Running a blog is something like walking in a minefield: If you’re not careful with each step, you will destroy yourself. Worse yet, there are many mistakes that are both devastating and common, and which you may well be doing yourself. Here’s a list of five of the most common ways that bloggers ruin their own success.
#1 – Picking the Wrong Theme
There are some themes that have truly obvious issues, there are more nefarious blog issues that you need to avoid. The default theme for WordPress, is problematic because it’s in such common use and is — let’s face it — boring. Other tricky to spot issues include having white text on a dark background, which is both harder to read and a pain to print; having a cluttered design; and having large design elements that take up far too much of the space above the fold on your website.
Related Useful Posts :
- Why Use A WordPress Theme Framework For Your Blog?
- Choosing A Top Grade Theme For Your Blog
- 25+ Free Awesome Thesis Skins That Don’t Suck
- 5 Simple Steps To An Original Blog Design
#2 – Using Distracting Elements
Start your entire blog layout and design with the question “What do I want people to focus on?” Then make sure that your target content is the most visually appealing, dynamically presented, and clearly laid-out.
Far too often, beautiful but irrelevant design elements or flashy add-ons (the worst of them actually using flash) take up your user’s attention and distract from your actual blog.
#3 – Making Sharing Complicated
If you’ve visited successful blogs, you’ve almost certainly seen the small widget next to each post that lets you share the post with a single click. (For those who need further examples, we’re referring to widgets like AddThis and ShareThis.) Honestly, these widgets are so essential to blogging success that it’s surprising this feature hasn’t been integrated into the defaults. Be sure you have your sharing widget installed and plainly visible.
#4 – Slowing Your Blog Down
Your blog’s loading time impact both your visitor experience and your search engine ranking. Don’t add unnecessary plugins and widgets to your posts, don’t integrate pictures without optimizing them for load speeds first, and make sure that you have hosting that takes care of your audience’s bandwidth demands.
For those who want to go the extra mile, several plugins can be found which effectively speed up your blog’s load times.
Related Useful Posts :
- 5 Easy Steps To Speed Up Your Website
- 20+ Tips To Improve And Increase Your Blog’s Loading Speed
- 7 Free Best Tools To Check Website Loading Speed
#5 – Making Communication Difficult
If you want to build a sense of community and a relationship with your visitors, you need to make communication — whether through blog comments or direct messages — as easy as possible. Simple plugins like WordPress-to-Lead or Contact Form 7 can add a simple and intuitive form for messages, and comment plugins like OpenID are a must for reducing the hurdles between a visitor and their comment.
While there are plenty of other mistakes you can make with your blog, these five can be found both in the list of the “most frequent” and “most disastrous” choices. By evading these problems, you will decrease your chances of self-sabotage immensely.
This article is written by Lorna Li. She is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Green Marketing TV. You can follow Lorna on Twitter @lornali.
I think that the 4-th is the most important thing in which all bloggers need to focus. I'm experiencing that on my blog, so I'm changing my theme. Ive found a great clean and seo optimized wp theme and Im working on it. And yes, Alexa says that Google penalizes slow websites. So my friends, be careful.
By the way, great tips. Thnx
Hello Lornali, you did a great job man 🙂 Keep rocking 🙂
You know I'm in the same boat as Jane,. I'm a big fan of having the right tools for success and when people don't add their twitter handle I have to look all over the page and add it to the tweet. I've gone as for as to not even tweet anymore unless their handle is add!
However I am okay with a slow blog if it's from lack of funding for a real server. if it's imply ads and plugins that create the poor experience then it's even worse. Great article Lorna I'm now following you on twitter!
Hi Lorna,
Wonderful list. The most annoying thing for me is when I read some awesome content and want to share it, and if I have to look for sharing buttons by scrolling up and down. In some cases, people don't set their Twitter @ handle.
Hopefully some people will realize and change things after reading this post. I am submitting it to blog networks.
Cheers,
Jane.
great info lornali… thank you for this info
Pradeep you blog needs a boost of load speed as well 😀
nice tips anyway!
+1. 😐
Slow blog will defently make a bad reputation. i had this problem. now i am good at it. and also communication is very important. just reply to your readers comments.
Sharing and theme is very important in today's world… I always try to keep the theme simple and minimal…
One bad thing is when you have been writing your blog content yourself for a long time, then suddenly start to outsource to freelance writers because you think the money comes in on autopilot but the quality suddenly drops and your income vanishes.
Even 1 of these points is enough to kill a blog.
These tips will surely help…thanks!
Communication with your readers play vital role in the success of any blog.
Each and every point is very important for successful blogging.
great points ill keep these point sin mind to avoid any downfall 🙂
thanks
Well said mate. Cheers!
The first two points are very important 🙂
Theme of blog is very important.
btw Pradeep your blog theme is not yet fully cool, you need some improvements.