11 Common Blogging Mistakes to Avoid in 2023

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Date: June 26, 2023

Blogging is a vast field, as it allows experts to provide valuable information to ordinary web users in a particular niche. According to recent stats, around 77% of internet users read blogs to consume the necessary information. They are likely to spend 3x more time on blogs than emails to get the information they need. 

Additionally, 77 Million new blog comments are generated by internet users each month, which reflects the interest of ordinary people in blogs. Blogs are considered the 5th most trustworthy source to get information online. 

Conveying helpful information in a meaningful and understandable way to the audience through blogs is nothing less than an art. Many professional bloggers earn their living through blogging, which is why novices are also coming to this field. 

However, if you are new to blogging, you must avoid a few common mistakes. The inability to avoid such mistakes will minimize your chances of getting engagement from the targeted audience. 

This blog will explain some common blogging mistakes beginners should avoid in 2023, which could be very helpful for them. 

Most Common Blogging Mistakes

1. Not Understanding the Audience Needs

The first mistake often made by beginners in the blogging field is failure to understand the audience’s needs. As a blogger, you need to be fully aware of the needs of your targeted audience. By needs, we mean the topics they want you to cover and the queries they want to be answered. 

Many bloggers start writing on the topic of their interest instead of the ones their targeted audience takes an interest in. The best way to avoid such a scenario is to build a persona of your targeted audience, getting aware of their demographics and psychographics. 

Moreover, use analytics to discover the common queries your targeted audience asks. Also, go through the blogs of your competitors and the comments posted against those blogs. This practice will help you learn about the needs of your targeted audience and create content on topics they love to read.

2. Choosing the Wrong Niche

Many beginners choose the wrong niche, which ultimately haunts their career as a blogger. Don’t be overconfident and choose a trending niche that is getting more engagement while thinking that you can write valuable content for the audience based on extensive research. You may even write a few blog posts on the wrongly selected niche, but you will fail to prolong this process.

However, you must ensure you choose the niche that resonates with your expertise, skills, or interest. 

For example, suppose you have expertise in HR (Human Resources), skills in parenting, or an interest in automobiles. You can choose any of these niches to start your blogging career and use your information and experience regarding those niches to make your writing valuable for the targeted audience.  

3. Following the Trend

Another mistake beginners usually made in the blogging field is following the trend. They will follow the activities of their competitors and write on trending topics. While this practice is effective for a few niches, it doesn’t work well with every niche. 

For instance, you may follow this practice while writing on niches like current affairs, sports, showbiz, or automobiles, but following the same practice in other niches will make you go south.

The best way to avoid this mistake is to write on evergreen topics. Your targeted audience will lose interest in trending topics as they will become useless over time. On the other hand, evergreen topics will make them visit your site repeatedly. Also this practice will bring new readers to your blog as well. 

4. Absence of Catchy Title

The title of any writing works for it as a resume works for a job applicant. Most of your targeted audience will judge the content of your blog post based on its title. Many bloggers fail to come up with catchy titles even though they have included highly valuable information in their writing. 

You will likely lose a large chunk of traffic coming to your website to read your post if its title fails to impress your audience. Hence, make sure you choose a compelling title that helps drive a huge chunk of traffic to your website. 

Generally, a questioning tone of the title works better for blogs. You can also add numbers to your titles to grab your audience’s attention at once.   

5. Not Using a Hook in The Beginning

Like the title, the hook at the very beginning of your writing is another necessary element that helps you keep your audience around. A hook is a sentence that includes an exciting question or fact to grab your audience’s attention. It can be a hint to a pain point as well. 

However, many beginners new to blogging make the mistake of not adding a hook at the beginning of their writing.

The span of human attention is becoming significantly shorter. If you want people to stay and read your entire blog post, it is necessary to add a hook. It will also help you set the tone of your entire writing. Ultimately, you will get more engagement to your blog. 

6. Adding Unverified Facts and Figures

The primary purpose of internet users behind reading blogs is to get accurate and updated information. They consider it one of the most trustworthy sources to get information online. Most of them rely on facts and figures provided by the bloggers. 

However, if these facts and figures are wrong or dated, you will lose their trust and witness a significant decline in traffic coming to your site. A slight deflection is acceptable, but a huge difference would be considered exaggeration or misguide. 

Therefore, it is essential to give proper time to this phase and collect relevant facts and figures for the topic you are working on from credible sources. Even if you rely on a trustworthy source, verifying facts and figures from multiple sources is better.  

7. Publishing Plagiarized Content

Plagiarism is an unforgivable mistake in the eyes of the audience that comes to read blogs and consume information through them. Unfortunately, many bloggers, especially beginners, include plagiarized patches in their content accidentally or intentionally. 

Doing so can hurt your reputation seriously. Furthermore, readers who come to your blog don’t rely on your content only to consume information; they also visit other sources.

Once they find plagiarism in your content, they are likely to leave your site immediately, and most won’t revisit it. Accidental plagiarism mainly occurs when bloggers try to hustle and go through a few sources for research purposes. 

Therefore, to avoid plagiarism, you must give proper time to the research process. Moreover, you can also opt for a reliable online plagiarism detector to catch duplication in your content.  

8. Poor Formatting

The audience that comes to read your content wants an optimum reading experience. It is only possible when you make it easier for them to read the entire content. Otherwise, they will leave your blog post midway, and you will fail to achieve the desired results from your content. Poor formatting can be the leading cause behind it. 

The best way to avoid it is to divide your content into shorter portions and properly use headings and subheadings. Additionally, you can add bulleted and numbered lists to make it easier for your audience to read important points. You can also add “notes” in particular places to summarize or enlighten important information. 

9. Posting Unoptimized Content

The biggest mistake that will lead to lesser engagement of the audience on your blog is posting unoptimized content. You need your content to appear in top positions on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) to drive organic traffic to your website from people interested in your niche. 

However, It is only possible when you optimize your content according to practical SEO guidelines. Moreover, you can avoid this mistake by doing keyword research and embedding relevant keywords in your content naturally and strategically to reflect the relevance of your writing. 

10. Not Repurposing Old Content

Many beginners try to come up with new content every time. While it is a great thing, the target audience needs new information regarding your niche. But you can’t make this happen every time. 

You will reach a point where something new is available to share with your targeted audience once or unless there is a significant development in the industry related to your niche.

The best way to deal with such a scenario is to repurpose the old content. You can rephrase the content you have already published on your blog and generate a new copy for your audience. However, many beginners stay away from this process and stop posting blog posts. Ultimately, it will lower the rankings of your web pages on SERPs, and you will face a decline in your traffic.  

11. No Proofreading

Some beginners are so confident about their writing that they don’t find it necessary to proofread it. However, it is a wrong approach. Even professionals need to proofread their content to ensure quality. A few grammatical mistakes will lead to vague sentences in the content. These vague sentences will ultimately compromise the meaningfulness of the content. 

The best way to avoid such a scenario is to proofread your content correctly. Doing it repeatedly is more effective. If you find it challenging to proofread your writing manually, using technology can greatly assist. An efficient online grammar corrector will not only assist you in finding mistakes in your writing but also provide suggestions to rectify them. By doing this, you can ensure that your content is easy to read for your audience.

The Sum Up:

Starting a career as a blogger is an appealing prospect, as it is a broad field that offers the potential for a great career if you can communicate information in a compelling way. However, you also need to be vigilant about a few common mistakes that can compromise your blogging career. We have discussed those mistakes in detail and provided their solutions in this blog. Reading it will help you build your career as a professional blogger!