Blogging for a living is one of the hardest things you can do. It involves lots of work, for little or no money. The saying goes "Blogging ain't easy" Well the truth is, it would be a lot easier if we did these ten things, but often we don’t…
Top 10 Things Bloggers Should Do But Don’t
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“Leave Things Alone”
10 – Leave Things Alone
This is something I am more guilty of more than others. Themes, widgets, post layouts, emails, I can’t help but fiddle and change them, even though people hate change and I would probably have even more readers now if I hadn’t have messed around with things all the time. Leave things alone for at least 6 months!
“Share Network Connections”
9 – Share Network Connections
Just done a guest post for someone or a review? What we should do is tell other people about this opportunity so they can contact that same person and maybe get a piece of the action. Then, in turn, you might end up with more guest posts from other people’s connections. But yet, we are secretive, private and squirrel connections away like blog nuts!
“Do More SEO”
8 – Do More SEO
99% of bloggers are guilty of this, but yet we all do it. Maybe it was a lack of keyword research for the title (of which I am often guilty) or maybe it is something as simple as not linking our social media accounts to our blog pages. Who cares about all that nerdy stuff anyway? Well, sadly Google does, and they can make or break a blog.
“Not Sell Out”
7 – Not Sell Out
While some might say they haven’t (when really they have) most of us will admit to taking guest post money or promoted product when the content didn’t match our own theme or blog style, we just did it for the money (or the merchandise). We should say NO! But sometimes the money talks a lot louder particularly in those early years.
“Give Yourself Enough Credit”
6 – Give Yourself Enough Credit
At the end of the day, you’ve started a blog which is more than most people will do that say they will. But we all think we should do better, or could do more. The hard bits over, you’ve started the blog and made the path ahead, now you just need to walk it. Give yourself some credit!
“Make More Time”
5 – Make More Time
Making time is one of the easiest things to do. Stop watching TV, or reading that book and get on with blogging, or promoting that blog! For me it is procrastination. I start doing some blog promotion, then end up reading some rubbish about top 10 cats doing silly things for several hours. It’s not about working on the blog 24/7, it’s about dedicating at least some time to it.
“Do More Self Promotion”
4 – Do More Self Promotion
Most of us do something to help our blogs grow every day, but not many of use (including myself) do enough. Get involved with blog hops, blog networks and Facebook pages, and even reading then commenting on other people’s blogs. We all know we could and should do more, but you’ve done one blog hop today, why do anymore?!?
“Post Consistently”
3 – Post Consistently
We all start with the very best intentions, but other things like real life and work get in the way of it. It’s the reason 99.9% of blogs fail, yet we have all been guilty of it at one time or another. If you really want to succeed in blogging, consistency is the groundwork any blog is built on. It’s it’s full of holes you can’t build on it.
“Give Credit To The Seeds of Ideas”
2 – Give Credit To The Seeds of Ideas
I am not talking about people who copy a whole blog post with this, it is often just the idea of it. While there is no need to give credit to the person you got an idea for a post from, it would be good for blog promotion and growth. But we often don’t want them thinking they are better than us, or that we stole their ideas.
“Get Permission to Use Images”
1 – Get Permission to Use Images
If there is one thing I try and do it has to be getting permission to use images, but it is often not easy to track down the original owner so it can often be next to impossible to do it for every image used. And yes, there is also sometimes when I don’t bother at all, and many other bloggers do this millions of times every day.
Who cares about all this extra work anyway!? The procrastination train has blown its whistle and I’m jumping aboard!
By: Ahmad Alomda
