5 Guaranteed Ways to Fail at Blogging

blog failureIt’s Thursday and I need content – again. I am not alone in getting the jitters when Thursday comes around. Other bloggers all over the world feel the same way every week, every month or even every day. Content, new original content is hard to write. It’s especially hard to write when one is also busy writing the last novel in The Beguiling Bachelor series.

Fortunately for me, I work for myself, so I set my own deadlines. No nasty publisher is breathing down my neck demanding the latest chapters. But as I am my own publisher, when I wear my publishing hat, the pressure is on. I want to finish my novel and start another. I have a head full of  ideas I want to share. Just not blog ideas.

Blogging is hard work. You may think that hundreds of people just wake up and decide to blog and poof! Success. Alas, for them, and for me as their fellow blogger, there are tough lessons to learn on the way to that magical poof. If you skip these lessons, you are guaranteed to fail. Trust me on this one. Learn from my mistakes.

[bctt tweet=”If you skip these lessons, you are guaranteed to fail. Trust me on this one. Learn from my mistakes.” username=”madisonmichael_”]

Content is King

As a reader,  you only want to read interesting stories told well. That is true when you select books, and it’s equally true when you read blogs. Finding interesting stories to tell week after week is a challenge for the best of writers, and making it tougher is the challenge of putting a new spin on a topic that has already been covered.

Some fiction writers simply publish excerpts from their novels. Maybe I should do that more, maybe not. Some publish posts similar to mine on Tuesdays, promoting other authors. I really enjoy doing my Tuesday blog because I get to meet other authors and help them reach a new audience. Also, romance readers are serious readers; when they read, they read everything they can get their hands on by authors they like. Sharing new books allows me to provide a service for my readers.

I want to connect with my readers to share some of myself – what I like, what I do, my ups and my downs. That means new content, usually weekly, rain or shine. This week, for example, I am traveling, but my blog does not get a vacation. Content, content, content. It is a blogger’s biggest challenge. Feel free to help me out and share your ideas for future posts.

If Content is King, Traffic is Queen

If a blogger is not complaining about what to write, then they are complaining that no one is reading their content. Bloggers who want to derive income from their blogs need to get enough traffic to be worth an advertiser’s dollars. Traffic is the differentiator. Like people seeking Twitter followers or likes and shares on Facebook, bloggers look for viral content, something that makes people sit up and listen, share and discuss.

How to drive traffic? Give something away? Increase the number of days you blog?. Of course, you manage your search engine optimization so you rank higher on Google and Bing. You write snazzy headlines. You continually write great content.

Starting to see a pattern here? These are all intertwined. Miss the mark on one, you miss the mark across the board, and then you do the work week after week but no one reads it. So sad.

SEO can drive a Person to Drink

SEO or search engine optimization may be the death of me. I use a wonderful tool, Yoast, to score me on my efforts. If I do well, Yoast gives me a green light. If not, a series of little red dots greets me

I can write a blog in half the time it takes me to get that stupid green light from Yoast.

I can only jump through so many hoops to keep the search engine happy and publish the post I wrote. Still, traffic is queen and if Google cannot find me, you cannot read me. So I write alt-text for my photos, even though I have no idea what it is or what it does. I know this: If I do it right I get a green light and if not, more red. I am completely trainable on this – like Pavlov’s dogs.

Writing a Blog Headline is Heady Stuff

I studied Journalism,, after classes all day I would run to the newspaper office where was the night editor. I was there when Patty Hearst was kidnapped, and I felt very superior knowing about it before everyone else.

As night editor, I picked the stories that ran. I decided on the photos and their size. And I wrote headlines. I wrote hundreds of headlines. I made certain that my headlines conveyed that who, what, where, when and how. I was good at it.
Fast forward 50 years…SEO and headlines? What is SEO again? Teaser headlines? Hashtag or no Hashtag?  Optimized headlines? Did you know that Coschedule has a headline optimizing tool? I find it addictive to test my headlines there each week. The one at the top of this post garnered a very strong 76, but I have yet to write one that scored above 85.

Blogging headlines don’t follow the rules I learned all those years ago. They require power words – win, lose, love or today! They require teasers that appeal to your hopes or threaten your fears. Many of the best ones begin with a number or ask a question. Creating urgency is really good, too. One wonderful expert on blogging, Jon Morrow, CEO of Smartblogger has provided a cheat sheet of headline hacks that allows you to fill in the blanks and be pretty much guaranteed success.

I use it whenever I can, or the analyzer. I learned my lesson on this one.

Get a Professional Web Designer

This has been the hardest lesson for me. Not because I did not understand I needed a designer, but because I have been unable to afford one. I have mooched time and energy from dear friends, but because they are dear friends, I can only mooch so much. And learning on the job means trial and error, frustration and airing a lot of dirty laundry.

Why dirty laundry? Every time I try something new on my website, all of you see it, until I replace with my next effort. There have been some really messy efforts too. My favorite has to be the gigantic sign up or opt-in boxes. I had some that were 10 times bigger than I planned. I have removed most of them for now.

Themes, was another area of web design experiments. A theme is a template for a website, some are easier to work with then others. Most are difficult for me. Or how about plug-ins and widgets? Not sure what those are? Me either, but it doesn’t stop me from adding them. I am a walking web-hazard. It doesn’t help that I am not certain how I want my website to look. That might have been a good place to start.

Just today, I changed my “About Madison Michael” page. I changed the text, moved things around and added a dreaded opt-in box. I haven’t tested it yet to see if the signup actually works. I am saving that mistake for another day.

Let me know what changes you would make in the comments below.

 

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