“10 Writing Mistakes that Will Guarantee Your Blog’s Failure” plus 1 more

10 Writing Mistakes that Will Guarantee Your Blog’s Failure

Posted: 10 Nov 2011 12:02 PM PST

This is a guest post by Gregory Ciotti of SparringMind.com.

You have the ideas.

You have the expertise.

You have the ability to project them well on your blog, and you are quite confident in your writing ability.

Yet, unknowingly, you could be building a sinking ship, punctured by these ten writing mistakes that will doom any blog to failure.

You needn’t be disheartened, however, as any blogger can avoid them. It just takes awareness of their existence, and a keen focus on giving the reader what they want, at all costs.

Do you make any of these ten fatal writing mistakes on your blog?

1. You have nothing to say

When blogging, you have to understand that in order to succeed, you need to give your readers what they want.

So then, what is it that readers really want?

They want you to provide them a solution to what they are seeking, even if what they are seeking is nothing but entertainment.

They also want to hear what you have to say. This doesn’t mean that they are intrigued about what you had for lunch. But they do want a personality behind the words they are reading. Otherwise, there is no connection that they can make to the words, and what they are reading becomes empty.

Making sure you have something to say makes writing easier and faster. When you have nothing to say, you are forced to write sentences that sound meaningful but deliver nothing.

2. You’re not specific

Consider the following two headlines:

How I Got A Lot Of Facebook Fans
How I Grew My Facebook Fan Page To 6,683 Fans In 4 Months

Which one of those do you think is going to offer the most in-depth information? The second one, as it called to our innate desire to hear the specifics.

The reason readers love to see details and examples is because they value their time, and they are not interested in hearing another cookie cutter “how-to” that provides no examples to show whether or not it works.

In your writing, your examples can sell your whole post. If you can back up the claims of your headline with a detailed example, you will have your readers reading from top to bottom, and then anxiously awaiting your next post.

How can you lead your readers if you don’t lead by example?

3. Your word choice is too complex

Almost any time I encourage people to write simply on blogs, they always disagree by saying that simple writing is boring. But they fail to see my point.

Articulate and meticulously crafted writing very much has its place, but sometimes bloggers fail to realize their medium and their audience.

It’s not that the web is only suited for simple writing, but it definitely benefits from it.

Getting your point across can be much more effective if you cut out the fluff, and will guarantee more people will read your posts from beginning to end—a critical part of being a successful blogger that people await updates from.

Why not put this to the test yourself? In your next post, keep it simple, using longer words only when other more direct options will not do. I guarantee you will find writing on your topic more enjoyable, and you will get to the point of each post far more quickly.

4. Your paragraphs are too wordy

This point is very closely related to the one above. Again, I feel a disclaimer is needed here. I’m not saying a long, comprehensive post is not suited for the blogospohere—in fact these types of posts add a lot of value and are often a great way to show your talent.

What I’m talking about is the dreaded fluff. In the same way fluff causes you to write with unnecessary adjectives and words you had to use a dictionary to look up, it can also wreak havoc on your writing structure.

In blogging, you should keep your paragraphs short for the same reason you should keep your wording simple: they are easier for people to read and understand.

The last thing you want to create on your posts is confusion. Your writing style needs to give people what they want, and people do not want to be confused—they want information. Give it to them.

5. You keep using the passive voice

Speaking of what readers want, did you know that in English, readers prefer the Subject, Verb, Object sentence structure? This is called the “active voice.”

“Long sentences annoy readers.” English readers like that.

“Readers are annoyed by long sentences.” That..? Not so much.

Did you also notice how the second option there—the passive voice—makes simple statements use a couple of unnecessary words? This can add up over a long blog post.

Although you cannot always use the active voice, as a blogger, you should try to as often as possible.

6. Your descriptions are empty

Worse than lacking details, is trying to force descriptions onto examples that don’t need them.

In writing these are known as “qualifying words,” and they include the likes of: very, little, rather. They add nothing to the meaning of your sentences, and take away their impact by lengthening them for no reason.

For instance, you could say this style of writing “is basically a little annoying, rather, there is very little reason you should be writing like this.”

