Blogging for business is an exciting foundation for most startups, especially if you want to establish yourself as an industry expert. 

It’s also a great foundation if you want to establish a reputation and earn money from your blog. Some people even make business blogging their primary source of income.

People often assume that blogging is easy, and that you simply receive a paycheck by writing stuff on the internet. While that’s half-true, the idea that it’s easy to do professional blogging is a major misconception.

The challenge begins the first time you make marketing mistakes with a blog. When following the updates of search engine algorithms, it’s important to understand the hidden power of content marketing in order to gain more authority, link building and blog traffic.

Running a business blog is also an amazing way to display vital information about the business in question. The blog acts as a traffic magnet for your business, which explains why content management has become one of the most effective means of attracting traffic to a website.

Let’s take a look at some of the common mistakes businesses make when running a blog and what needs to be done right.

Mistake 1: Generating the Wrong Ideas

Anybody can get an idea at any time of the day. From watching a movie, driving to work, or even speaking to someone new. An innovative blog idea could hit you at any time. 

But how successful is the idea? How likely is it that the idea will gain traction online with a varied audience? An idea is only innovative and successful if it works for your business or brand once implemented on a blog.

Solution

There is a direct relationship between your business blog content and your business’ industry. Make sure the blog highlights real life issues affecting the industry, and while highlighting industry issues, remember to offer possible solutions for those problems.

To get more clarity in terms of the issues affecting the appropriate industry, you can have a chat with industry leaders or members of your business’ sales team. The idea is to get a better understanding of the problems they face, so that when it comes time to write a blog, you can offer real feedback on the industry.

This step will help you interpret things from the ground-up and come up with the best possible solutions. This step also makes your business blog useful, interactive and valuable.

Mistake 2: Having a Very Stiff Writing Style

Writing a blog isn’t the same as writing a book or a research paper. At first, there’s going to be a lot of confusion when it comes to writing patterns in business blogs. 

The important thing to understand is that your blog is meant to solve industry problems, or more specifically, it’s meant to answer questions that people might ask and search for online. If the style of writing isn’t that interactive, people won’t enjoy reading your blog.

Solution

Use a conversational tone when writing, even for a business blog. People will relate to the content much better if it feels personable. The readers will feel like they’re communicating with a real person, and not just a company ad or a content robot.

Mistake 3: Automatically Assume That People Care About Your Opinion

This might sound a little bit harsh, but it’s the reality of business writing. People don’t always care about your ideas and opinions. Without establishing a brand or a history of authority on some level, people won’t get invested in what you have to say. 

Remember, readers are usually only looking for answers to their problems, and therefore they’re really only looking for an answer to their questions. Trying to provide more than that, or adding opinions might prevent people from looking for their answers on your blog, which is bad.

Solution

While there are a number of potential solutions, one of the best places to start is by reflecting your personality in your content. This approach can help engage readers more and becomes a branding point for your blog. 

For example, throwing in a few humorous punchlines in the midst of a serious topic might engage readers more than having a completely dry and humorless recap of some topic. Of course it’s also important to engage on an appropriate level for the business in question, you don’t have to play specifically to people’s expectations, but you should still keep those expectations in mind.

Mistake 4: Writing Broad Topics

When starting a business blog, there is always the temptation of writing about broad topics such as;

• How to Grow Your Blog Audience
• Best Social Media Practices
• Tips to Making Money Online

If you’re relatively new to the blogging world, it might be difficult to delve deep into such broad topics. You also need to cover the minute details, or the quality and focus of your content will appear diluted. Avoid choosing topics that are too broad.

Solution

To avoid an overly generic blog, be specific with both your topics and your writing. This will draw a reader’s attention. In the same way that your readers search for very specific issues online, your solutions should be equally specific. 

Mistake 5: Not Using Exact Data

It’s important to provide context whenever you make an argument. Your point will be more credible when there is sufficient supporting data. For example:

Instagram use has grown exponentially. In the U.S. alone, the number of people using Instagram is expected to grow by 10.6% by the end of the year, compared to 3.1% growth estimate of the entire social network sector.

Solution

Getting reliable data isn’t always easy, but that’s also what increases the value of blogs that include such data. When creating your business blog, make sure you do extensive research and pick key data points to support the arguments. 

The idea is to enrich your audience’s reading experience with the data, so make sure the information is relevant to the blog’s content.

Mistake 6: Using Duplicate Content

Many bloggers still think plagiarizing content is acceptable. Not only is there a question of ethics when it comes to duplicate content, but Google bots are on high alert as well. The penalty for plagiarized content is heavy, and it can lead to a decline in your blog’s rankings for organic search engine listings.

Solution

There are instances where you have to refer to related content in order to improve the logic of your business content. Therefore, it’s important to always cite any content sourced from another website. 

Things to do:

• Quoting the original author
• Giving credit for the borrowed idea
• Mentioning the source

Mistake 7: Forgetting to Revise

After coming up with a piece of content, some bloggers just publish it. Don’t do that. There is always the likelihood that some errors slipped through.

What to Check

• Topic selection
• Article structure
• Copy editing
• Supporting elements
• Title selection
• SEO friendliness

Mistake 8: Not Being Consistent

Frequently updating your blog also affects your readership. You can’t update the business blog five times during the first week and then drop down to two blog posts in the second week. You’ll end up confusing your readers.

Solution

To achieve success in business blog writing, the blog needs constant update. Make sure you plan your topic idea in advance so that the content is consistent with your marketing strategy.

By keeping these mistakes in mind, you can significantly improve your business blog’s content. Once you have a solid foundation, you can also start to add and expand your blog to include more images, a wider variety of topics, and more audience feedback. It’s important to maintain a consistent and regular blog with clear standards, but you also want to avoid stagnating!