Blogs are definitely a “thing” in marketing. Lots of companies have them.
I’ve read quite a few blogs, publish my own and am a paid blog-writer. Maybe that gives me the right to compose this list of blog mistakes. Maybe not. But what the heck, the beauty and beastliness) of the Internet is that anyone can post just about anything!! So reader beware. This is MY opinion.
Avoid:
I’ve read quite a few blogs, publish my own and am a paid blog-writer. Maybe that gives me the right to compose this list of blog mistakes. Maybe not. But what the heck, the beauty and beastliness) of the Internet is that anyone can post just about anything!! So reader beware. This is MY opinion.
Avoid:
- Bad grammar, wrong punctuation, misspelling If you want to be taken seriously, show up in a business-like manner. You wouldn’t come to a business meeting in your jammies, would you? Misspelled words, poor sentence structure, etc. make you look unprofessional–even foolish. If you don’t know the basics, enlist a good proofreader. Or ask a friend to check what you’ve written. (Pay attention to your computer’s spell check, of course, but don’t rely on it alone.)
- Tone that’s not authentic The Internet is a come-as-you-are kind of place. It’s a good idea to be yourself. If you’re bubbly and upbeat, don’t go for a snarky tone … or vice versa. It’s hard to keep up a façade, and readers will catch a false tone.
- Overt selling The idea behind blogging is to attract interested people to you. So good blogs provide useful information, not sales pitches. Not that you can’t sneak in the occasional product reference. Just don’t build an entire post around the wonders of your new widget.
- Going on and on You may see some advice that says longer posts are better. That’s because some search engines may factor in length as a sign of expertise. However, human readers prefer things that are brief and to-the-point. So my advice is to keep your posts to about 600 words. Readers don’t have a lot of time. Visuals can make your content more engaging.
- Keyword obsession Old SEO advice told us to load content with keywords to get picked up by search engines. Thankfully, that’s not true anymore. In fact, you can get dinged for over-using a term. Please remember your blog is for people first. Slavish use of keywords makes your content clunky and hard for humans to read. (SEO experts agree.)
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