30 tips for what NOT to do on your blog

Here’s an alternative list of blogging tips–ideas to not use on your blog!

1. Try as hard as you can to please everybody.

Because this always works. Every time.

2. Avoid social media.

Unless they’re close friends, there is simply no point engaging with others on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Stumble Upon, or LinkedIn and letting people know about interesting and/or useful things you write.

3. Ignore new sources of promotional potential.

Sites such as Pinterest and Google+ are just overload. There are already too many things taking up your time. Rather than spend an hour assessing whether or not Pinterest will work better for you, bringing in many more readers than Stumble Upon for example, just stick to what you know.

4. Ignore what others are writing about.

Who cares? You can keep up with the latest trends and news your own way and anyone who says reading other blogs helps you blog better is wrong.

5. Ignore the community.

Don’t sign up with blogging networks like BritMums. Tweet with your friends, but don’t bother making a separate list on Twitter for others in your niche so you can focus directly in on their conversations and keep up with what’s going on in the community.

6. Don’t bother commenting on other people’s blogs.

You need to spend all that time on yours. And anyway, if they’ve checked their stats they’ll know they’ve had visitors.

7. Don’t bother with the real life meet-ups.

What’s the point? The whole idea is that this is an online world. Meeting in person defeats the object. Even if meeting people increases your connections, thus increasing loyal readers and even some great word of mouth advertising for your blog, it’s just a hassle and never very much fun.

8. Don’t ask an experienced blogger how they did something.

They’ll think you’re wasting their time—they were never as ignorant as you at the beginning so why would they help you?

9. If you can’t do techy things like SEO or add a plugin to your blog, don’t even try to learn it.

You probably don’t need it anyway.

10. Don’t try anything new.

It will throw everyone off and no one will ever come back to see what new things are going on with your blog.

11. Check your stats at least once a day.

Knowing how many visitors come to your blog every day is vital information and will change the way you blog forever.

12. Blog every day!

Forget about blog-life balance, if you want to take blogging seriously you must blog everyday. It doesn’t matter that the massively successful sites don’t do this, you should.

13. Write long posts.

The longer the better. Your readers are just stay at home mums and dads with nothing to do all day and yours is probably the only blog they read so a long post will keep them busy. Anything more than 700 words is ideal. There’s no point in trying to split a long post into two, in order to increase posts and readers, adding at the bottom of the first “come back Thursday to see how I dealt with that situation!” because you aren’t interested in regular readers.

14. No planning and no notes just write whatever comes to mind.

Even if it is just a meandering train of thought on how your laundry seems to be an endless task, rewriting that into a short, witty little post that people chuckle over and nod their heads at then reTweet because they think you handled a dull topic so artfully, is a waste of time. Isn’t it?

15. Click ‘publish’ without proofreading or editing.

Be impulsive! Spelling and grammar don’t matter.

16. Don’t read your post out loud before publishing.

Many people know that reading a written piece out loud helps identify errors we don’t notice on paper, but it’s just a blog post, who cares if it reads a bit strange.

17. Write and publish a post when you’re angry.

Mad at your sister? Annoyed with your neighbor. Really angry at that other blogger who always does that thing? Sit down and write about it! Then publish it and if you offend someone or say something a bit too controversial well at least that’ll get the community tweeting. And if everyone gets mad at you, they’ll get over it. Eventually. Maybe. Once you change your identity.

18. Start a flame war.

This is awesome for your blog and for the community! You’ll get loads of comments and loads of unfollows.

19. Titles must be matter of fact, dull even.

Who clicks on a catchy or quirky title out of curiosity? Who would reTweet something eye-catching?

20. Don’t give credit if you borrow.

No one really knows if you borrow an idea or a paragraph or a photo from someone else’s blog. And if they knew, would they actually care? Would you care if someone did that to you?

21. Make it difficult to share.

If people like a blog post, for some crazy reason they will sometimes share it on Twitter or Stumble Upon, or Pinterest, or Google+. When they do this it only brings in more readers. Make it difficult for people to do this by not including any sharing or ‘add this’ buttons on your post.

22. Keep the word verification.

It slows down the process of leaving comments so much that only those really desperate to leave comments will hang around. You only want a few comments anyway, right?

23. Don’t reply to commenters.

They never check back anyway. And new readers coming in never read the comments so it’s a waste of time.

24. Use the basic Blogger or WordPress design.

Content is King, not design. No one cares what the site looks like when they visit. Tweaking with the design a bit, or even paying a designer to help you out is a total waste of time. If your blog looks like hundreds of other blogs, then at least people will know what they’re getting when they come to your site before clicking away.

25. Don’t bother with an About page.

Why would people who are interested enough to visit your blog be interested to know any more about you?

If people really want to know about you they can just learn more by reading all your posts. I they don’t have time to do that and click away, oh well. Your objective is not to connect with other people through your blog.

26. Keep loads of ads, images, and social networking logos.

Loads of these in your sidebar—and all over the place are great! It means you look really busy and popular. Ok, so it looks really crowded and all that stuff makes finding the important things kind of difficult, but if the reader is really interested in what you have to say they’ll take the time to look for it.

27. Fancy fonts, white font on black background, music when the site opens, and pop ups are all awesome.

Because these are all so distracting, the reader will probably click away without getting to know what your site is about, but that’s ok, right?

28. Domain names are pointless.

Don’t bother with one, or if you do, give yourself a couple of years to get really well established and build up a decent sized following before you move your whole blog over to the new domain, leaving all but your most diligent followers behind.

29. Don’t ask readers for feedback.

Why would you do that? Doing things like anonymous polls on Polldaddy asking specific questions about the design and content of your blog will only make them think you’re trying to improve their reading experience.

30. Lost your blogging mojo? Give up.

Don’t waste any more time on the blog because the inspiration, the interest in other bloggers, the enjoyment of connecting to other like-minded people will never return. Until it does a few days, or weeks later.

Happy blogging!

Did you see the previous posts in this series? Time for a blog design rethink and Create an interesting About page are worth checking out.

And check in next Tuesday for our next Better your Blog Workshop post on Increasing your Readership.