Blogging can be a rewarding experience, but it can also become a stressful experience too in the beginning. It takes a lot to time to learn and grow, but you can do it. Here’ I shall share a few the biggest mistakes I made during my first year of blogging. I hope my experiences help guide you through your journey!
Scroll to the bottom of this post for some courses that’ll help you through your blogging journey! They definitely helped guide me through a lot of challenges.
This blog may have affiliate links. This means that, at no extra cost to you, if you so choose to participate in some of the learning opportunities here, we at Kyrabe Stories may receive a commission as gratitude from the partnering companies. Thank you sincerely for your support and for your desire to learn and grow!
Okay, let me start off by saying that blogging as a business entails a lot more than just writing posts and hitting the publish button. If that’s all that you want to do though, it’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with blogging as a casual hobby.
If you plan to make money from this, then buckle up because you have one hellacious learning experiment ahead of you!
Starting out, I was overwhelmed by how much I didn’t know about blogging. I was fortunate enough to have come across a free 5-Day Blogging Course that got me started. It also helped to have been a part of their Facebook Blogging Community because it showed me that I wasn’t alone in this learning experience.
After a few more months of stubbornness, I invested in their 30-Day Blogging Blastoff course (new enrollment window each month), and that gave me the detailed insight as to if blogging as a business was something I truly wanted to take on. Fortunately, that answer became a definite YES!
This is one of those mistakes that should not have been a hard lesson to learn, but it was. Take this question to heart: How do you expect people to read your content if nobody knows that it even exists?
I finally sucked it up and got Hootsuite, a social media management platform, and OMG I am still frustrated that I didn’t do something like this sooner! Many thanks to P.A. Raymond for also taking over much of the social media post shares. We have a spreadsheet of all the posts listed with the description and relevant hashtags at the ready. Each day, certain posts are shared to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. This allows for consistent organic traffic to the blog!
Please remember to constantly share your posts. I admit that I thought it would be spammy to post a link to a specific post more than once. That is not true! Unless every single follower hits that notification button (which let’s be real, not everyone is going to do that) only a small percentage of our audience will actually see that we posted something new. Re-posting a link a few days later just allows a new group of your followers to see that you’ve posted something new!
My mentality for most of the year on this one was, “If they really like the post, they’ll sign up on their own!” This held true for only a tiny fraction of my readers! Which was weird seeing that I would get comments on social media on how the articles were helpful. So why the freak were they not subscribing to the newsletter!?
One mistake that I made was not adding a direct call-to-action to the post itself! Something as simple as, “If you enjoyed this post, sign up to the newsletter for more updates and educational resources!” or placing a convenient and obvious method to sign up in the post itself!
Another method has been to make my newsletter call-to-action a direct link on social media! Briefly explain what your audience can expect from signing up, like how we send out affordable educational options, then simply add the link to the subscriber page! If you’re on Twitter, make this a regular tweet!
Yes, email is still a popular method and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. One thing that’s good about Email Marketing is that your subscribers have already opted-in to say, “I want to see more of your work!” On social media, they MIGHT be notified that you’ve posted something new, but through a newsletter, they will be alerted every time.
We technically do not own our social media pages. If our accounts were deactivated or if the platform just slowed down on engagement (MySpace, anyone?), that’s their right to do so. However, you still own your email list if you paid for the email marketing service, such as through Constant Contact as we use. That is yours to notify your audience whenever you please (just don’t be spammy about it).
Social media has become such a powerful tool when it comes to promoting our brand and expanding our audience. On top of that, it’s free to link posts back to your blog on most popular platforms! Now, how many people actually see and engage with the post is a completely different and extended subject matter to touch on, but point being: larger ENGAGED audience, larger exposure. If your audience shares your post, then that’s more exposure for you!
Did you noticed the ENGAGED part? Buying followers do not work. That number will just be that: a number. Follow-for-follows don’t always work well either unless you are actively and genuinely engaging with each other’s work. Your analytics will tattle on you. It’s better to have a small/mid-sized engaged audience than to have a huge following of bots.
Another important benefit to growing your social media audience is for paid promotions from bigger brands! We are living in an age where most ads can be skipped after 5-15 seconds. What are bigger brands going to do if their marketing strategies are being ignored? They hire people like you and me to promote their stuff for them! This is getting more into Influencer Marketing and Affiliate Marketing, but here’s this similarity gist of both:
Our audience trusts our recommendations. Companies need to sell their products. Our audience matches the company’s targeted audience. Our content doesn’t get skipped over (as much). Company extends a contract or a commission agreement for us to advertise their products. Larger audience equals higher demand from these companies.
See how a larger audience can help out? Now, let me warn you that it takes some seriously dedicated social media management and engagement to grow an engaged audience, but as long as you provide them valuable content, they’ll want to interact with you.
I thought I knew who my audience would be, but this is not the area to be making narrow-minded assumptions! Sure, we need to have a targeted audience depending on our niche, but don’t place a limit onto your reach just yet.
When I declared my blog to be focused on personal and professional development, I assumed that it would mostly be high school and younger college students interested in my posts. I was surprised to see occasionally that the 35-44 age demographics would compete for the top spots. I was also happy to find that I have an almost even gender ratio of users although I also assumed that females would be more attracted to the blog itself.
Take time to explore Google Analytics and see who your content is attracting. These reports will also come in handy when it’s time for paid promotions.
So here’s a little bit of behind-the-scenes dry humor about this tip: This is my second time making this post. I messed up my settings in Bluehost (my domain provider) that ended up resetting my blog to the last backup, which was fortunately right before this post was published. Not that bad, right? Just one lost post. Well, the only reason that was the most recent backup is because last week I made some edits that caused ALMOST A THIRD OF MY BLOG POSTS TO DISAPPEAR!
