Mike's WISE-Cracks

This is a piece evaluating the most important practices for establishing and maintaining a desirable, engaging, and successful blog.

Everyone reacts better to Top 10 Lists, and since “avoiding mistakes” remains universally desirable, why not present the topics this way?

Now some of these are obvious, some are subjective, but in my opinion this is how you avoid getting yourself in trouble when trying to make something meaningful (business or otherwise) out of your blog:

NEVER Expect Immediate Results: This is happening everywhere and that is the major reason why a large percentage of bloggers fail. Many bloggers come online unprepared and with the wrong set of expectations. They think blogging is a bed of roses and they only need to write one or two posts and begin to make money right away. Wrong!

NEVER Neglect the Interests of Your Readers: Some bloggers start gaining traction fast, and after a while they start to make their blogs gravitate around themselves. That is, they start talking exclusively about themselves, about the things they like, about how cool they are and so on. Big mistake. Your blog is about your the people who read it, not about you.

NEVER Neglect Updating Your Blog Regularly: You will see some bloggers telling you they want to be a pro-blogger, only to leave their blog without updates for weeks. If you can’t commit to updating your blog regularly, why would you expect people to commit to reading it regularly?

NEVER Ignore SEO: Nowadays, you will see many bloggers not optimizing their blogs for search engines, if you ask them why, they will say they don’t know SEO. The real answer, however, is “Because I am lazy.” Don’t be lazy and learn what you must if you want to make your blog popular.

NEVER Have An Unreadable/Unnavigable Site: Many people think blogging is all about your content. No! Blogging is far more than your content. You should work on making sure your site is easily navigable and that readers can easily get what they want without looking twice. Usability is a big factor on the web.

NEVER Conform to Being Another Blogger: This is so common among many bloggers nowadays. They no longer want to be themselves, they now want to be one popular blogger they know. It won’t sustain over the long-term, so stay real.

NEVER Create Enemies in the Blogosphere: Some new bloggers that if they attack other people or bloggers, they might create a buzz and increase their traffic levels. This might be true in the short run, but over the long term such attitude will create many enemies and burn yourself.

NEVER Plagiarize Another Blogger’s Content: This is funny but nowadays you will see many new bloggers who don’t even know the basics, and yet they start to scrape another bloggers content. Often times these people won’t even credit the source. You can’t get far with this attitude.