based on my positive experience with them. For more information, please read my Disclaimer.
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Why Should I Fix These Blogging Mistakes?
Have you ever tried to complete a puzzle with a bunch of pieces missing? It’s frustrating. You’re left with an incomplete picture and a poor attitude toward the puzzle.
Picture your blog: your website is self-hosted, and you installed your WordPress theme in just a couple of days. You’ve written 200 posts and published them all.
After some time, you can’t figure out why Google doesn’t like you. You’re unsure why users don’t stay on your site.
Every day is frustrating and seems like it will never end. You’re writing less. Your blog is a stress point for you.
You let it die to get rid of the stress it has caused you, even though writing actually brought you joy.
This happened to me. My excitement blinded me, and I wrote content on a blog that just wasn’t working.
I dove right in with no thought or plan and expected my blog to work. When my blog went quiet, I quit. I made a lot of blogging mistakes as a new blogger, and I want to help you thrive!
Fixing your blogging mistakes early on will keep you from time-consuming tasks later on when you have hundreds or thousands of blog posts.
I am going to help you fix your blogging mistakes, reduce your stress, and get you back to the part you love: the writing!!!
Top Blogging Mistakes New Bloggers Make
These are some of the top blogging mistakes you can be making, that are hindering you from success!
1. Your Colors Are Off
Your color scheme is one of the first things your audience is going to see. It will be on your website, your logo, your social pages, and your products, and will set the tone for your brand.
Bad color makes everything look terrible. Even when you select the perfect image.
I made a HUGE error by not making sure that my colors were displaying correctly. My website looked weird, my original photography and stock images had color mistakes. My social pages fell flat.
I couldn’t see the color mistakes because I hadn’t taken the time to calibrate my monitor to display proper colors.
Most new bloggers make this mistake. Instead of looking more professional; you look like a hobby blogger. Even the personal images you share need good color.
Fixing Your Blog Color Mistakes
This is a very easy fix. Simply type “calibrate display color” into the Windows or Mac search box. And follow the tutorial. Apply your changes. BOOM done!
If you do your own photography, I recommend getting a SpyderX Pro.
It’s an external hardware USB device that measures the light and helps you calibrate your monitor for precision color with their professional software. And it is simple to use! Simply place the device on your screen as directed and run the software. Save and you are done!!
Now you will see your website and brand colors as they are truly seen.
You will look professional with consistent and beautiful brand colors. Bye-bye stressful bland colors! Hello, eye-catching images with eye-catching colors!
| RELATED: How To Look Like A Professional Blogger Right From The Start
2. You’re Not Being Your Authentic Self In Your Writing
As a new blogger, I thought that all successful bloggers spoke in the same tone. I copied their tone of voice instead of using my own.
In the niche I wrote in, many of the top bloggers were speaking in a superior educative voice. And it was boring! I would doze off many nights doing research about the dog training niche.
This is one of the most common blogging mistakes.
The problem with mimicking another blogger’s tone of voice is your audience is not their audience.
Those big bloggers I read were speaking to women like me, advanced dog trainers. Not my audience of beginners.
I thought I was being professional and informative. What I was actually doing was being inconsistent and unauthentic.
My in-person clients were loving the personalized and relatable way I was teaching them. They would book more classes with me. They loved my teaching style. I made training pups fun for them, and easy to understand.
But my blog failed because I was not the same person online. To my audience, I was distant, superior, and unrelatable. And my word choice left them feeling like they needed a dictionary.
I allowed other bloggers to influence my personal brand. And became inauthentic because of it. I lost trust in my readers. Even my favorite clients did not want to visit my blog.
It became one of my biggest blogging mistakes.
| RELATED: How Many Blog Posts You Really Need to Launch Your Blog
Fixing Your Personal Brand
What I should have done was re-evaluate my personal branding strategy and edited my content and website to match my sparkling, relatable, and friendly personality.
Not having a personal branding plan in place was the nail in the coffin for my last blog. How could I write for my audience if I didn’t know how my writing should sound?
What exactly was the goal of my words? I did not know what I was trying to do. I was throwing spaghetti at walls just trying to get my blog to stick.
Read your content out loud, or have a friend read it to you.
How does your work sound? Friendly? Fun? Relatable? Educational? Serious? Angry? Is that how you want to be heard?
