3. Being Too Promotional: Often the best way to promote your business is to be seen as a resource and not a PR outlet. If you try to sell a customer a product too early in the relationship, before you've really gotten to know each other or learned to trust one another, you'll often scare them off. Rather, establishing a blog that provides regularly interesting, useful and informational (not promotional) content will make customers more likely to make purchasing decisions.
"Organizations are still learning about becoming media companies to utilize the power of pull vs. looking to move inventory with just ads and promotion," says Valeria Maltoni, the author of renowned marketing blog Conversation Agent, "The way to make your blog a lead generation mechanism is to start it as a lead nurturing vehicle."
4. It's About the People Not the Words: In most cases, companies are starting blogs as a means to connect further with their customers and in the end sell more products. But the message is unsuccessful if the person on the other end, in this case the reader, can't understand or can't relate to what you are saying. As pollster and political consultant Frank Luntz has made famous, "it's not what you say that matters, it's what they hear."
"Successful bloggers are focused on their audience and readers as they move out from behind the podium," says Strauss. "They know it's about the people and not about the words. In other words, they care what their audience thinks and they are learners, so they come to it with a beginner's mind and aren't afraid to say I'm learning as they talk to others and improve."
5. Lack of Direction/Strategy: While variety is great in a blog because it keeps it from becoming boring, you need to be clear about what users can expect when they visit it. If you are Wegman's, you've made it very clear at the top of the page that this blog is all about "Fresh Stories: An Inside Look at All Things Wegmans."
"Think back to when you started your business and what it was about that particular business that attracted you," says Salt. "So if you're a retailer, why do you sell what you sell? If you're a B2B service, what made you decide to run a business around that? Tap back into that passion for whatever drove you down that road; when you tap into that passion it becomes clear to other people, they get excited by it and they want to read more."
6. Not Utilizing Your Experience: What makes your perspective unique and different from the millions of other blogs that are out there? Why should readers trust your voice? If you are a business owner, it's rare to start a blog before you've established customers. So clearly, you have experience in your field of business. Just like you tap into your passion with the overall strategy, make the most out of your experience and be sure to offer a unique perspective. Don't just say what everyone else is saying. Often, disruption can breed success.
"If you want a long, loyal following, you need to blog your experience of the information," notes Strauss. "The best example to me is if every movie critic only blogged information about a film, we'd really only need one critic. But it's opinion and experience that matter as you read all these reviews. If you're doing a review of a website and talking about how to solve a problem, if you include your experience in it, it not only humanizes it but allows me to extrapolate what works for me and what doesn't."
7. Taking Advantage of Technology: It's important to master the basics to make your blog look good and read well. Consider varied content types, whether it's a standard text blog, video interviews, podcasts or an infographic. Beyond that, make sure you are utilizing all of the sharing tools available, from an RSS feed to social sharing abilities (via tools like AddThis). And more importantly, use an analytics service (free ones like Google Analytics work just fine) to track what posts perform well, how users are finding you and more.
"Make sure you're using all the tools out there that can help you with SEO, readability scores, and all of those things," says Salt. "It's important to invest in those things because if you're going to invest in blogging, you need to invest in the tool set to get people to actually see your blog. Some people do a readability score, which tells you the education level that the person reading it must have. If you're writing to appeal to people with a Ph.D, you don't want to write grade school-level posts, and vice versa. Just look around at what works for you."
Dig Deeper: 13 Must-Have Blog Techniques and Tools
