Blogger Beware: 12 Blogging Blunders to Ban

by PR Coach

Blogging mistakes can rust away your readers

Caught up in the blog days of summer? Looking for blogging inspiration? We’ve got help. Starting with 12 blogging blunders to avoid and following with 24 superb blogging tips and inspiration from the experts.

I’ve been blogging for more than 10 years, though in the early days at About.com, it wasn’t called blogging. I have learned a few lessons about writing, reaching out to readers and making the most of your posts.

With that in mind, I’m sharing 12 common, though tongue-in-cheek blogging blunders you should avoid at all costs:

  1. Flogging: deathly posts filled with marketing-speak, hard-selling, or pushing products too hard. Readers are gone in an instant.
  2. Clogging: jamming up the channel with useless commentary.
  3. Slogging: creating long, boring list posts (ahem, this post excluded).
  4. Water blogging: torturing readers with misplaced minutiae.
  5. Dogging: flat out lazy blogging with no clear purpose, no insight or no solutions for readers.
  6. Fogging: confusing readers with confusing writing or purposely misleading readers by not staying on track or making sense of an issue. Haven’t we all read some of those?
  7. Hogging: writing as if it’s all about me, me, me, and no one else. For some bloggers, the ego knows no bounds.
  8. Jogging: racing through your post so fast or making it so short that it’s as if you ran right by your readers. Mostly, It’s rude and disrespectful.
  9. Logging: similar to slogging, this is death by “listing.”
  10. Pogging: I made this one up. It’s playing games like Pogs when you should be paying attention to making your point.
  11. Sogging: blogging and attacking others by throwing cold water on perfectly good points that other bloggers or your readers make.
  12. Splogging:  putting up meaningless link bait posts to attract traffic and to try and generate income from Adsense.

These blogging mistakes are easily avoided. Top bloggers respect their readers too much to play these games. Whether it’s a personal or business blog, keep an eye out for these common slipups.

24 Superb Blogging Tips from the Experts

If you’re looking for more tips, drop by our PR Library or browse our list of more than 230 of the Top PR Bloggers. Of course you’ll want to get The PR Coach blog by email or your favorite RSS Feed reader too.

Here’s our most recent selection of blogging tips from a range of experts. You’ll find tips for beginners, business bloggers and best practices that can take your blogging to the next level. Blogalicious!

4 Ways to Write Several Blog Posts at Once  [Blogging Pro]
Great blogging advice on productivity.

5 Items to Delete from Your Blog NOW  [HubSpot]
Sage blogging advice.

15 List Post Ideas When You Get Writer’s Block
 [Kikolani.com]
Stuck? Try these list post ideas.

24 Ways to Feed the Blog Beast  [Arik Hanson]
Terrific PR blogging tips.

25 Ways to Use the Web to Find Content for Your Blog  [Danny Brown]
Smart blogging tips from Danny Brown.

Blog Case Study – Country Music Life  [The Future Buzz]
How to ramp up a new blog from scratch.

Corporate Blogs in the Fortune 500 [John Cass]
Only 17% of Fortune 500 companies now have corporate blogs and here are links to them.

Do Short Posts Deliver on Value? [Men with Pens]
Long or short blog posts? What do you think?

Emotion-filled Images to Jazz up Your Blog Posts  [Small Business Trends]
Here’s a very creative PR blogging tip.

How to Choose a Headline Using 3 Little Known Secrets  [Famous Bloggers]
SEO headline tips.

How to Engage Your Readers? 10 Steps Into Social Media on Your Website  [Online Journalism Review]
Though aimed at media websites, these tips are perfect for PR websites and blogs.

How to Source and Credit Content  [Valeria Maltoni]
PR and blog writers take note.

Now Rank This: Blog Posts That Drive Traffic  [Journalistics]
Useful blogging insight from Jeremy Porter.

Photos as Web Content  [Jakab Nielsen]
Research: Readers like real people and generally ignore stock photos.

Picture Worth a Thousand Words: Importance of Images in a Blog  [The Blog Herald]
Smart blogging advice on using visuals in your blog.

The Art of Corporate Blogging  [Radian6]
Terrific free business blog resource.

The Death of Blogs? [Journalistics]
Hardly…but it’s time to drop the labels.

Top 10 Reasons Why Top-10 Lists Are Irresistible [Dean Rotbart]
OK, I’ll bite.

 

Photo Credit: Bill Barber via Flickr

Author: Jeff Domansky is Editor, The PR Coach



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