Blogging is a popular and well-approved content marketing strategy amongst businesses of all sizes, and just because of the same, the Internet is full of myths about the right and wrong things that you do with your blogs to make them a big success. Unfortunately, many of these are myths that are just hindering the growth of your business and brand.
You might have heard stories about how blogging success is applauded worldwide, but a majority of blogs can make less than 4$ dollars a day! So, is it that blogging has lost its value, or is it still an untapped gold mine that needs to be explored further?
Let us tackle the most pervasive myths about successful blogging that are the biggest hurdle to growth:
Myth 1- It is quite easy to make it a passive income source!
If it could have been this easy to make blogging a passive income, then we all would have been rolling in cash till now. However, if you look at the statistics then you will realize that there is a lot of competition. It was in the year 2011 when the number of blogs worldwide was recorded to be 173 million. Furthermore, the survey also says that out of these, only 8% of blogs have managed to earn an income that is enough to support an average family, whereas 81% of the blogs never made more than $100 in their lifetime.
There are several reasons why you must blog, including driving traffic to your website, positioning yourself as an expert in the industry, or ranking high on the search engine result pages, for instance. But if you are generating passive income for your business, then you might find yourself on the other side of the bed!
Myth 2: You Need to Post a Blog Every Day
Posting a blog each day can actually harm your website and business, and brand. To start with, you need to understand that a blog is a lot more than just writing. Apart from researching, idea generation, planning your calendar, writing, creating charts and photos, and scheduling social media posts at regular intervals, and others. You are likely to become uninspired and burned out even before you hit the jackpot.
Most importantly, the fact is that not only you, but your reader will also suffer from this burnout. There are plenty of people who have the inclination as well as the time to keep up with regular blogs. Furthermore, 53% of the people complain that they receive a lot of marketing emails, which means that they are highly likely to unsubscribe from your daily notifications. Thus, better try posting one blog per week while keeping a careful eye on the user engagement or lack of it.
Myth 3- The blog must be very long
Several people have an assumption and belief that the blog posts must be huge repositories of information. They serve as a platform to provide the viewers with almost every detail that your customer must have ever wanted to know about a certain topic.
Actually, the length of the blog post is not just about the word count, but its ability to keep the readers glued to the page. Therefore, it differs from one blog page to another.
Myth 4- Short attention span means no one loves reading long posts
Unlike the previous point, this one is contrasting and polar to the above statement. The length of content does not make a big difference at all with respect to the amount of time that a reader spends on the post. The moral of the story- Make your content as long as you want it to be, till the time you can keep it compelling up to a thousand words. If you are having a great copy and are unsure of the attention span of the reader, you can turn it into a series of small posts that are interesting and involving.
Myth 5: You Need Promoting Your Blog constantly on Social Media
This is quite true, but to a limited context. Several brands have made the mistake of promoting their blogs on several media platforms, that too, multiple times a day. In addition to this, they also promote sponsored ads on the same post. However, gradually their likes, engagements, and comments start to decline if you start to post a lot.
The ideal numbers are:
1 time per day for LinkedIn
5 times per day for Pinterest
3 times per day for Twitter
2 times per day for Facebook
The numbers vary from one blog to another and also depend on the type of industry and audience, but generally, you must devote at least one to two posts per day to a blog and use the rest of the posts to share something interesting and unbranded content. When the followers engage, they will do you a favor by sharing and posting blogs for you.
Myth 6: Results will start appearing in a couple of months
Blogging is not just a fast way to build a reputation or increase traffic on your website. For newbies, it can bring Google and other major search engines to index your website. However, this process takes at least 4 to 6 months or even longer. After that, you are supposed to spend a few months climbing to climb on the top of search results and learn what social media tactics and social media platforms work in favor of your brand.
Get prepared to spend a lot of time researching and assessing the competitor’s social media campaigns, blogs, and testing the variations on your website till the time you have successfully ironed out and created a great strategy. Think of content marketing and blogging as a marathon rather than a sprint.
Myth 7: Blogs Are Inexpensive
When you are planning marketing, it is quite true that blogs cost a lot less than traditional modes of advertising. However, it never indicates that they are cheap. Things and factors like website hosting, domain name, and other requires money, and they are not the only investment you are required to make.
Even a small-sized blog includes a lot of other expenses like stock photographs, subscriptions, social media post boosters, writers’ expenses, and other sorts of paid online advertisements. The smartest thing in such cases is to start the process with fewer blog posts per week so that it gets easier to manage things on your own.
Myth 8: Blogging Is Unnecessary
Amidst all the blogging myths, one that can really hurt your business brand is thinking that blogging is just a passing fad. The stats say that as high as 70 percent of the customers are impressed and influenced by the blogs while making a purchase decision. An article or blog shows how a company performs research.
A well-written blog also makes a website highly visible on search engines because websites that have blogs are highly indexed by Google.
So, if you are planning to transfer your company’s blog into a branding machine, then it’s time to choose a reliable web host service provider and SEO company. Only then will you be capable of building a strong collection of inspiring and informational blogs that drive potential customers and viewers.