Has blogging become more of a chore than a passion for you? Are you confused about your target audience? Or clueless about branding? If any of these issues sound familiar then sadly, your blog is probably on the brink of failure. Most bloggers start their writing careers with the best intentions, perhaps they want to build a community with like-minded people, build on their writing skills, share their experiences or make money from their blog. Equally, most bloggers and their projects fail within the first 12 months.
It’s a painful truth, but if you feel that success is running away from you or you feel as though you’ve exhausted all other avenues, don’t worry. You still have time to turn your blog around and make the most of your writing skills and all the hard work you’ve put in so far. Check out the most common reasons why blogs fail within their first year and change your approach for the better.
Take branding seriously
I know what you’re thinking: I own a blog, why do I need to worry about branding? The truth is, a strong and wholly consistent online brand is arguably just as important as the content you’re producing. This means consistent branding across all your platforms, which is something you can achieve through better Digital Asset Management with bynder.com. DAM software helps you make the most of your digital assets which include your banners, logo, fonts, video and photo content, written files, etc. By keeping them in a centralized cloud-based library, you can access the files you need within seconds and maintain high levels of branding across all platforms with clever version control capabilities.
A blog without a strong brand identity across all platforms leaves questions over authenticity and your attention to detail. The more consistent your branding, the stronger the trust between you and your readership, and the more recognizable your content will be.
Inconsistent effort
Whether you’re a mommy blogger or a travel writer, your blogging efforts need to be consistent. That means the quality of your content, the number of posts you commit to each week, and even your levels of engagement within your community need to be reliable. You can’t expect your readers to hang around wondering if/when you’ll post next. Blogging takes commitment and steadfast effort across all areas. Just like any job or vocation, if you don’t take it seriously – you will ultimately, fail.
And finally, ads, ads everywhere
If you’re hoping to monetize your website or you want to come across as a more authentic blog, then you’re not alone. However, plastering your pages with ads from all kinds of businesses will only have the opposite effect. The last thing you want is to turn readers away because your blog looks spammy and of poor quality. Your readership is only likely to decrease at this stage. Experts recommend introducing limited ads on your blog space when you have built a large readership and extensive volumes of traffic each month. Stay away from obvious advertisements until then, as they’re not worth the damage they could do to your authenticity.
