10 Common Blogging Problems and How to Overcome Them

How to Avoid Boring Posts

Many bloggers, especially newbies, will feel that their blog posts are ‘boring’ and not interesting enough for readers to share, like and follow.
You should consider your format, your tone, and how visual your blog post is. Gone were the days when you can write a few long paragraphs, publish it, and wait for the traffic to flow to your website.

The Solution

A good rule of thumb is to remember that a blog post is a bit more personal than a generic article; try to speak to the readers in a personal tone so that you connect with your audience. Also keep in mind that you should be more visual – readers appreciate blog posts that are visually attractive. You can use images and even videos in your posts and add some statistics and interesting figures to give your post more substance.

Boosting Your Organic Traffic

One of the most frustrating issues for any blogger is not getting enough traffic. Without traffic to your blog post, it won’t get the exposure it needs to rank well and be shared among readers and their peers. In fact, most bloggers don’t think about attracting visitors until after they’ve published their blog post. And no matter how much traffic you have, you’ll always want more.

The Solution

Re-evaluate your blog post and make sure that the content you publish is original and worthy of sharing. Can you perhaps try other types of posts? Are you attracting the right type of readers? Make sure you choose topics that are relevant to your audience and your business. You can try publishing posts on other blogs (guest blogging) to help promote your content and make sure you use social media to share your content.

Finding the Right Topics

Finding the right topic is probably one of the most important things to consider when writing a blog. You need to keep within your focus and choose topics that are relevant to your business and your audience. If you can solve a problem for readers, chances are they’ll appreciate your post much more as opposed to simply reading on something interesting.

The Solution

One way is to think about questions your users often ask; what problems are they facing? Also consider what’s newsworthy in your niche and look at leading blogs – what topics are they covering? This will give you an idea on what topics to use.

Monetizing Your Blog

Unless you simply want to blog for personal reasons, you might want to consider making money from y our blog. Even the potential of earning money from your blog is definitely there, in reality only a small percentage of people are making good money with blogging. Building a profitable blog takes time, and you need to be consistent and have a plan. There are many ways of making money with your blog, for e.g. you can sell premium content with your blog, make money from affiliate programs or sell memberships.

The Solution

Always plan ahead. Decide how you want to make money and slowly work toward that goal. Focus on building a following of readers and always maintain a good reputation. Your recommendations will carry much more weight if people value your opinion. Identify problems that your readers face and offer a solution.

Is Blogging Taking Too Much Time?

If you feel blogging takes too much time, remember that it’s an invested effort and if you produce great content, the time will be worth it. You don’t have to post every day, as it’s the quality that counts, not the quantity. That being said, you should try to blog as often as you can as fresh, relevant and engaging content is what search engines and readers love.

The Solution

Work out a schedule where you can post as often as you can, but without having to compromise on quality. The goal will be to aim for 2 – 3 fresh posts per week but try to do one post a week as an absolute minimum. Don’t have the time? Consider getting a professional blog writing service handle your blogging efforts. You can share your ideas and goals, and the writers will handle the rest.

Increasing Comments on Your Posts

It can be very frustrating to publish a blog post and wait for comments that never seems to come. It’s easy to start a blog, but it’s not always so easy to get your blog noticed and get the comments and the shares you are looking for.

The Solution:

One of the ways you can start building an audience is to leave comments on other blogs. You can start with smaller blogs as they are likely to notice and appreciate your comment. Remember to respond to replies and make an effort to provide valuable comments. You can also ask questions in your blog posts, to entice readers to share their experience with a comment. It’s a great way to get readers involved in your posts.

Writing with a Clear Purpose

Remember that every blog post should have a purpose. If you are writing a personal blog for colleagues, friends and family, you can write about almost any topic you want; however, if you want to use blogging as a way to connect with your audience and promote your business, you need to have a clear purpose with every topic you write on.

The Solution:

Start by thinking why you want to blog. Is it simply to share your thoughts? Do you want to promote your products or services? Do you want to boost your reputation and establish yourself as an expert in your industry?

The route you want to take with your blog will greatly impact the way you go forward. For example, if you want to establish yourself as an expert, you need content that is very high in quality, with a lot of value, interesting facts, helpful information, etc. if you can pull this off, people will start seeing you as an expert in your industry.

The Perfect Blog Post Length

There is no ‘perfect’ length when it comes to blogging, but you may pick up that short blog posts don’t attract as many readers as longer posts. Why? Longer blog posts provide more value and establishes you as an expert in your field. But you shouldn’t just take content and fluff it up as much as possible – no matter the length, quality is always more important.

The Solution

Interestingly, Google recommends an average of 2,500 words to be optimised for their latest algorithm. Don’t panic if your blog posts aren’t close to that. Not all pages should be this long, but it’s a good rule of thumb.

Longer posts will provide more in-depth information and you can easily break it up into smaller paragraphs, multiple headings and images. It’s way better to publish one long, valuable and expertly written blog every two weeks, than a few short, uninteresting posts every few days.

Struggling with Promotion

Another issue that many bloggers struggle with is promotion. You’ve written a blog post and published it to your blog. Now what? You need to promote your content and respond to readers, handle feedback, comments and social media follows.

Promoting content is absolutely essential, but not every writer knows how to start, especially when they are new to the world of social media and content sharing.

The Solution

Plan in advance. Make sure that your social media profiles are up to date and that you have enough time to reply to comments and questions when your post is published. You need to share your post on all your social platforms and get people talking, so it will take some time out of your schedule to manage – you don’t want people replying or asking questions, with nobody to answer them.

Take a look at a few competitor profiles and see how often they post, and how they handle reader comments. You want people to talk about your brand and your content, but you need to make sure you will have enough time, and skill, to handle it. Don’t worry, it will likely start out slow (unless you write a viral post!) so you’ll have enough time to get with the pace.

Improving Writing Skills

Many business owners want to make blogging a regular part of the marketing strategy but they find that they are simply not good enough at copywriting.

Simply put – they don’t have the skill or the passion to learn how to be a great writer – and they need to focus on other areas of running their business.

It’s important to ensure that your blog has regular, high quality content to offer. Not only to rank well within search engines but to also ensure that your readers get the information they need.

The Solution

Sub-standard content won’t help a brand’s marketing strategy or credibility, which is why business owners should consider outsourcing their blog writing needs. With an experienced and qualified team of blog writers, business can effectively market their products or services, while providing unique, valuable and informative content to their readers. Plus, you will give search engines what they love – fresh and helpful content.

If you are looking to outsource your blog writing requirements, or even get a team to provide you with professional blog posts on a regular basis, contact TrafficBox today.