MY 7 BLOGGING MISTAKES

I have been blogging for around three and a half years now, and in my time I have made plenty of mistakes, or just realised things quite late into it that have probably hindered me in the long run. I am a firm believer that smart people learn from their own mistakes and a wise person learns from the mistakes of others and I think it’s so helpful when others share their learning experiences, so here are seven of my many mistakes when it has come to blogging…

1// Not Using Social Media To Promote Quicker - I used to be embarrassed about my blog, so I wouldn't promote it on social media until a few months into my blogging journey as I wasn't that proud of it and I was scared that people in my school would mock it. Nowadays though, I honestly couldn't care less as it's one of my biggest achievements and a lot of my readers find my blog through my social media and it's a bit engagement enhancer too!

2// Opted For Quality Over Quantity – This would happen particularly when I was posting content for frequently as I would either run out of things to write or want to compile a roundup of my blog posts and they just weren’t received as well. Thing is, deep down I knew that these posts wouldn’t receive many views or much, if any interaction as they were very vague and didn’t require a lot of effort on my part.

3// Didn’t Leave A Day To Proofread – There’s not a blog post that goes out, that I don’t proofread as I quite quickly, so it’s easy for me to make a mistake or things aren’t articulated as well as they should be. However, I do need to make a habit of proofreading at least a day after I’ve written the post because when you’ve looked at something time after time, you still seem to miss your mistakes. So taking a day to look at it with fresh eyes means you’re more likely to notice any errors.

4// Didn’t Have A Functional Blog Design – For the longest time, I would design my blog myself, and it was so mish mash and didn’t function well to the point where it wasn’t even mobile/tablet responsive. I’ve only had my blog designed for just over a year now, but in my opinion it’s money well spent as it creates a whole new aesthetic to my blog as well as continuity regarding the theme.

5// Lacked Interacting With Other Bloggers – I find it so difficult interacting with other bloggers, primarily due to the fact that I feel like bloggers have their own little cliques. Particularly at events, when as I always go to events on my own, with the intention of meeting and networking with other bloggers, but I get so intimidated, due to my age and the small size of my blog and everyone seems to be in their own little groups and I can’t exactly go up and be like “hi!” I do need to be more carefree and outspoken, but the entire situation just makes me anxious.

6// Wrote As If It Was An Essay – Being a student who studied essay based subjects, you tend to get into a habit of writing in a particular way such as saying “it can be argued that” and “they convey…” which is all well and good for an English/Law/Politics essay, but for a primarily beauty blog, it doesn’t fair too well and can become quite boring. My blog for myself, and possibly others is like an escape from all of that, but I guess I find times to distinguish between the two.

7// Irrelevant Content – I sometimes have this idea in my mind of how long a blog post needs to be to for it to be a justified blog post. In doing this, I tend to write unnecessary content to beef up the post to have an increased number of words. I’m aware that sometimes, short and sweet is key, but I personally like medium-long posts, however this mentality results in me waffling.