Make goals for your personal brand. Decide how you want to speak to your audience. What the purpose of your content is: fun, educational, inspirational, etc?
I did not want to make this mistake twice!
When I found Margaret’s book on personal branding – “How To Win Over Readers, Clients And Customers”, I jumped right in with both hands.
This e-book helped me expand my personal branding strategy. Now my blog sounds like me.
I am now creating a consistent blog voice and personal brand I want for my audience. If you need help planning your personal brand and banishing imposter syndrome, this e-book is a must-have!
3. Your Website Is Not User Friendly
Your website is your hello to the world. It tells your audience what to expect from your content, services, and products (should you have any).
There is a saying, “A wise man builds his house upon the rock.” Well, a smart blogger builds a blog on a good website.
One of the biggest blogging mistakes a blogger can make is not investing in your website upfront.
An easy-to-use and functional website will not only keep your audience sticking around, but it will also help convert those readers to subscribers, and better yet, buyers.
Your audience will not stick around if your website is confusing or hard to use.
Fixing Your Website
What makes your website a good one?
Think about your favorite websites. What do they all have in common? Now think about the websites that annoy you. What do they have in common? Let’s talk about the components of a good website, shall we?
Your website should have a clearly defined niche so you know exactly who your audience is. How are you going to curate content for your audience if you are talking to everyone?
I know what you’re thinking; I thought so too. “But I don’t want to exclude anyone. I just want to get my content out there.”
By defining your niche, you are improving your chances of having your audience find you. You can create content for them, that speaks to them, and solve their problems.
It’s one of the reasons why nobody may be reading your blog.
Now let’s chat about your readers’ experience once they click on your link in Google.
Readers are going to remember your website as one of two things: a positive experience or a negative one. How do you create a positive experience for your readers? By making your website as simple as possible!
- Do you have a home page that gives tidbits of your niche, about page, services, products, and a way to subscribe?
- Do you have a menu on that home page that connects to all parts of your live website? Does it link to your other content or pages?
- Is your About page sending a clear message about what you do for your readers?
- Does your website load your content and images quickly?
- Have you corrected the errors in your site audits?
After running tests and fixing errors, have a friend or blogging pal run through your website. Are they able to comment easily? Do the menu links work for them. Are they able to access products easily after purchase – be sure to provide them with a freebie coupon for their work! Do they find subscriber forms and contact information for you without having to ask you?
Common blogging mistakes I have seen after reviewing websites:
- Your business (services) niche and blog audience don’t match. If you are promoting services for one audience on your home page, but your blog is talking to another, your audience will be confused and is probably hopping off your website without engaging.
- Don’t make your audience hunt a subscriber form. Your subscriber form should be easy for your audience to find. One of the best places to add it is at the end of your blog post.
- Your website doesn’t load properly. It was hard to read the content or see the images because they didn’t want to load.
- There were excessive pop-ups and ads. Making money is a goal of most bloggers. But your audience will not fight the pop-ups and ads to read your content.
- Your blog page is a wall of articles. You should not be able to read every single post on a single page. It’s going to affect your SEO.
- Your niche is unclear. There are blogs I have read that have dozens of categories. Blogging is not where you want to be a jack of all trades. You sound like a journal, not an expert.
- You don’t have a way to share. Sharing creates growth!
- You’re not linking to relevant content or pages. Not linking to relevant pages or articles is sending your readers down a dead-end road. Always give them an option to discover other places on your site.
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4. You Didn’t Set A Blogging Schedule You Could Keep
This was one of the blogging mistakes I made that led to blogging burnout.
There are many full-time bloggers out there. They are posting to social media constantly, writing two posts a week, emailing and engaging, and creating products for their audience.
As a new blogger, I fell into the trap of trying to match the pace of Olympic Athletes when I was just learning how to run. I just could not keep pace with the full-time bloggers and found myself burned out within eight months.
Creating a schedule that fits your life will help you and your blog achieve long-term success.
Fixing Your Blogging Schedule
Your blogging schedule needs to work for you. You can see a consistent growth of your blog with a laid-back schedule. Slow growth is still growth!
For example, I post to Pinterest and email once a week, social media 2x a week, and write 2 new posts a month. I am still seeing it grow every month on my blog, subscribers, and social media pages.
Blogging is a marathon and not a sprint. You need a balance between your blog life and your personal life to thrive or you will burn yourself out.
