7 Reasons Why Your Blog is Failing and How to Fix It
If you have a blog that isn’t thriving, you’re not alone! While content marketing is a great way to grow your brand and drive traffic to your website, you may find yourself struggling with success when it comes to your blog. Luckily, building a thriving blog isn’t a matter of luck — well, not always, at least. To have a successful blog, all you have to do is understand what goes into successful blogs and then implement those strategies. Lucky for you, we’re going to help you with that today. Keep reading to learn seven of the most common mistakes that businesses make with their blogs and how to fix them.
#1: You don’t have a blog content strategy.
As with the rest of your branding, marketing, and content, you need a strategy before you just go about writing and posting blogs. Why? Because without a strategy, everything that you do is random and doesn’t fit well together. Not only should your blog topics be relevant to your industry and business, but they should also be intentionally chosen, not just randomly inserted.
How to Fix It
When you’re building your social media strategy, content strategy
#2: Your blog is poorly designed.
Nobody is going to read your blog if you post a bunch of small, hard-to-read text on a webpage. Okay, okay, that’s an extreme example, but the logic applies to less extreme examples too! If your blog isn’t designed well, or at least designed in a way that makes it appealing for your audience to read, people aren’t likely to read it. You don’t have much time (under ~15 seconds!) to capture your audience’s attention and humans have low attention spans. Anything that distracts them or makes it harder for them to read your blog will end up with them leaving your website…and you definitely don’t want that to happen.
How to fix it
Design your blog well and make sure that it’s mobile-friendly, too. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, it just needs to be easy on the eyes.
#3: You’re not sharing your blogs on social media.
What’s the point of writing a blog if nobody is going to read it? Especially when you’re just starting your blog out, it’s important that you’re promoting it on different social media platforms. Even if you don’t have a huge social media following, by promoting your blog, you’re creating brand awareness and driving traffic to your website. We recommend cross-promoting your blog on various social media platforms. Even better, using social media for your blog is a double whammy — you drive traffic to your site and promote your blog while also posting more on social media.
How to fix it
Promote your blog on your social media channels, even if you don’t have a large following.
RELATED READING: 12 Tips For Building A Better Social Media Presence
#4: Your posts aren’t SEO optimized.
Unless you’re already a well-known brand with a large audience, it’s likely going to be challenging to get people to read your posts at first. That’s why SEO optimization is so important, especially if you’re relying on blogs to drive traffic to your site and generate leads that will actually turn into sales. When you fail to optimize your posts for SEO, you’re missing out on all of those potential leads that come through Google. Luckily, SEO optimization isn’t rocket science and with a few hours of research, you can pick up some tips and tricks that will significantly improve your SEO rankings.
How to Fix It
Learn how to optimize your blogs for SEO and optimize them as much as possible.
#5: Your posts aren’t consistent.
Another reason that your blog may be failing is because you’re posting randomly and sporadically. Just like your social media, you want your blog posts to be consistent and frequent enough. This doesn’t mean you should post a new blog every day, but consider doing one weekly, bi-weekly, or even monthly (though we recommend doing it more frequently than monthly). If you’re hoping to build your brand through your blog, you’ll need to post frequent enough to be relevant. Posting consistently will also help grow your audience and build brand recognition. If you don’t, your blog may just be a random part of your website that seems unorganized and irrelevant.
How to Fix It
Create a schedule for your blog content. You can do this within your social media calendar so that you’re also promoting your blogs on your social.
#6: Your content isn’t engaging and clear.
If your blog isn’t engaging or clear, nobody is going to read it. Trust us on this one — blogs aren’t books, academic papers, or journalistic works of art. They aren’t meant to be crazy confusing and complex. When someone reads your blog, it’s likely because your title caught their attention and they want an easy way to consume the information they’re looking for. Sure, there are exceptions to the rule, but more likely than not, your audience is looking for engaging and clear content when they read your blog. Even more, as a business, it’s important that all of your copy is engaging and clear (Psst.. that’s what story-based marketing is all about!).
How to Fix It
Be careful when you’re writing your content and remember that you probably know more about the subject than your reader. If you’re not sure if it’s engaging or clear enough, have someone else read it who is similar to your target audience and get feedback from them.
#7: Your blog isn’t unique.
Finally, your blog may be failing because it isn’t unique enough. In the current internet environment, it’s unlikely that your blog or business is completely one-of-a-kind…and that’s okay! There can be others out there like you, but if you’re exactly like every other brand out there, what’s the value you’re adding to your customers’ lives? By adding some aspect of uniqueness to your blog, you’ll separate yourself from the competition and draw people toward your blog (and that’s what you want, right?!).
How to Fix It
Consider picking a niche or take time to think about what makes you and your business unique, then incorporate that uniqueness into your blog strategy.
After reading this blog, we hope that you have a better understanding of why your blog is failing and how you can fix it.
If anything, remember that everything starts with strategy. So, if you’re ever confused about where to start when it comes to fixing your blog, go back to the blog strategy, see where there might be gaps, and take it from there. And of course, if you ever need a helping hand, we’re here to help.
Happy Evolving!
