I think it’s safe to say that blogging is a thriving industry at the moment. Indeed, the number of blogs and blog readers has been growing exponentially in recent years.
One of the reasons for this growth is because people are looking for ways to express themselves, share their knowledge with others, and make a living online. However, just like any other industry, there are myths out there that can hurt your blog if you believe them.
In this article, we’ll be debunking nine common blogging myths that may have been harming your growth until now.
1. You Must Be an Expert Writer
The first blogging myth we’ll look at is believing that you need to be an expert writer.
Believe it or not, this isn’t entirely true. Yes, you should avoid publishing poorly written content at all costs; but even if English isn’t your first language, it’s still possible to create awesome blog posts and attract a large audience without being a master of the written word.
With that being said, if you aren’t able to write high-quality posts yet but want to get your website started anyway, you should consider using an AI copywriting tool to help you out.
For example, an AI tool like Jarvis can be given commands like:
- Write an intro paragraph about the best protein powders
- Write an outline for an article about the best protein powders
- Write about the benefits of protein powders
And it will quickly write content for you. Needless to say, you still need to revise it—but it can be of tremendous help.
It also allows you to rewrite content so you can quickly update old blog posts.
2. You Should Always Write Long Blog Posts
Another common misconception is to believe that longer blog posts will result in more traffic and higher conversion rates.
However, the length of your blog post depends on your topic.
A good way to find how long your blog post should be is by analyzing the top results on Google and seeing how long they are.
For example, if you notice that all of the posts ranking for the keyword “best protein powders” are around 2,000 words long, then yours should be around the same. If you find that they’re only 700 words long, then yours should be around 700 words as well.
There are several free browser extensions you can use to quickly gather this information right from the search engine result pages (SERPs) without having to click through each individual post, which can save you lots of research time.
3. You Shouldn’t Worry About Website Speed Until Later
Even if it’s just a few seconds, every time a person visits your page and has to wait for more than 3 seconds before it loads, you’re losing views.
Google also introduced three Core Web Vitals—Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)—that are taken into account for ranking your website
Therefore, it’s important that you work on speeding up your website early on to avoid setbacks.
4. You Can Write About Anything You Want
A common misconception is to assume that you can write about anything on your blog, yet this may prove to be counterproductive.
The word “blogging” comes from the concept of a blog being a diary or journal. As a result, many brands begin blogging about anything and everything with no structure. This then leads to some confusion for the reader who isn’t sure why they are reading this blog post in particular.
As you’re thinking of your content strategy, it’s important to focus on topics that you can easily market. This means creating topics that you know your audience is interested in, and then find ways to tie these topics back to why it’s relevant to your brand.
As an example, if you blog about fashion posts related to the latest trends, try focusing on how the clothing will help enhance your readers’ experience rather than just rambling about the latest styles.
Every article you write should have one of these goals:
- Get email subscribers
- Make a sale
- Create awareness for a product or service
- Drive traffic to monetize with ads
5. You Should Avoid Competitive Niches
The next major myth is that you should avoid competitive niches.
Now I’m not saying to get a massive ego and go into personal finance if you have absolutely no clue what it takes to run a successful blog in this niche, but there are ways around this problem.
For example, instead of blogging about fashion, try starting a fashion blog that focuses on blogging tips and tricks. While you may not take home the prize in terms of traffic from top fashion blogs, if you can focus on your own audience and what they want to read, it will be much easier for your blog to grow.
If there are a lot of people in a competitive niche, it means there’s a lot of money to be made.
Basically, it’s easier to make $10,000 per month on a $10 billion niche, than it is on a $1 million one.
6. You Need Lots of Traffic to Make Money
While it’s true that having an audience will help your blog generate revenue, you may be surprised at how much income you can make with just a few thousand visits per month.
For example, if you’re offering coaching, consulting, or any other types of services, you don’t really need a huge audience. The same goes for selling your own products.
You just have to make sure that you’re writing the right blog posts and connecting with the right audience.
However, if your plan is to monetize your website with ads, then you will, in fact, need a lot of traffic.
7. If You Want to Be Successful, You Need a Professional Design
Another common misconception is to think that if you want your blog to be successful then it needs to have a professional design.
Although having an aesthetically pleasing website can definitely help you attract more visitors, it’s not the only thing that matters.
In fact, even if you’re a complete beginner and don’t have any web design or programming skills, it’s still possible to create an awesome website.
And you don’t even need to spend a lot of money doing so.
The most important thing is just to ensure that your website has the right keywords, offers value, and doesn’t look too spammy.
8. If You Want More Traffic, Give Freebies Away in Your Posts
Believing this myth can also hurt your blog by causing you to lose focus on your content.
One of the first things many bloggers do in an attempt to gain more readers is to give away freebies or other benefits in their posts.
While this is a great idea overall, it can actually turn out to be counterproductive and discourage people from staying on your website because they think everything’s given for free.
In other words, giving things away for free in your posts should be used sparingly to increase page views and not as a blog’s main focus.
9. You Must Publish a Blog Post Every Day
The last myth related to blogging we’ll cover is believing you must publish a new blog post every single day.
Although it’s true that if you want to have a successful website then you should aim to publish at least one blog post per day, on average, this really isn’t necessary.
It can also cause your website to become less valuable because it scares off users by seeming too spammy.
Having high-quality content is much better than writing a lot of mediocre posts that no one truly cares about.
Wrapping Things Up
As you can see, there are many blogging myths that can hurt your blog if you believe them—but it doesn’t mean being successful is impossible. At the end of the day, you just need to focus on creating high-quality blog posts and building a strong audience.