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Have you ever read a post and were in awe of the writer’s skills, from the flow of their content to their beautiful use of imagery?

Well, most of us have! I bet the question running through your mind right now is how did these blogging gurus come to be?

Truth is, everyone starts from somewhere and once upon a time today’s blogging experts were novices just like the rest of us. All of them experienced frustrations and made tons of mistakes in the process of becoming the experts they are today.

Blogging has become one of the best ways to drive traffic and generate leads when done correctly. It’s time to revamp your skills and avoid making some of the mistakes that could be affecting the impact your blog has. So, if you are struggling to achieve your goals through your blog, then you might be doing something wrong. Below is a list of common blogging mistakes that most bloggers make:

1- Do not understand their target audience

One of the biggest mistake bloggers make is failing to understand who their audience is and instead write about what they want to write about. Yes, your content can be excellent, but does it connect to your audience? Before crafting any blog post consider your audience and the information they need, then tailor your post to provide the relevant information to your target audience. Otherwise, you’ll only be creating journal entry posts and struggle to achieve results from your blog.

2- Failing to capture leads

When it comes to blogging, simply creating blog posts isn’t enough. You need to ensure that your blog posts drive traffic and conversions. You can use lead capture tools such as hello Bar on your blog so that your content serves its purpose.

3- Inconsistency

Writing blogs should be done consistently. Consider the fact that the more you blog, the more traffic, subscribers and leads you’ll generate from your posts. Blogs that thrive are the ones that established a publishing routine, separate from their daily inspirations. Here is the tricky part, although consistency can be achieved, this does not mean that you post shoddy posts and expect magic to happen. Remember, quality always triumphs frequency.

4- Using a stiff writing style

Do you ever start to read a post and first few sentences in you click out of the page? I know it happens to most of us. Writing a blog is not the same as writing a term paper; your post should be exciting—something that people will enjoy reading. If your content fails to hook a reader, how do you expect people to continue reading it? When crafting your blog posts ensure you provide your readers with an incentive to continue reading the post. A great hook can be a problem or issue that your audience is facing. Also, a conversational style makes your writing more approachable meaning that people will enjoy reading your post.

5- Not writing long-form content

Time is of the essence, and you may have a lot on your plate as a blogger. But making a habit of creating long-form content increases your opportunity to generate more leads as compared to short blog posts. Generally, posts that rank highly on SERPs are usually 1500+ words. As you create your blog posts, you should always aim to offer a solution, don’t just explain a problem and leave it at that.

6- Making it about you

As long as you are not one of the Kardashians, focus on providing content that your users find entertaining, useful or interesting. People are interested in the information your content offers and what it can teach them, not about your interests. But you can incorporate aspects of your character in your writing to make your readers more at ease with you. You can infuse your personality in your writing style by using a personal, engaging and approachable tone.

7- Failing to use data as evidence

Whatever you are writing about, ensure you provide the relevant data from your research. For instance, if you are writing about how businesses can use social media to improve sales or hire the social media company, simply stating;

• Numerous people can be found across social media platforms which makes it a great platform to market your business.
• With the growing social media user base currently at 2 billion and expected to rise to 3 billion by 2021, using social media as part of your company’s marketing mix is essential.

The second claims are more compelling compared to the first one. With data-driven content, you not only convince people to see your point about an issue, but you also persuade them to take action.

8- Concentrating your analysis on immediate traffic

Bloggers tend to get frustrated when their blog posts fail to generate the expected traffic immediately. However, instead of concentrating on short-term traffic, you can concentrate on the accumulative potential of organic traffic gained with time.

As mentioned earlier, we all have to start somewhere. So if you’ve read through this list and feel like most of these apply to you, don’t worry. Instead, use these tips to improve your blog’s content.