Yikes! As Mark Twain once said:

“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write very; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

8. You often ramble in your writing

Let me tell you about rambling, it’s like this one time I was trying to come up with a post for problogger.net about huge writing mistakes bloggers make, and the power ended up going out before I could save my post, and I thought maybe I should write an entire post about saving your writing, because it’s really important for bloggers to make sure that there best thoughts aren’t erased by some sort of haphazard…

Okay, I’ll stop.

Notice a trend in these writing problems? You aren’t giving readers what they want. Maybe, maybe, you run a blog where readers come around just for your rants. Most likely, however, you don’t—your readers come for information, and they come for examples, as always.

Don’t ramble: give them what they want.

9. Your blog is repetitive

Bloggers with specific niches everywhere just did a double-take.

No my fellow blogger, you can keep writing about tech, food, fitness, or naked skydiving until the end of your days for all I care. The danger in repetitiveness is not the subject matter, but the presentation.

How-to posts, all day, every day, may be what you want to do, but it can become a drag for readers who come back often. As you progress and continue writing for your blog, you may find yourself sick of writing these posts as well.

Instead, mix up the type of posts you put out. Text interviews, critiques, a huge resource list—the types of post that you can write are endless. Even better, change the entire medium in which you present your writing. I’m talking about writing for podcasts and videos, specifically.

Writing a script for a podcast or a video session can be a totally unique take on your writing.Not only that, it gets your blog out on different media, allowing people to discover your site through your external videos and podcasts, and gives long time readers another way to “hear your voice,” quite literally in this instance!

So don’ be boring, mix up writing style, and mix up presentation media. Your writing, and your blog, will be better for it.

10. You don’t edit

Have I driven the point home that you need to be thoughtful of your reader? Maybe I should re-read my section on repetitiveness!

Honestly, it may feel good to simply “crank out” a successful post, but you are placing too much faith in your talents and not enough importance on your reader if you don’t go back and edit even your best “one-shot” works.

This goes beyond simple grammar and spelling edits as well. No reader of yours will ever expect for you to be the perfect writer, and it’s okay to add a touch of personality into your blog. In fact it is quite welcome.

You should, however, not be afraid to edit your own thoughts. Re-read posts and cut out anything that doesn’t add to the post in a meaningful way.

Read the post as best as you can from the perspective of a reader: “Would I care about this section?” is a question that should come into your mind often.

Write for your reader

The running theme through all of these mistakes is the lack of attention being paid to the reader.

While writing may be an expression of your†thoughts, you won’t be the only one reading them (if you aspire for your blog to be read by more than you and your cat, that is!).

Sit back after each post, after each line, and ask yourself: does this benefit my reader? Do they get something out of this line? Is it needed for the post as a whole to be a success?

You can’t make your blogging style flawless, but you can darn well try to make your reader happy!

Are you a WordPress user like Darren Rowse? Then you definitely need to check out Sparring Mind, the WordPress content marketing blog, which shows you that you don’t need to be a tech geek to create amazing content on a superb WordPress site.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

10 Writing Mistakes that Will Guarantee Your Blog’s Failure

The Blogger’s Guide to Meaningful Engagement on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter

Posted: 10 Nov 2011 06:04 AM PST

This guest post is by Neil Patel of KISSmetrics.

When it comes to social media, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter are the big three. If you're not on these social sites, then you are missing out on great business opportunities.

If you are on these sites, however, you probably know that getting meaningful engagement with your followers isn't easy. You can easily drown in the noise, so you need tips and tools to help you break through that noise. The following ideas will help you do just that.

Better Engagement on Facebook

Image copyright Darren Baker - Fotolia.com

You more than likely have a Facebook fan page if you are in business. The engagement probably isn’t great, however. See, about 90% of people who like your Facebook fan page never return. They will come back if you can effectively convince them… but you have to have good content.

What is good content on Facebook? We don't know exactly how Facebook judges content, but we know they look at three scores using their EdgeRank indicator:

Affinity: This is a measure of how much a user's fans like his page. Unfortunately, this is a one-way street, so to boost your Affinity score you need to convince people to Like your posts, click your links and interact with you.
Weight: How people interact with your content matters. A comment is given more weight than a Like since it takes more effort.
Time decay: The newer the content, the more likely it will show up in your news feed.

Like I pointed out above, if your content gets a low score, it may not even show up in the Recent News feed. And if it's not showing up in Recent News, then people aren't going to interact with it. So what you need to do is optimize your news feed. Here's how to do that.

