Blogging: How To Know If Your Blog Content Really Sucks
Posted Under: Blogging Information
Although there are no set rules that tell you if your blog content really sucks; there are some very good indicators that will give you a chance to change your style of writing before you fade away into the blogispheare.
Newcomers in particular are told to post content on a regular basis in order to generate web traffic. So, they obediently pump out article after article on a daily basis, trying to get some traffic generated.
After writing and writing for several weeks or months without getting any real results; they begin to wonder if the reason they’re not getting any comments, links, and more traffic is because of their writing skills.
Should you be patient, continue to write, and wait for traffic to come? Or is it that your blog content really sucks.
Since everyone’s writing style is different, it’s hard to tell if your blog content really sucks or if something else is the problem.
The problem with creating anything, is that no one can really tell you exactly how to do it.
You can benefit from everyone’s opinion and learn from their experience, but in the end… you put the paint on the canvas, the pen on the parchment, or shape the clay for the figurine.
You are the creator and the results are always subjective.
If you want to know if your content really sucks, here are some of the hundreds of most common telltale signs that will tip you off that something is wrong with your blogging.
- Your blog posts read like journal entries
Initially blogs were written as online journals however, blogs have since evolved and have become more like online magazines, with highly polished content.
If your blog reads like a personal diary instead of a magazine or newspaper; it’s probable that your blog content really sucks.
- Your blog doesn’t receive any comments from readers
Blog comments are a direct measure of reader engagement. Your content is probably unworthy of your readers attention if no one is commenting on your blog, especially if you have a couple of hundred subscribers.
- Your visitors don’t stay on your blog more than a minute or two.
Anything less than a two minute stay on your blog is bad news and if less than a minute, your blog content is probably driving away visitors.
Find out how long visitors are staying on your blog by installing Google Analytics.
- You don’t get any fan mail
As a beginner, you can’t expect much or any fan mail; but as your site progresses, you should be receiving something more than a Tweet on Twitter. People will go out of their way to comment on good blog content and if they don’t on your blog, you can be doing better.
- You don’t spend enough time on each blog post
Although it’s possible to write a great blog post in 10 minutes; it doesn’t happen often. Most of the superior bloggers spend anywhere from 1 to 5 or more hours on each blog post they write.
If you’re cranking out content believing that quantity is better than quality; you are dead wrong.
If your blog content really sucks, you are probably spending less than 15 minutes per post.
- Focusing on SEO before you get your first link
In a deliberate effort to stuff your blog content with keywords to improve your SEO; you could be driving away human traffic.
If your blog content really sucks, you are probably writing garbage content trying to please the search engines instead of writing to your audience. What you really need to boost your search engine ranking is for people to link to your site.
- You feel you need SEO to build a popular blog
SEO alone cannot make a popular blog. You need great content first, then optimize it for the search engines.
Without great content, no amount of SEO can make your blog great. People will visit, find your blog wanting and immediately leave.
I’d love to tell you that producing great content is easy but it’s not. There are no shortcuts to good content other than hiring a ghost writer, and even then there is no guarantee.
There are no easy fixes to great blogging.
If your blog content really sucks, you are probably showing some of the above symptoms; so get to work and correct the problem before it gets any worse.