Define your responsibilities in life. When can you fit time in for your blog, and when do you need to be 100% present in your life?
Be honest. If the only time you can create content is after the kids go to bed, that should be part of your schedule.
Can’t commit to weekends? Don’t include it. Do not create a schedule that doesn’t fit your life. You’ll just find yourself frustrated.
| RELATED: How To Create A Blogging Schedule That’ll Help You Grow
5. You Started Writing Without Learning SEO
Many new bloggers are so excited to write, that they completely skip learning SEO until they aren’t seeing views. Writing before learning SEO is one of the most common blogging mistakes that new bloggers make.
I did it, and I won’t be the last to do it.
The problem is Google and Pinterest are search engines, and you need search engine optimization (SEO) to get your content in front of the right audience. Do you really want your parenting tips going to adults without kids? No, you won’t get clicks.
Optimizing your pages and blog posts for SEO will help you connect with your audience. That’s how you get your blog to grow.
Fixing Your SEO
This blogging mistake is why I was not getting pageviews. I didn’t have an audience. Before I wrote a single blog post on With Love, Me; I did research. That’s how I found Margaret and her amazing blog.
The pain point of many new bloggers is SEO. How do keywords work? Where do I put them? How do I tell if what I am doing is working?
Improving your titles will help your audience determine if they should click. The few posts I had written were not being found for the keyword I had intended.
I went back and reworked my titles to be clearer. What was my intention? To be mysterious? No. I wanted my audience to click because I am solving their problem. My titles at the time were not telling my audience how I helped them.
Researching better keywords helps you rank and get more readers. While I was ranking on my keyword, no one was visiting my blog because no one was searching for my keyword.
Not exactly my goal. Use keywords for your niche and your audience. You want to select keywords that apply to your audience and their problems.
Learning SEO will also help you improve your pages and products too. SEO is important for getting your products, services, and courses in front of the right people. If you want your pages to convert, SEO is how you do it.
TIP: I recommend Margaret’s, Optimize It: A Guide to SEO for Blogs. It has clear and easy-to-read instructions on how to get your content in front of your audience. SEO makes sense now. I highly recommend it!
| RELATED: How To Avoid Plagiarizing Content – Tips On How To Create Original Blog Posts
6. You Expected Your Blog To Make Quick Money Without Making a Plan
All businesses need a plan to make money. While you may get lucky and sell a few products or get a few affiliate clicks, you will not make enough income to be a blogger full-time.
To reach your goal of making a full-time or part-time income for your blog, you will need a plan to convert your audience to buyers.
Let’s add this to my long list of blogging mistakes I did on my first blog. I never made a sale on my failed blog during the 8 months it was online.
Zero. No affiliates, no conversions, no sales. Absolute zilch.
How do you plan to get your audience to buy? What are you comfortable promoting? Are ads appropriate for your website? Do you want to take part in email marketing sales? Do you want to be a social media influencer?
As new bloggers, we often get excited about the possibility of a quick, full-time income from Pinterest. How many of you have all seen those pins promising thousands of dollars in your first month of blogging?
This is how most of us get the idea to start a blog, but not having a blogging plan is like throwing darts blindfolded. Sometimes you hit, sometimes don’t.
| RELATED: What You Should Know Before Starting A Blog
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Fixing Your Business Plan
Defining your audience and niche, once again, is key.
You can’t sell digital products to an audience that doesn’t like technology, right? The same goes for your blog niche’s audience. Putting products in front of them that are not solving their problems is just going to sit there and not convert.
Planning your content’s links will help you convert to sales. Often new bloggers will link affiliates to words they have written in their content without a plan to have those links convert.
Did those affiliate links solve a problem your readers have? Or are they there on the chance they will click it?
What are you comfortable doing? When you feel like a slimy salesman, you sound like a slimy salesman.
Your monetization plan should only include strategies with which you’re comfortable activating.
Do you want to create digital downloads in the future? Are ads telling your audience something that contradicts your content? Is your content plan stressful for your audience? Do you absolutely hate spamming inboxes? Create a plan that works for you!
How do you take your blog from that hobby stage to a full-time income business? Creating a plan, of course!
When you are a new blogger and feel absolutely lost, taking a course is a huge help!
