Blogging is a way of expressing one’s views on a particular topic (niche) for a targeted audience. Some people write blog posts on their websites, while others use free blogging platforms. Many people use YouTube for blogging (Vlog).
The reasons for blogging are varied – some people blog to establish themselves as experts in their fields while others blog for earning money. Marketing of products is also one of the main reasons for blogging.
Whatever is the case, it is not easy to be successful as a blogger. In this business people face many problems due to the two main reasons – first, they don’t know their job well and second, there is a fierce competition in this field.
Unable to overcome hurdles in their way, most of the bloggers tend to give up and never come back.
List of common problems faced by bloggers and tips to overcome them
1. Unable to customize the website
Most of the bloggers opt for WordPress platform for their blog. Although it is easy, still it requires some knowledge about themes, plugins and configurable options. After going through many related literature and videos, bloggers are able to start a website. But it misses the quality of a professional internet site.
You will need a lot of customization work to achieve the level of a professional website. Although much of the customization knowledge is available on different websites and YouTube videos, implementation requires some understanding of HTML, CSS and PHP programming languages. Or, you will need to hire software professionals to do the work.
In the early days, most of the bloggers do not want to spend money on hiring people. Therefore, the only option left is to invest time and efforts to gain some technical knowledge/skills in the programming languages as mentioned above.
2. Difficulty in selecting Topic for the blog post
After each post, there is a hunt for the subject of the next post. It is because a new blogger has no defined niche and feels he can write on any topic. When he surfs the internet he finds a lot of material is already available on the topic he wanted to write on. So, he drops that topic and starts searching some other topic. In all, he is confused.
So, how to select a topic for blogging? Focus on your niche and seek keyword ideas from some keyword planner tool. You may choose one of the keywords and create an original high-quality blog post. At the same time, you can join some discussion forums related to your niche and see which topics are getting most comments. You can select any such topic to create a post.
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3. No comments
You have created a fresh new blog post after putting a lot of efforts, and now you are waiting for people to come and read the post and leave comments. But your wait is not getting over; comments are not coming.
Make a list of good Alexa ranking blogs and start leaving value-added comments there. Besides, you should make it a habit to visit these blogs regularly and leave comments. Soon, you will get noticed, and audience from those sites will start visiting your sites and leaving comments.
The other thing you can do — create such contents which ask questions from readers and encourage them to share their thoughts in the commenting area. Do it particularly toward the end of your post.
While doing so, stay away from controversial issues as they may hurt the feelings of some of your readers.
4. Little Traffic
After putting in hours in creating a blog post, you expected a flow of traffic to your site, although you did not plan how this would happen before you had created the post. Now, you are disappointed to see nominal traffic to your web page and think what to do to change the situation.
Don’t worry this happens with most of the bloggers, particularly in their early days of blogging. Just sit back, relax and then read the upcoming tips carefully.
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Ensure Content quality
You should verify your post for original contents—meaning materials created by you and not copied from somewhere else. Apart from this, you should check if the title of the post is attractive enough to generate interest in the people to visit your web page and read the article. If it is not so, think to revise it.
Now, think of your audience and find out what they may want to read. Review your post whether it matches your audience’s taste. If not, consider revising it.
In the next step, ask one of your friends to read the post and give a feedback whether you were able to express your thoughts clearly and in an easy to understand language. Furthermore, ensure the article is free of general grammatical errors as it conveys a poor image of the author.
Sharing on social media
These days, social media is a powerful tool to promote your contents, and one must use it intelligently to get best out of it. As the first step in this direction, create your profile at the popular social networking sites.
The popular social sites include Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Slideshare, Pinterest, Instagram etc. First, you should start sharing some interesting and useful stuff on these sites regularly to generate readers’ interest. Then, share your blog posts amid those articles from other sites. Be regular in this practice.
One of the mantras of success on social media is to follow others, and in return, many of them will follow you back. This way you can enlarge your network for sharing contents on the internet.
Remember, Facebook is the biggest social networking site and has the potential to generate many followers for your fan page or business page. To utilize the awesome power of Facebook, have a good number of friends and ask them to like your Facebook page.
Join 25 to 30 Facebook groups that are related to your niche. Like and comment these people’s posts, and they will return the favor by liking and commenting on your posts.
Repeat the procedure with Google plus and Twitter. This strategy will ensure an increase in web traffic to your site.
Another good site is Reddit. If you use it correctly, it can send massive traffic to your site. Also, note that you get do-follow backlinks from this site. To be successful, be patient and keep posting here and commenting other posts.
Slideshare is another website to drive traffic. Create a ppt of your post and share it there. Keep its size to 12-15 slides and link it back to your site page.
Similarly, you can use YouTube as an important source of traffic.
Guest posting
Think of this tool which can introduce you to the audience of a successful blog and also encourage them to visit your site provided they find your guest posting interesting and useful.
Although, it is not easy to find a blog owner who will accept your post on his site, if your content’s quality is high and post is useful for his audience, he will approve it for publishing.
SEO friendly website
Although I have mentioned this point in the last, it deserves to be the first one. You should put required efforts to make your website search engine friendly. To achieve this, you will need on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
You need to put right keywords in the post title, H1 heading and in the body of the page. Moreover, you have to create backlinks to your website pages regularly. Also ensure that your website loading time is fast, otherwise many users will stay away from your site.
Conclusion
The problems mentioned above are quite common among bloggers, but one must not get disheartened to see them. You should focus on the tips provided above to solve these issues, and I have no doubt that you will succeed.
If you have something to add here, do write to us in the comments column.
