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.
This article costed me 200 bucks. I was reading it on my phone while driving and traffic police caught me, haha :-p. I recently added a blogger, No, let’s call him a random boy, calling him a blogger is like insulting the word itself. He owns 4-5 blogs and each blog is stuffed with ads all above the fold, making it hard to read any content. Yet, he shows so much attitude, whenever I ask him something regarding blogging. He keeps on the uploading screenshot of his Adsense account on Facebook and demoralize other bloggers either by addressing them a newbie or an idiot.
On the other hand, there are bloggers like Andrew Kramer, he runs a motion graphics blog just mine with lakhs of traffic every month, till now, I have never seen a single ad on the site. Plus, Andrew gets 200-300 comments on his articles and he even takes out time to read all of them.
And for you Manpreet, great content. It seems your blogging break gave you some great topics to write upon. Even I am also planning to get a little break of about 14-15 days.
Hello Raunak, I am very sorry for the loss of 200 bucks 😛
For the people like you mentioned, there’s only one thing you should do – IGNORE. You know when a person reaches great heights, the first things he learns is to be humble and the people who don’t learn that, never achieve great success. They just pretend to be successful. And I would seriously want to visit that blog.. let’s see what that pro has to say about blogging 😛 😉
Thanks.. well, my blogging break didn’t go that well but after this comment, I wouldn’t mind considering it a success 😛 🙂 Good luck 🙂
Hi Manpreet Kaur
First of all a big bravo on writing such a detailed post and that too on a topic which most blogger don’t pick just because it may discourage many bloggers to continue blogging.
But you picked it and expressed bravely what one really needs have to continue blogging and what are the reasons he should quit it without second thought.
However I would differ a little here. All the required skills as you mentioned here can be learnt at any stage in life. Most of the bloggers learnt them after starting their first blog. So first of all a blogger should make up his mind that he would learn while blogging and don’t be excited to see results unless he gets command on it and they expect to get rewards.
The rest of the points you mentioned in this post are really cool. thanks for sharing.
Hello, yup I really missed a point .. WILL TO LEARN
A blogger must be ready to learn.. he shouldn’t enter into this profession thinking that he knows everything. He has to network and read .. know what has been changing.. what works and what doesn’t. So, if you aren’t ready to learn.. quit blogging 🙂
Thank you for pointing that out. 🙂
I hope the readers would take notice of this new point we have added..
Hi Manpreet,
You describe the well and good points… Actually I think there are numerous number of reasons to quite blogging. Because here everyone is not thinking the same. If you want to be a blogger than you have to think out of box. 🙂
Thanks!!!
Thank you Bhavesh. Of course, the reasons differ from person to person and these were just from my point of view. 🙂
I have to agree with you on this talk. Any way your always welcome Manpreet. 🙂
🙂
I like the money part, very interesting that almost 90% of blogs today are in for the money. I cant go against that nor support it but i think there has to be something to motivate them to blog.
Hello Stacy, you’re right about the motivation thing. You need something to keep you working but if money is the only reason, it won’t work!
Hello Manpreet,
Thank you for this informative post. Really i liked it and you explained valid points very well. Why people doing blogging? i think most of them doing blogging for money only. I agree your each and every point in this post. Keep sharing stuff like this. Surely i will come back for more wonderful informative posts.
Hello Deepi, Yes you are right. Most of the people are doing blogging for money for this is the new trend and myth that says one can make money in few days very easily through blogging. What do you think gave rise to a myth like this?
Just like your other post ” pros n cons of blogging” , this is another good one where u r actually making me think wat skills to improve n wat n wat not to do. Informative post like the other one. Both r in my reading list