Habits are behaviors you repeatedly do day after day. Some are good, some are bad. They transcend in all different areas of your life, including when you blog. Here are five bad blogger habits that you want to avoid or stop doing to become a better blogger.
1. Checking your stats and comments 100 times a day
As a beginning blogger it is not uncommon to be obsessed over your web traffic and comments. Of course you want a lot of people coming to your blog, a lot of people linking to you and you naturally want as many people as possible commenting on your posts. That doesn’t mean that you have to check your stats every 10 minutes.
This habit will waste you a lot of time that can be channeled in much more productive activities for your blog. Set aside a time of the day where you check your stats. My suggestion would be twice a day. Once in the morning and some time late afternoon. Use that saved up time for producing more content or networking with other bloggers.
2. Not replying to comments
When people are leaving a comment behind on one of your posts, see that as a compliment. They were emotionally compelled to leave feedback behind, good or bad. What I see is that most bloggers never respond to them. If there is one big thing that helps in building loyal readers, it is responding to comments on your blog. It shows you care about them, even to readers who didn’t leave a comment behind.
Don’t go overboard with responding to every single comment, but definitely respond to comments that are requesting your opinion or respond to commenters who leave valuable comments behind. If you don’t know how to respond then a “thank you” can go a long way.
3. Inconsistency in posting
It is a common mistake for new bloggers to start publishing a lot of content in the beginning phases of the blog and then take a break. That’s the wrong mindset to have and a bad habit. Avoid a “blog hiatus” as much as possible. You don’t want your posting schedule to be irregular.
Be consistent. Besides the fact that search engines love regularly updated websites, readers will love you for it too. By publishing on a consistent basis readers will look forward to reading your content. If you are new to blogging, pick one day where you will publish a new post and make the commitment of sticking to that. Don’t set the bar too high. Start off with one day and stick to it.
4. Not giving credit where it is due
I see too many bloggers copy and paste ideas and works of others without giving any credit. This is not a good way of building credibility. It’s very easy on the Internet to trace back to original sources and you will get called out on it. Give credit where credit is due. Mention the source where you got your idea or work from. Linking out to others is also not a bad idea. It is actually a great way to get on your fellow blogger’s radar and use that as a starting point to network with him or her.
This issue not giving credit especially goes for using copyright images. Verify to make sure you can use the images in your posts. There are a lot of resources (like Flickr) to get free images as long as you credit the producer. Search for Creative Commons copyrighted images. You can use those images without the producer’s consent as long as you give credit to the producer.
5. Not proofreading your posts
Nothing bugs a reader more than reading a post full with typos, grammar mistakes and a train of thought that does not go anywhere. You lose credibility and professionalism when your post contains a lot of typos and grammatical errors. Typos can easily be avoided by using a spell checker.
Make it a habit to proof read every post before you publish it. Do it especially when you are not in a hurry and you can focus on proof reading. A good way to proof read is to read your post out loud and do the editing along the way. What is even better is if someone else can proof read your post.
About Donny
I’m Donny. I can sum myself up with four simple ways. Online Entrepreneur. Author. Investor. World Traveler
Support your second point, no reply comment.
If you do not reply comment of your reader then i do think you are not welcome reader and don’t know what the purpose you blogging for since no welcome your reader.
Some even not approve people comment. So what the point.
Even you have a good content but you will lose lot of reader to coming back to you .
That happen to most of blogger.
1 is extremely hard to do with big Twitter and Facebook share plugins staring you in the face 🙂 An easy way to avoid them is simply skip the public site of your site and only view the admin.
Avoid your checking your analytics too frequently by setting automatic mailings of PDFs weekly. That way to still get the helpful info that will help you tailor your blog your audience, but can avoid checking every hour to see what your traffic level is at for the day.
Above all, focus on what matters most, communicating with the audience you do have, and focus less on the other things, share counts, traffic analytics, and comment counts. Everything else will work its way out if you do this.
Yea am a culprit for Number one and number three habits. I working seriously on breaking that
Yeah from your tips I have 3 Bad habits. They are Number(1),
Number(3), Number(5)
More often I checked my stats and comments always. I can’t stop it easily. and I’m little lazy for proofreading my articles.
Most bloggers don’t do enough drafts of their posts, and their writing shows it. If I run across basic errors early in the piece, it’s hard for me to finish reading it. The content has to have great value for me to ignore writing errors. Thanks for the tips!
Well written Thanh! can’t agree more with you!
I believe the deadly ones are 1,2 and 3!
Not replying to comments is a big one for me. I figure if my readers are nice enough to say hi, then I should say hi back. Especially if they are asking a question. Good stuff! Thanks for sharing.
If you have a niche site, having a few people in mind will help a lot. Imagine you are in a conference about your niche and you need to present the content you write to them.
When brainstorming for posts or having a writing style, keep this thing in mind.
I just started responding to comments on a regular basis after listening to a podcast by James Martell. But 80% of them still seem like link building and nothing more.
Haha, yeah I’m not going to lie…need to lay off checking the stats so often. It’s just the rush and excitement of seeing new people coming in but it definitely wastes some valuable time.
As for #5, I don’t know how people publish content they haven’t proofread. It’s an instant turnoff and if I see a blog full of typos and grammatical errors, I’m out right there.
Gosh. I should beware with no. 1! And now I start to realize it’s effectively wasting my time!
Great post and yep I have to hold my hands up Ive done some of them and wasted huge amounts of time.
I now try to be good and not keep checking my stats!!!
thanks for sharing
For last few months I have not been replying to my readers comments because of my busy schedule.But I’ll try to reply them very soon.
Its really very good guide to new bloggers like me.. No 3 & No 5 are very good advice and I need to follow the same. Thanks Thanh Pham.
For those forgeting to proofread, “after the deadline” is a great plugin that can help you.
Hi Thanh,
Most newbie bloggers I know confess that they can’t resist checking stats and adsense earnings many times a day. I used to be like that, but now I check stats once in a week to analyze keywords, referring sites and so on. This helps me to workout what works best for me and what gets me more traffic. Over time and with practice this bad habit can be overcome.
Proofreading and replying to comments are must.
Cheers,
Jane.
Good points, Thanh.
I scored five out of five, so I really have my work cut out for me.
Number (1) was a huge problem for me.
Now having gone(Self hosting) most of my stats have vanished(Including my sitemap) hopefully only due to migrating over to the new domain address.
Yet, I still keep visiting my Analytics compulsively.
Number(3) Ouch! Some people are prolific writes(They write, rain hail or shine) others are more seasonal(Also depend on the weather(Whether or not they feel like it.)
My problem is I have too many things buzzing around in my head that I wish to write about, though, need to stay focused.
(5) I do a fair amount of proof reading, generally on the recent posts. Not going through the much older posts is a huge mistake as some older posts, though, occasionally producing a gem, can sometimes be absolute shockers.
.
#5 is my biggest hang up, or I should say was. I now handwrite all my blog post, scan them to email to my assistant, he types them then I reread correct where needed and then post.
I think it is better but still needs improvement
Dave
“Checking your stats and comments 100 times a day” is more of an addiction than a habit, which is very hard to break, but if you can come away from doing that, you will save a dam allot of time.
I used to check my comments almost everyday and now only check them about twice per week
No. 1 is also a time killer for me. I removed the bookmark from my browser and will only check it once every few days. The professional bloggers recommend only once a month.
I’ve got to stop doing #1, #3 and #5.
Number 1 is the one I need to stop doing. I find myself checking my traffic stats, my AdSense earnings or my forum threads way to often.
Same here, I check literally every half hour or so .. then I end up getting down because my stats didn’t change.
Definitely a bad habit.