Seven Classic New Blogger Mistakes that Will Kill Your Traffic, Profit or Leads

Someone’s always asking me why their blog isn’t getting traffic/making money/converting leads. These are the top seven mistakes that are related to all three of these issues.

1. Being Too Anonymous

The general public still have only the vaguest idea of what a blog is. For those people, this is how it goes. They go to a search engine or a site they already frequent. They search for something or follow a link. They end up at your blog.

In 10 – 30 seconds, from 25% up to 90% of the time, they’ll then leave, not having found what they want, never to return.

What makes the percentage of people who stick around higher? It’s typically 3 things.

A- There’s so much information at that site in a topic that interests them that they will be back.
B- They get the sense that someone is “minding the store”,
C- Least likely, they believe that they will find what they’re looking for or and feel connected to a real person who might be able to answer their question, or direct them to something better.

You can affect those last two by being a real person. I know some people have ghost bloggers, CEOs in particular. They give their general ideas to another party who fleshes them out. Or the other person writes all their blog posts. Some sites have a team of bloggers posting on a site where the actual owner who makes the most profit is never heard from.

And that’s fine. Your blog must still have personality. There’s no law that says it has to be Your personality. But if you have an impersonal blog, you may as well not have a blog at all.

2. Not Linking to Fellow Bloggers

Big mistake. Biggest lesson in blogging is that no blog is an island. Why would you expect people to link to you if you don’t link to them? And if you think that’s giving away traffic that won’t come back, think of it this way.

Unless you chain someone to their computer, they’re eventually leaving. And since it’s illegal to do that, you might as well help your visitor along their way. It is imperative that you develop the confidence to know that they’ll come back. And no one can place a gift in the palm of your hand if you’re holding out a closed fist.

3. Not Commenting on Your Blogs or Others.

No popular blogger catches every last comment, true. But to get to popularirty, you better believe they started out that way. You should also comment on other blogs. In fact, forget your link the first few times – you may only need one link to count in your favor anyway. So take the focus off that and add to the discourse.

It’s smart blogging and people don’t forget it.

4. Speaking Like an Expert Before You Know Your Stuff

This is my number one pet peeve. Everyone is an expert on something, but you should Only speak expertly on things you know about. Doctors don’t try to do your taxes for you. It just doesn’t make any sense.

At first, people may listen to you. But once they do what you say and they fall flat on their faces, because of your bad advice, what then? Do you think they’ll be in line to buy your products and solicit your services? Will they become return visitors who may click on advertisements that interest them?

No. Duh!

And yet I see people I think of as truly intelligent make this dumb ass mistake again and again.

It’s so cool to have authority and to have people’s opinions be swayed by your knowledge and expertise, sure. But until you can prove your results, cite supporting research from trusted sources, and maintain a reputation for being a rain maker, you’re shooting yourself in the foot and you’ll probably take your business down with you.

Not to mention all the poor people who are following your bad advice. My favorite thing is when people give contradictory advice on different blog posts in the same week, without even recanting. They state whatever position is popular, just to get visitors, not caring about the fallout they cause.

So if you’re a newbie blogger, how do you get popular without declaring yourself an expert? How can you have power and be influential if you’re the little guy? That’s another article for perhaps later on today.

5. Failing to Capture Leads

There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have some type of lead capture on your site. Even if it’s inadequate and you don’t intend to email your list frequently. Sending them a freebie or some tips once a week is enough to keep your list warm. Send them a tip a day and it’ll be blazing hot. And when your tips hold water, they’ll be ready to spend money on the premium version of your solution to their problem.

The same is true for RSS. More people are using RSS feeds, and sometimes they are fading into the background of other tools they use to retrieve information or do resarch. For the love of Pete, if you’re blogging, turn your site feed on and test to make sure it works.

6. Taking without Giving and Thanking

It’s great when everyone links to you, pays attention to your site, and generally makes you popular. But you have to frequently remember that you’re nothing without those folks. Send a private thank you note. Make a public one.

Add the link of the person who linked you to a social bookmarking site. Comment. Share. Make a blog post about your supporters.

7. Poor Integration of Monetization Techniques

Another pet peeve of mine.

It’s amazing how many times I pull up a blog that has more in-your-face monetization plans than good content. Not that I’m against money. You know me. I’m not ashamed of being a capitalist. The value exchange is one of man’s best inventions.

However. If you want to have paid reviews, an advertiser block, Google AdSense, affiliate links and paid link positioning on your site all at the same time, blend, darling. You can get all that stuff on your blog, and more, if you’ll simply position it properly.

If you don’t know how? Hire a designer.

Okay. I think that was all seven. A long article, but it’s worth it if any one of those seven points puts money in your pocket, traffic in your site, or leads in your sales process.