Blogging Mistake That I Still Tend to Make
You would think that we ought to learn from our mistakes. Well I don’t know about you but there are a few mistakes that I keep making in my life. Like taking my daughter to the children playground where she runs to the room filled with balls, and later I’m having a very hard time getting her out. I tell myself that I won’t make the same mistake again and bring her there, but whenever she exclaims “balls, balls” and pulls my hand, I can’t resist and take her again to that balls room.
With blogging though I was careful enough to learn from others mistakes and study as much as possible about blogging before launching my own blog. But still, there are a few mistakes (fortunately, not many) that I made, though I’ve learned from most of them and won’t repeat the same mistake in the future. However this particular mistake I still tend to make, even though I’m constantly improving on it and lessening its effect.
I’ve read on many blogs that it’s best to be consistent with the posting frequency on your blog, and if your audience is used to daily posts, then you should keep it that way all the time. That was my original inclination - to post once a day on a regular basis. Nonetheless a few weeks later I was finding it challenging to keep up with my work and family and frequent blogging, but I was afraid to lose my readers, so I was staying up very late and writing. I didn’t want my blogging to be a burden though, I wished to enjoy it. So something had to be changed.
The problem I had is that I didn’t have any drafts saved for rainy (read extremely busy, since it’s raining quite often here) days. So one morning I got up very early, everyone was still sleeping and I had three uninterrupted quiet hours that I dedicated to my blog and wrote three complete posts and started two more…
Again, I did remember reading on other blogs that posting more than expected is bad too, so I saved them all and published only one. I also realized that rather than storing all ideas for my blog posts in my head, I should type them out and save in Drafts, and that’s what I’m doing from that day on.
Despite all this I’m now having a slightly different variation of the same problem. I have several drafts saved on my blog, but none of them are complete, thus I don’t have anything ready to publish with one click of a button if I have no time to write and complete the draft. That means I need another early morning boost of inspiration to get a few ready to go drafts for my blog.
They say that smart people learn from their own mistakes, while wise people learn from others. So be wise, and learn from my mistakes - make your blogging life easier, spend an extra few hours and complete several drafts ready to be published in emergency cases - when you’re too busy with other things, or simply not in a blogging mood.
What are your blogging mistakes? You can share them with others and participate in another group project hosted by DailyBlogTips. This is a great way to get more traffic to your blog and meet other bloggers. I’ve participated in the first group project with DailyBlogTips where everyone shared their Traffic generation tips, which proved to be quite a success and brings traffic to my blog until now.
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March 28th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
It’s good that you shared your mistake with us. I will participating in that project soon…
March 28th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Thanks. Look forward to reading about your mistake
March 28th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
For me, writing a half of the post in the drafts is lost post. I know I’ll never finish it again. In the meanwhile, I have lost my point, I’ve lost the story. Other case, but that’s the good one, is saving in drafts completed post to publish later. That is good for one more reason. I know I will read it once again, with fresh head and I’ll see it from new angle, so I can make changes, cut out unnecessery parts and rewrite any possible unclear parts.
March 28th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
I guess it really depends on the content of the post. In my case sometimes it’s good to have some drafts ready that I could get back to with more research on that topic, or more thoughts, in other cases I do agree with you - there might be a danger of never going back to that draft and finishing it. But then they may also inspire some other topics to blog about.
March 28th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
I should really go back to my drafts. It has been a long time since I looked at any of them.
In general I just struggle to come up with ideas. I don’t want to link for the sake of it, hence why I only have one post on the front page, it forces me to keep it full rather than ending up with an empty page with a link on it.
I also don’t post daily or even regularly. Just when I get an idea.
March 28th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
I actually like your blog style with only one post on the front page - makes it look less than a blog and more like a web site
March 29th, 2007 at 1:27 am
Well, each time I save a draft for a blog post, I’m actually sentencing it to death.
My drafts always become obsolete, never finished and most of the times I will remove them before publishing ..
That’s one of my (several) blogging errors ..
March 29th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Your point about posting too much can be a problem rings true to me. I currently have 33 blogs in my rss feader. Probably 25 of them post everyday. One blog has been posting only a few times a month. The rest normally post 4-5 times a week. I get behind on my reading when some of them post 5 articles on one day. I find myself picking one post to read thoroughly and the rest to just skim. I don’t want to miss anything on my favorite blogs but sometimes its just hard to read it all.
So, to sum it up I prefer to read only one or two posts per blog per day.
March 29th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Stefano, my latest post I actually saved in my Drafts a few weeks ago, but never had a chance to complete and publish it until today. So in my case Drafts are very much alive
Joey, I completely agree with you - I too have a couple of blogs in my RSS reader that post over 5 articles per day, and I rarely read more then one of them, if any, mainly just scanning the titles and picking the most attractive ones.
March 29th, 2007 at 11:07 am
Thanks. I have gradually reduced the content on my blog to a minimum and am gradually working my way back up as I feel something is missing. One of my drafts that I just fished out is about exactly that so I may well finish it in the next few days.
March 30th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Here’s the mistake I did: http://shankarthetechie.blogsp.....-with.html
March 30th, 2007 at 6:59 am
Thanks, Shankar - I’ve left a comment on your blog about it
March 30th, 2007 at 7:00 am
Yeah, I saw that, keep coming. Our timezones vary a lot. It’s morning to you, night to me.
April 4th, 2007 at 12:48 am
I was just in my drafts folder and once again I am on this topic….
If I leave unfinished post in the hope of doing it one of these days, the chance is that two weeks later I’ll find it still unfinished, but outdated. It is not that my blogging is time related, I don’t rely on news much. But, in that time I already wrote about something that more or less covered the topic and I kicked my own post out to rubish. I just can be there to witnes that I needded that post as introduction or to connect the whole story.
April 5th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Vivien — Maybe you can turn a half-finished post into a complete one by asking your readers to fill in the missing pieces. For example, if you haven’t finished a post because there’s more research to do then acknowledge the situation and ask others to suggest resources for you to check out.
April 5th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
That’s an excellent idea, Mark. It can’t be applied to all my drafts, but it’ll work well with some.
April 6th, 2007 at 7:52 am
Very interesting, thanks for sharing it with us!
I know a couple of my friends would benefit from reading this.