After many hours of agonizing troubleshooting, I managed to find where the other half of my blog had gone and I did a backup save right then and there!
Yes, I’m frustrated about having to redo this post, but I guess I needed that reminder. I’m grateful that I always save a copy of the rough draft in OneDrive. I still have the editing to do, but it’s better than trying to remember everything I typed from scratch, right? #AlwaysLearning
I promise that all of this was not meant to scare you away from blogging. Mistakes are going to happen. I can guarantee you that! It’s a never-ending learning experience, and I expect to make plenty more mistakes with blogging in 2020. Each lesson will just make us wiser for the following year.
What are some of your concerns with blogging? If you’ve been blogging for a while, what are some mistakes that you had to overcome? I’d love to hear about your experiences.
And above all else, remember to just live and learn one story at a time.
Take care,
Kyndall Bennett from Kyrabe Stories
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Great tips here! I didn't have any idea how big the learning curve would be for blogging - boy was I surprised. This post is encouraging.
Thank you! It really can be frustrating, but it's rewarding to see what you've created grow! Strangely enough, I think what helped me a lot was creating the Kyrabe's Diary page where I openly documented my mistakes. Reading through last year's logs, I caught myself laughing at what caused me a headache and a few tears back then. Keeping a diary (private or public) can definitely help you to see how far you've come in the blogging world!
It was perfect the first time.This is very really unique helpful information.I learn so much from you as well!Keep it up.
Thank you, Ghulam. It means a lot to read these encouraging comments. I'm sure that there will be a part 2 to this soon enough. ?
Great tips. I'm basically just starting in the blogging venture, and would love to make money at it, so hopefully i put to action some of your tips, social networking, emails and backing up! uugh so much to learn. Thank you!
You can do it! Please, oh please, remember to back up your blog! Other than that, every mistake will be a learning opportunity to do better later in the year. I just hope that my post helps you make smarter mistakes than I made. ?
I have absolutely made (am currently making...) at least three of these mistakes myself. Thank you - Great post and good advice.
It took a while for me to accept that these mistakes will help me in the long run. I hope the other items on the list helps guide you towards better situations.
Consistency is key. I dropped the ball on my blog for a little bit and now am in the process of rebuilding. It's a hard climb back up for sure!
At least you got back up, Junell! Many people quit and years later wish they didn't and feel like it's "too late" to start over. You can now put previous mistakes to use to make this time go a lot better! ?
Thanks for sharing your mistakes...it's nice to know I'm not the only one who had made them! My biggest mistake thus far, undervaluing consistency (in posting, social media, etc.). Again, thanks for sharing such great tips!
Same here! It's not the only social media management platform, but Hootsuite has helped me increase my social media consistency. For the posts that you do have, I suggest created a Word Doc with small descriptions of the post that you are linking to. Even if you just have maybe 5 posts you want to share at the moment, you can schedule them to post on repeat on Twitter and just rotate through different hashtags. It helps a lot to build organic traffic too.
Great insights! I did run into some pretty big challenges when I first started blogging. First, the learning curve is HUGE compared to what so many "start your own blog" gurus make it out to be. I was very computer literate when I first started and was even familiar with basic computer coding, and it still took a long time to learn all the nuts and bolts of things.
Second, my blog got hacked because of poor hosting practices and problems with shared hosting vulnerabilities. Let's just say, I got a crash course in the C-Panel back end of things on my blog! Backup is really important, and I love WP plugin "WPS Hide Login." It hides your admin login area adding an extra layer of security against hackers. There's a lot more to security than that, but it's one more area of blogging not discussed like it should be.
Thank you for sharing what you've learned. I think information like this is just as, if not more, valuable than the "how to get started" blogging info.
OMG, that's one heck of an experience! Thank you so much for sharing your story, Jaimie! And thank you so much for your insights on the importance of sharing mistakes. To be honest, I procrastinated on making this post because I wasn't sure what mistakes would be relevant to share without it sounding like a super long ramble. I'm amazed to see how many people resonated with this post, more so than my other blogging tips. ? Maybe this year I can focus on making a "Mistake Series" since I have plenty of stories to share for that just from last year alone.
This is great for new bloggers. I have had a blog for over a year and I still have absolutely no clue what I'm doing!
You're not alone, Breanna! Trust me when I say that this blog post only scratched the surface of my mistakes list. I tried experimenting with Google Ads last year just to find out maybe six months later that I had been doing so many things incorrectly! I didn't know ANYTHING about ad campaigns, ad sets, then the ads themselves! This year, I finally enrolled in a Digital Marketing course, and every lesson I'm face-palming myself like, "I DID THAT WRONG TOO!?"
It's good that you are aware that there's still much to learn. Each year you will become more experienced. ❤
Great tips. Despite the common misconception, blogging is not just posting a story every now and then, is it? Having a structured, business approach is something that must be learned. Now - off to back up my site ;)
Thank you for backing up that blog! And yes, I'm a bit ashamed to admit myself that I had that misconception too when I first launched my blog. I think my biggest shock factor was the legal side of advertising from the FTC. On top of that, I wasn't really much of an avid social media user, but that had to change quickly once I realized that I had to promote myself too! So many things go into managing a blog, and the writing the post portion is only a small percentage of it!
Isn't that the crazy part of blogging, all the "other" information you didn't know about lol.. Glad you hung in there and kept going. Good job!
Thank you, Denise. Yes, it definitely was a huge shock and a discouraging one at times too. So far, I love my blog and the community that has grown from it, but it definitely comes with a huge bag of responsibility.