Avoid these common blogging mistakes

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There’s nothing quite like coming home at the end of a chilly, winter day to a crockpot full of warm, garlicky black bean soup. It’s healthy, delicious, and a breeze to make.

But have you ever had one of those mornings when a simple recipe and a well laid plan go awry due to one teensy little oversight?

You’ve read through the recipe on Pinterest, picked up all the ingredients at the store, and you wake just early enough to dump all the good stuff in the pot, and then you realize you didn’t soak the beans overnight.

To be fair, it’s not absolutely necessary to take this precautionary step, but if you skip it, your gut will regret it. Because this one little step goes a long way towards making the beans more palatable and digestible.

Blogging mistakes are the same. On the surface, blogging seems like a simple enough endeavor. Write what you’re thinking and post it on your blog.

However, there are teensy little steps that you can take to make your blog more palatable and digestible. Skipping them can have a gut-wrenching effect on your food blog’s success.

Get to know your audience

First and foremost, if you’re writing a blog that you hope to grow and ultimately monetize, you must consider your target market. This is the business aspect of blogging. Don’t skip it.

How do you determine your target audience? Start with who you want to target. Be as specific as possible. You might even consider taking time to develop an ideal reader avatar – an imaginary representative of the group of readers you want to reach out to.

Then, look at readers who are already following you and spend some time engaging with them. Find out what they like about your posts and what they’d like to see more of. Identify problems that they’re having as well as goals they’re working towards.

Write for your audience

Once you’ve gotten to know your audience, offer insights into the issues that they’re facing. If you’re writing a food blog, these may be technical problems – how can I keep my souffle from falling? – or they may be challenges that are more personal in nature – how can I get my picky eater to enjoy vegetables?

If your ideal reader has specific goals in mind, like weight loss or a healthier lifestyle, be sure to provide encouragement and solutions for making those goals more manageable.

Use your unique voice

Being your authentic, amazing self is the first and easiest step in standing out from the crowd. Don’t be afraid to use examples from your daily life to add color to your blog posts, especially the mistakes you’ve made. Sharing your own fallen souffle story will make you more relatable and save your readers from making the same mistakes.

You can post a delectable recipe every day of the week, but if you’re not adding the spice that is your charming personality to your posts, you’re not giving your readers a reason to come back.

Take time to edit

Imagine that you’ve invited these ideal readers over to your house, and you want to make your best impression. You’ll take a few moments to pick up the dirty socks and toss them in the laundry basket and spot mop the spaghetti sauce that your toddler used to decorate the floor, right? Same principle.

While some might argue that friends won’t care about their dirty house, you want these friends to come back regularly and to bring their friends. That means you should make an effort on most days to put your best face forward: edit before you publish.

Send out invitations

Let’s go back to this metaphor of visiting friends. Your mom and sister and maybe your BFF might show up uninvited just because they love you and think you’re the bee’s knees. But you want strangers to visit you and be wowed by your awesome.

Invite them.

Share links to your posts via social media and emails. Over and over again. That’s right. If you’ve got two dozen posts that are perfect for spring, but you wrote them two years ago when you weren’t bothering to edit and you were still finding your voice, spruce them up a bit and share them again.

With just a little extra effort, you can take your food blog from passable to irresistible, and win over new readers every day for your pains. Give your blog the same attention you give your favorite meals, and you’ll leave those new readers hungry for more.

What’s your favorite blogging advice?