5 Signs That You Should Quit Blogging

Blogging is nothing new and uncommon these days. Just like it is said about engineering in India, the same goes for blogging. Every second person you meet would be a blogger in India.

While I won’t comment on the credibility of anyone’s blog, I cannot keep myself from writing this post. Because what I believe is that just by setting up a blog and writing a few posts, you don’t become a blogger. There are a number of other things which you have to do.

Blogging doesn’t revolve around one thing. In fact, blogging is a work which requires a unique blend of technical skills, writing skills, marketing skills and interpersonal skills.

Technical skills – to set up the very blog itself, to build a good user-friendly design, to optimize it for SEO, to include various widgets like advertisements, sharing options, subscription forms etc. While many of these can be done by just copying and pasting the code easily available online, you still require the basic knowledge. At least, you should know what you are actually required to do.

Writing skills – Blogging is all about writing. This is one of the most important skills than all four. If you don’t know how to write well, you’re going to fail. A well researched and well framed post is a must for any blog. What about I own a photography blog and post just photographs? Is this still valid for me?

Yes, of course it is. You might not consider writing anything on your post but then you would have to deal with the user comments. In one way or other, you would have to deal with ‘writing’ if you’re into blogging. Bad writing leads to disinterest in users and people like me feel like killing themselves while reading blogs filled with grammatical mistakes and wrong sentence formation.

Marketing Skills – Once you set up your blog and start writing on it, the most immediate attention is required by the promotion strategy of your blog. There is no use of having a blog if you don’t know how to promote it well. You must know what kind of promotional strategies can be experimented with.

You can’t just say that I like to keep my blog ‘personal’. Keep a journal if you want that. If you’re into the blogging profession, respect it and then pursue it. And when it comes to respecting, it does mean that you have to take up all responsibilities related to your blog and carry them on in an efficient manner.

Interpersonal Skills – Once you understand the first three, you would automatically realize the need of the fourth one. Anyone can ask you about your blog or your loyal visitors can leave comments and it depends upon you how to make them stick to your blog. Blogging is more of thinking about your readers than your own self.

All the people who are professionals in blogging and are earning a big amount of money from their blog know the importance of these skills and have put in a hard work for their blog. They didn’t become rich and popular just by setting up a blog and posting some ‘copied’ articles on it.

While I am really glad to see that more and more people in India have shown their interest in blogging, I have realized, with the sound long-time analysis about pattern of new Indian bloggers that “Not everyone is meant for blogging.”

I know it’s the coolest thing around these days but that doesn’t mean you are fit for it. Look at these 5 signs which want you to stop wasting your time on blogging.

1. Bad Blog Design: This one comes from the first skill I mentioned – technical skills. A simple, easy-to-navigate design is what people need on blogs. How many blogs have you visited till now?

Imagine a blog which is filled with tones of advertisements and pop ups and where you can’t even find the navigation bar to jump to another column. Imagine that you’re looking forward to find the about page on a blog and you had to search the entire blog, try out all menu options and other widgets hoping to get landed on the about page of the blog.

How would your experience be? In an era, where everyone wants information at a lightning speed, you had to spend extra minutes in just finding the blog’s about page.

A bad blog design is worse than not having a blog. So, if you can’t keep it simple, QUIT.

2. Bad Grammar: I remember visiting a newly set up blog by a best friend of mine. At first, I was too happy that even my fellows are taking up the interest I have had since years. But then came the nightmare.

If you don’t already know, my reading speed is at least 1500 words in 1-2 minutes give or take. When I started reading a post on that blog, it took me more than 15 minutes to read those less than 500 words.

Since then, neither did I visit that blog again (no matter how interesting and alluring its posts’ titles are), nor did I ask any of my friend to try blogging.

This is the impact bad grammar has on your reader. If you don’t know how to write, at least do the world a favor and don’t plant hatred for reading among the people.

3. Inconsistent Posts: Blogging is fun but this ‘fun’ has a lot of responsibilities which need to be followed. And one of the most important responsibilities is being consistent. In almost every post I have written about blogging, I have talked of the importance of being consistent with your efforts.

Regularity is the biggest identity of professionals. They’re consistent and treat their work with respect. If you find yourself unable to fit into the mould of consistency, you should better try out something else (if you think that can work without consistency).

4. Not promoting the blog: If you aren’t making efforts for promotion of your blog, don’t expect to make a good fortune with it and don’t even think of calling yourself a blogger. Promotion isn’t a choice when it comes to blogging, it’s a need of your blog and if you can’t respect its needs, you down deserve to own a blog.

5. Blogging only for money: Most of the people pick up blogging in order to earn some extra income or with dreams of making a big fortune through their blog. I am not against the practice of trying to earn money through a blog but there are people whose only motive is to earn money.

They don’t care about what kind of means they opt for. They don’t care if they are providing wrong information or misguiding the normal people. All they care is to earn money.

This kind of strategy might work but not for long time. And when it fails, the only resort is to Quit Blogging. So why not now?

Blogging isn’t being taken seriously by many people and this is what leads to degradation of quality of blogs. Even if you are worried just about yourself, you must know that at the end it’s you who is going to fail, not the readers or anyone else.

If you don’t want to fail, if you want to make it big with blogging, notice these 5 signs and either try to fix them or drop the very plan of blogging. This is the best for you.