Friday Five: 5 Blogging Mistakes

There are a lot bloggers out there and some are certainly better than others. Whether you're just getting started with your blog or you're established with a loyal following, there is always room for improvement! Improve your blogging skills by avoiding these common blogging mistakes.

1. Don't Just Post to Post

You should certainly be consistent with your blog posts and make sure you are posting often. However, this doesn't mean that you should be constantly posting all the time. Quality is still more important than quantity. You shouldn't feel the need to post daily if you don't have anything to write about. Take your time to come up with some post ideas and really research and write them well. In the end, your readers will appreciate this more than just a bunch of posts about nothing.

2. Don't Be a Robot - Show Your Personality!

No matter the topic you're writing about, it's important to set your posts apart by including your "voice" in your writing. Even if you think your topic is boring, you can always spice up a post by putting your own spin on it. Make sure you don't sound like a robot writes your blog instead of a human. Everyone has their own flair and writing style and you should make sure to let that show in every post you do.

3. Don't Forget to Define Your Abbreviations

This is one of my pet peeves! I don't know about your industry, but the domain industry has A LOT of abbreviations. ICANN, IANA, DNS, IP, TLD - I could go on and on. But, if I do go on and on and I don't actually define what any of these abbreviations are, I'm alienating some readers who won't understand my blog post as well as they could. You just can't assume that everyone will know what you're talking about when you use abbreviations. Even if you're writing an article that is geared towards a certain group that most likely will know what you're talking about, you should still write your article in a way that everyone can understand. The general rule is to define an abbreviation the first time you use it and then you can just use the abbreviation from then on.

4. Make Sure You Know Your Audience

Who are you writing for? Although it may seem like the answer is you, make sure you aren't just writing for yourself. You should be providing good quality writing that your readers can take something away from. You should also try and figure out who your target audience is. For example, if your blog is focused on art, then your target audience could be other artists who do similar work or even just people who also love art.

5. Don't Forget to Edit!

I know, I know - you're the greatest writer on Earth and you never make a mistake. Me too! ;) Except that we're both human and, let's face it, everyone makes mistakes. This is why you have to go back through and edit your posts. If you can, it's also great to have another person read through your post to look for any necessary changes. This is especially important if you're already read through your post many times, for example due to several re-writes. I know after a few read-throughs, I'm useless at editing my own stuff. Grab someone who is good at editing and give their fresh eyes a chance to catch the mistakes you may have missed.


You didn't think I'd end this blog without defining my acronyms did you? Although, as I mentioned above, normally you should define your acronyms the first time they're mentioned, I'll make an exception and define them here at the end: ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which is the group that oversees the the global internet. IANA stands for Internet Assigned Numbers Authority and is one ICANN's departments that manages the Domain Name System (DNS) and coordinates the global Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. Lastly, TLD stands for top-level domain and an example of a TLD is .COM.)

Post by Robyn Norgan