Check out Margaret’s Grow It: From Blog to Online Business course – it helped me create a plan – a roadmap to building my blog and growing it. Start blogging with confidence and start seeing your products and affiliates convert!
| RELATED: How To Write Affiliate Product Reviews That Successfully Convert To Sales
7. You Are Going It Alone
One of the biggest blogging mistakes that new bloggers make is believing they have to do it all alone.
Every blogger needs a support system. From blogging questions to opportunities to write guest posts, having a support system for your blog will set you up for long-term blog success.
Creating Your Blog Support System
Tell your family and friends. Your first subscribers and views will be your family and friends. My mom was my first subscriber and is still my most active one.
Your friends and family will talk about your blog, and give you the first engagements on your social pages. Invite them to share your journey!
Make blogger friends by engaging with them. Commenting on posts and social media will help establish a relationship with another blogger.
Subscribe to their newsletters. If you see a mistake or error, discreetly let them know. Your blogging friends help you get your blog off the ground with shares, comments, and opportunities for future collaborations.
Join a couple of blogger Facebook groups!
Being surrounded by bloggers helps you expand and promote your content, get your questions answered, and give you ideas to improve your blog.
Joining two to three groups will help you make new friends, create opportunities for guest posts and collaborations, and perhaps even find a mentor without spending all your time on social media.
I’m part of Margaret’s The Blog It Better Society which has some of the nicest bloggers on Facebook. Tell them Krystian sent you, wink!
To Summarize It All…
Fixing your blogging mistakes will help you set up your blog for long-term success and relieve your blogging stress.
To recap:
- Fix your colors by calibrating your monitor.
- Be your amazing authentic self to conquer imposter syndrome and create a personal brand.
- Make your website/blog a user-friendly experience.
- Create a schedule you can maintain long-term.
- Learn SEO to get your content in front of your audience.
- Make a plan to monetize.
- Get a blogging support system.
It has been my absolute pleasure to help fix your blogging mistakes and relieve some of your blog-related stress.
QUESTION: What is your plan to fix your blogging mistakes? Tell me in the comments!
Guest Post written by Krystian Howe, founder of With Love, Me – a mental health and self-care blog.
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Hi! Thank you for your blogpost!
I think that learning SEO is the most important and making a plan for become an income !
I started blogging about a year and a half ago and although I learnt a lot I know that there is still more to learn. My two main concerns are still SEO and growing my email list and followers on social media. A couple of months ago I did a mini-rebrand with the help of Margaret, which I’m really happy about. I love my website and I’m so grateful for all the support that I’m receiving from the group. It has help me out immensely. As part of my learning initiative, I recently became an Amazon Associate in order to generate some income. So, I’m looking forward to seeing how that develops and where that take me. One more thing, thanks for sharing this informative article. Much appreciated!
You’re very welcome! I’ve also learned a ton from Margaret!!
This is so helpful and timing wise is perfect for me right now. I really appreciate hearing about a more relaxed schedule and easing up myself.
I’m glad to hear this! Having a relaxed schedule has helped my blog thrive this time around! Helps me balance my life and my work and I am much happier!
Love this article! It is full of helpful content and is a great guide I will use moving forward with my blog. Thank you!
You are very welcome!
This article is thoughtful and totally on point! I especially identify with not fully understanding and implementing SEO in my early blog posts. Let’s just say, my to-do list includes some revisions to my earliest posts! Even though I’m still relatively new to blogging, I’ve already learned so much, and I’m improving every day. I honestly couldn’t have done it without the support, advice and encouragement from fellow bloggers. It’s definitely worthwhile to join a few blogging groups on Facebook. It’s helped me through the more technical stuff, but more importantly, being a part of a community of like-minded individuals has helped me stay positive and motivated. There will be ups and downs, so it’s good to have a tribe to lean on when things get tough! And Margaret has been a great guide through my blogging journey. I appreciate that she provides relevant information in an actionable and easy-to-understand format. Thank you for sharing this post! It’s refreshing to know that I’m not alone in making some of the most common blogging mistakes, and it’s so helpful to have information on how to adapt and overcome 🙂
I am glad to see you have found your blogging tribe! I made ALL these mistakes on my failed blog. And I know now that having a tribe would really have helped me figure out why I was struggling.
This is so helpful! It opens my eyes to many things that I need to fix. Thanks!
Happy to help you on your blogging journey!