It happens to me time and again. Since winning Top 10 Blogs for Writers, writers email me and ask — “Would you take a look at my blog and tell me what I’m doing wrong? Why can’t I get any comments? Why doesn’t anyone subscribe?”
There could be a lot of reasons for these problems, but let’s focus on one of the biggest reasons today.
It’s something that’s incredibly common, and fairly easy to change. But if you’re making this mistake, you can keep on blogging until the messiah comes, but you’re probably not going to attract an audience. It’s sort of a fatal error for blogs.
I originally planned to write a long post building the tension up until I finally revealed the nature of this devastating mistake. Fortunately, I can cut right to the chase, because my friend Derek Halpern from Social Triggers and DIYThemes recently made a short video that explains Why Most Bloggers Fail. (Really, watch it — it’s only 20 seconds long. So we can wait while you do that.)
That’s right. Most blogs are all about me, me, me. And that’s boring.
They’re not about what readers need to know.
It’s really that simple. If you think of your blog as a place to brag, pontificate, rant, vent, muse, or otherwise go on about every tiny detail of your life, your day, your greatness…it should be no surprise that few people will take an interest.
Of course, if something that happened in your day might help enlighten a reader on how to do something, you can use it as a springboard for that. I do that all the time, as with this post that talked about what I learned about business from playing Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook. Nobody wants you to write a sterile blog devoid of personal experience — but that experience needs to be in service of the important goal of any blogger who wants their blog to help them earn:
To help readers.
Blogs that exist to help readers solve their problems become popular.
How do you know what readers are interested in learning from you? One great way to do that is simple: Just ask.
Speaking of which…
I’m planning a couple of Webinars on blogging success, so I’d like to ask you some questions today as I start developing the content for those presentations. I want to be sure these events tell my blog readers exactly what they need to know to improve their blogs!
As usual, there’s something in it for you, because I love to give away free stuff!
So tell us:
1) Your blog URL
2) How long you’ve been blogging
3) Your goal for the blog.
Then answer this: What is the biggest problem you’re having on your blog? What aspect of blogging would you like to learn more about?