Less is more: You are more likely to get a fan to comment or Like a post if you limit your posts to two to five a day. If you send a barrage of posts, people may even hide you.
Shorter updates: Another important rule is to keep your posts under 100 characters. If you have to make people read a whole lot of copy, they are less likely to interact.
Use links: Posts with links will get more interaction than posts without links, but make sure you use the full link and not a shortened link.
Questions: Posts with a question will always beat a post without a question. Try and come up with at least one good question a day.
Share photos and videos: These are the best ways to get engagement from people. If it's an enticing video, people will watch it. And lots of people will Like it.
Time your posts: The best time to post to Facebook is between 10am and 4pm. Interestingly enough, if you post outside of business hours, you'll get 20% more engagement.
Post on Thursday and Friday: Because of the "happiness index," these two days get 18% more engagement!

If you want to find out what your EdgeRank score is, you can connect with the EdgeRank Checker here.

Deeper Engagement on Google+

Google+ is the new kid on the block, so ways to encourage engagement are constantly emerging. Here are some traditional and new ways to do that.

Post to the public stream: If you want to interact with all of your friends no matter what circle they are in, then you need to get into the habit of posting to the public stream. This will expose you to a lot more people.
Share other posts: When you’re surfing your Google+ stream, take the time to engage your friends by clicking the Share button for their posts. This will load their post in your stream, effectively sharing their content with your audience.
Create smart custom Circles: It's possible to run into "Circle fatigue," where you might just throw up your hands and say "What's the use?" but there is a very good argument for creating custom circles. Chris Voss, for example, creates a Commenter circle, which is a list of people who have commented on his posts in Google+ but are not connected with him. He then reciprocates with this group by commenting on their posts. It's a great way to engage the power users!
Hangouts: This feature of Google+ is for that person who is truly social. It's for the person who not only wants to see you, but hear your voice as well. It's great for company meetings, conference calls, mastermind groups, ad hoc brainstorm sessions, or just simply hanging out. Hangouts are meant to be loose, so bring your own drink, and remember that you can also start a hangout on YouTube.
Add Google+ to your website: Google+ can improve social engagement but it can also help your SEO efforts, too, which is why I recommend putting the Google+ button on your content. This will encourage people to share it on the social network and interact with it, and it boost your rankings as well.

Stronger Engagement on Twitter

At the 2011 Web 2.0 Summit, former Facebook President Sean Parker said that power users are leaving Facebook for Google+ and Twitter. The reason is because Facebook is not giving these users the tools they need to handle the glut of information on Facebook.

It's interesting that these users would go to Twitter, because you could argue that Twitter sends you a glut of information, too. But Twitter is different because around it, there are lots of tools to help you manage that information.

Here are two that I highly recommend.

Buffer is a tool that allows you to spread out your tweets throughout the day during optimal viewing times. If you're like me, it's usually in the early morning or late evenings that I really get a chance to engage on Twitter. So if I send out a whole bunch of tweets at that time, they're wasted because not very many people see them. With Buffer my tweets are shown at more optimal time, which results in more clicks and more retweets.

The other tool is HootSuite. The free version gives you free social analytics and supports up to five profiles. The paid version gives you enhanced social analytics, unlimited social profiles, and integration with Google Analytics and Facebook Insights.

Some people think TweetDeck is better than HootSuite, but I disagree. TweetDeck may have its advantages with a clean interface and URL shortener, but when it comes down to it, HootSuite delivers more value in these areas:

Speed: TweetDeck's Adobe Air is a massive resource hog. HootSuite is much faster.
Statistics: You only get the data bit.ly will give you for TweetDeck. With HootSuite you can integrate with Google Analytics.
Multiple social networks: With HootSuite, you can also connect to Facebook fan pages, Ping.fm, WordPress, FourSquare, Mixi, and MySpace—not just Facebook and LinkedIn.

In the end, this is an essential tool to help you or your team track conversations and measure campaign results.

Other engagement options

Even though there are a lot more social media sites out there, like LinkedIn, these ideas can work equally well on those sites, too. You just have to use common sense.

What other methods do you use to increase engagement on social sites?

Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics and blogs at Quick Sprout.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

The Blogger’s Guide to Meaningful Engagement on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter

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