4 BLOGGING MISTAKES YOU MIGHT BE MAKING

I've been blogging for a while now, actually a long while really, over three years to be exact.

Honestly I always wish that when I started out, I knew all that I now know about blogging. I probably would have monetised this little space a long time ago and would also have more page views but we learn something new every day. 

 I'm no professional and most of what I've learnt as a blogger is from experience, trial and error while others, I read and learnt online. Having been at this for a while, I will say it’s not how long you blog but how well you blog. Now I've seen a lot of posts dishing tips on blogging, some of which have been great while other pointless but my goal in writing this is to share a few blog mistakes I made and link some of the other helpful posts I've read.

Related: 5 recommended blogging tools

1. Large blog pictures

Have you ever been to a blog which took forever to load, well I've been there and I basically exit after waiting. As a blogger you don't want to loose your readers so to avoid this, it is important to resize your pictures which will help in reducing the load time of your blog. An ideal blog picture size is under 700 pixels. However your ideal picture size is subject to the width and layout of your blog, find what works for you. Now I keep my picture size around 1000x 1200 due to social media as facebook has a way or resizing pictures thereby making it loose quality. Eventually, I’d like to have two sets of pictures edited, one for blog content and another for social media.

2. Improperly named images

I see this mistake a lot especially when downloading pictures from other blogs. In fact I was making this same mistake until I learnt better last year. Renaming your pictures improves your SEO optimisation, which simply means, making it easier for search engines to find your content which translates to more traffic. For example if I'm looking for Ankara skirts outfit inspirations, a picture saved as IMG232 will most likely not pop up. Hence save your photos according to what you think people might search for.

3. Neglecting Comments and Replies

As bloggers we love comments, it’s that one thing that shows that people are actually reading and care. Sure there’s the traffic but comments show real people. However as much as we love comments, most of us either don’t reply to the comments on our blogs or comment on other blogs. When I started blogging, I commented on other blogs quite well but failed to reply to comments on my blog. Eventually the comments declined and I learnt the hard way. So guys reply to comments, I even sometimes go back to blogs to check if they replied to my comment. Also be sure to visit the blogs of your commenters and leave proper comments not spam ones like '' nice stuff" (rolls eyes, then deletes comment). Leaving comments even helps with traffic and gets other people to visit your blog.

4. Social media over blog

Social media is important to the success of blogs these days. However some of us have neglected our blogs while putting all our focus on social media. While this has worked for others, I find that when it comes to making money from blogging, your actual blog is needed and even preferred over social media. I mean sure you can get paid for sponsored posts on social media, Instagram especially. But you can make so much more from, affiliate links and ad banners among others. 

Now I could go on and on but I feel there are quite a few posts by fellow bloggers which I felt were helpful. So in order not to keep repeating what’s already been said, please see the links below for some of those posts.

Cassie Daves Reasons your blog traffic is not growing and So you want to be a blogger?

Kachee Tee's 5 quick ways to improve your blog

Sisiyemmie has a whole section of helpful posts here, check them all out

I hope you found this post helpful and maybe learnt something new or better yet found a link that was helpful.

What mistakes did you make when you started blogging? What tips did you learn along your blog journey? What’s one thing you wish we bloggers did more? What’s one mistake you've made? What tip would you give?

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