By Josh Sarz
When you're blogging, you should understand that you're not the only one doing what you're doing.
If you haven't established yourself as an authority at an early time like what Chris Brogan, Seth Godin, Darren Rowse and Brian Clark had done, chances are you're going to have one heck of a time doing it now.
Everyone's competing for attention.
Want to write a guest post for Problogger? Hundreds of other people are doing that.
Want to build backlinks for a competitive keyword? Chances are, bigger companies are doing the same, and are hiring a lot of talented people to help them with the job.
Why not just quit blogging instead?
Oh wait, never mind. On second thought, take a listen to what I have to say.
5 Big Don'ts in Blogging
Just like school, or the office, there are rules to what you're doing.
If you want to become a respectable blogger, you might want to take notes.
1. Don't blab
You don't want to talk too much, especially about yourself. No one likes that.
Oh and one more thing, if you talk too much you might lose sight of what you were writing about in the first place, causing you to steer away from the supposedly awesome headline that you spend hours to conjur up and now it all gone to waste because you can't stop talking about one thing when in fact you should have moved on a long time ago but you never did.
See? It's annoying.
Don't be annoying.
2. Don't be a copycat
Well, it's hard to be completely free of this one.
Almost everything that should be said has already been said.
But what you can do, is add a personal touch to it. Perhaps relate old content to a new episode of Mad Men.
Even the Copyblogger does that because, to be honest, they've already said what needs to be said. And people just aren't getting it.
3. Don't lose patience
One of the most important things that you should know about blogging, is that it doesn't take off like a rocket ship.
You won't get thousands of subscribers on your first month, unless you already have existing connections.
You see, the true secret to A-list blogging is to make A-list connections.
If you don't however, have those A-list connections, you're going to have to work your butt a little bit more.
And progress is going to be slow. Especially once you hit the blogging ceiling (according to Jon Morrow).
But you should never lose patience. Keep going at it.
Keep writing guest posts. Keep making quality backlinks. Keep writing epic shit.
4. Don't be Lazy
One of the worst mistakes you can make at blogging is becoming lazy.
If you have a blog, you suddenly have that big responsibility of following up and replying to comments from your readers.
If someone sends you an email, you have to reply. If you don't, you're being lazy.
And if you're lazy, you're blog is going to die soon.
Because after becoming lazy, you'll put off writing quality posts. You stop halfway through a blog series.
Again, don't be lazy. Work your butt off. Reply to your readers' comments.
Spend time working on really good blog posts.
Do some research.
5. Don't blog about yourself
Here's the mother-load.
This is probably one of the biggest and most common mistakes among bloggers.
They talk a lot about themselves. The reason why this is a no-no is that you readers aren't coming to your site to know what you had for lunch, or what song got stuck in your head during your road trip.
Your blog is there for a purpose. Stick to it. If your blog's there to become an online journal, then what you can do is relate your post to something relevant and helpful for your readers.
No one likes to read a rant about how humid it is.
Now how about you?
Have you made some of these major mistakes in blogging? If so, what did you do to correct them? What happened after you committed these mistakes? Any change in your blog's performance?
Josh Sarz is a writer/editor for Thumbtack, an online marketplace for local services in the U.S. He has two main blogs where he writes about Finding Ways to Enjoy Life on sagoyism.com, and about Mythbusters for Blogging at blogworkproject.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Josh_Sarz
http://EzineArticles.com/?5-Big-Donts-in-Blogging&id=6728908
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When you're blogging, you should understand that you're not the only one doing what you're doing.
If you haven't established yourself as an authority at an early time like what Chris Brogan, Seth Godin, Darren Rowse and Brian Clark had done, chances are you're going to have one heck of a time doing it now.
Everyone's competing for attention.
Want to write a guest post for Problogger? Hundreds of other people are doing that.
Want to build backlinks for a competitive keyword? Chances are, bigger companies are doing the same, and are hiring a lot of talented people to help them with the job.
Why not just quit blogging instead?
Oh wait, never mind. On second thought, take a listen to what I have to say.
5 Big Don'ts in Blogging
Just like school, or the office, there are rules to what you're doing.
If you want to become a respectable blogger, you might want to take notes.
1. Don't blab
You don't want to talk too much, especially about yourself. No one likes that.
Oh and one more thing, if you talk too much you might lose sight of what you were writing about in the first place, causing you to steer away from the supposedly awesome headline that you spend hours to conjur up and now it all gone to waste because you can't stop talking about one thing when in fact you should have moved on a long time ago but you never did.
See? It's annoying.
Don't be annoying.
2. Don't be a copycat
Well, it's hard to be completely free of this one.
Almost everything that should be said has already been said.
But what you can do, is add a personal touch to it. Perhaps relate old content to a new episode of Mad Men.
Even the Copyblogger does that because, to be honest, they've already said what needs to be said. And people just aren't getting it.
3. Don't lose patience
One of the most important things that you should know about blogging, is that it doesn't take off like a rocket ship.
You won't get thousands of subscribers on your first month, unless you already have existing connections.
You see, the true secret to A-list blogging is to make A-list connections.
If you don't however, have those A-list connections, you're going to have to work your butt a little bit more.
And progress is going to be slow. Especially once you hit the blogging ceiling (according to Jon Morrow).
But you should never lose patience. Keep going at it.
Keep writing guest posts. Keep making quality backlinks. Keep writing epic shit.
4. Don't be Lazy
One of the worst mistakes you can make at blogging is becoming lazy.
If you have a blog, you suddenly have that big responsibility of following up and replying to comments from your readers.
If someone sends you an email, you have to reply. If you don't, you're being lazy.
And if you're lazy, you're blog is going to die soon.
Because after becoming lazy, you'll put off writing quality posts. You stop halfway through a blog series.
Again, don't be lazy. Work your butt off. Reply to your readers' comments.
Spend time working on really good blog posts.
Do some research.
5. Don't blog about yourself
Here's the mother-load.
This is probably one of the biggest and most common mistakes among bloggers.
They talk a lot about themselves. The reason why this is a no-no is that you readers aren't coming to your site to know what you had for lunch, or what song got stuck in your head during your road trip.
Your blog is there for a purpose. Stick to it. If your blog's there to become an online journal, then what you can do is relate your post to something relevant and helpful for your readers.
No one likes to read a rant about how humid it is.
Now how about you?
Have you made some of these major mistakes in blogging? If so, what did you do to correct them? What happened after you committed these mistakes? Any change in your blog's performance?
Josh Sarz is a writer/editor for Thumbtack, an online marketplace for local services in the U.S. He has two main blogs where he writes about Finding Ways to Enjoy Life on sagoyism.com, and about Mythbusters for Blogging at blogworkproject.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Josh_Sarz
http://EzineArticles.com/?5-Big-Donts-in-Blogging&id=6728908
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