I was recently invited to be a guest speaker at a blogger workshop hosted by The Social Agency and Bludoor Market at Nomads&Co in Parktown North. The morning started with a session for beginner bloggers and the afternoon for intermediate bloggers.
We were three guest speakers at the conference. Jade Brennan from Tech Girl, Anne from Anneversation and Me (from lovilee off-course).
Apart from sharing my journey with lovilee over the past six years and telling them about all the do’s, I made a list of the 5 blogging mistakes that I think stifled my blog growth.
- Logo design & – My logo was gorgeous but I had created it in a very light lilac that made it very unrecogniseable.
- I did not focus on any SEO in the first three years of my blog that really hampered the growth. I now make use of SEO by Yoast.
- Cluttered blog design. There were menu’s all over the show, up to three layers down which made it very difficult to find content.
- I tried to gain followers by handing out beautiful postcards, I soon realised that Facebook advertising was cheaper and had a wider reach.
- I worked myself to the bone trying to get few articles a week out, every weekday in a year. Now I realise that there is a balance between consistency and quality. Three great articles a week can be just as good, even better as five average ones a week.
- Having no mailing list associated with the content. With so many people following so many people on social media, the content that you post can easily be overlooked. The most direct way to get your content delivered to your audience is to send it to them via email. Mailchimp is a great platform to use to do this and integrating it with a pop-up bar on your website with Hello Bar can help you to get more followers.
- Choosing a great hosting provider reduced my server load time by almost 2 seconds! I now make use of Bluehost.
A big thank you to Imka from Glamorous Glitter who provided us with some soft copies of the following her ‘Social Media Marketing for Bloggers’ and ‘The Ultimate Guide to marketing your blog’ books as give-aways. Here blog is filled with some other great resources as well that has assisted me in my blogging journey.
To view some of what we spoke about on Instagram and Twitter use the hashtag #LOVETOBLOG.
Also read my Blogging 101 articles:
- Before you start a blog
- Choosing the right platform
- Paid vs. free blogging options
- Monetising your blog
Images: The Social Agency
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