6 blogging mistakes I've made (and which maybe you're making too!) by Lucy Rycroft

Next week I've been asked to deliver a blogging workshop to my local ACW Writers' Group.

I feel a bit of a fraud, if I'm honest. My blog has been around for nearly seven years, but it was only a year ago that I started to get serious about it and learn how to do it 'properly'.

So while I'm the teacher next week, I also still feel very much like the student. I'm learning all the time, and still making mistakes a-plenty.

This blog post, therefore, isn't a suggestion that I've somehow got it all sorted now with blogging - far from it! It's merely a summary of some of the things I've learnt this past year. There will be many more learning points to come (maybe this should become an annual blog post?!), but here are the current ones.

My paragraphs were too long

This is a simple one, but something I didn't realise until someone told me.

Most people read blogs on their phones, where the limited margins will make even one sentence seem like it's going on forever - so keep your paragraphs short! People get disheartened when they can't see the end. Three sentences is usually the maximum, although there's no set rule.

I've gone back over a lot of my past blog posts to tweak the paragraphs for future readers. If it's broke, it's got to be fixed!

I didn't define my target audience clearly enough

Except - I thought I had! I was writing to Christian mums, wasn't I?

But I'd become aware of others reading my blog who didn't fit into that description: Christian dads, non-Christian parents, grandparents, people looking into adoption, those who hoped to be parents one day. I was aware that my blog was being read by several demographics, so I tried to cater for all of them.

It didn't work - it never does!

In trying to cater for all, I was actually not really catering for anyone.

One day I read about creating a 'reader avatar'. This is your target audience personified.

I developed an avatar called Kate: she's 35, Christian, married to a Christian, with two young children and considering adoption or fostering in the future. She works part-time in a job she doesn't think will be forever, and she and her husband are home-owners. Financially, they are comfortable but not affluent. Her family is involved in a local church.

Whatever I write, I now ask myself, "Would Kate read this? Would this encourage/bless/help Kate?"

Of course none of my blog readers exactly fits Kate's description! But the funny thing is, narrowing down my target audience has actually increased my audience, even in different demographics, because people know what they're getting. Although there's definitely still room for improvement, I'm feeding my readers a much more consistent diet of material - and they're responding positively.

Have you sat down and thought about your reader avatar?

I wrote about too broad a range of topics

Following on from my first mistake, because I hadn't ever thought to narrow down my reader avatar, I was writing about too many things: parenthood, yes, but also theology, food, local places of interest, marriage - anything that took my fancy!

It wasn't that my posts weren't interesting or well-written - it's just that they weren't all going to appeal to 'Kate'. Why write about York restaurants when most of my audience live elsewhere? Why write about theology when there are plenty of other blogs which do that better?

Yes, these things may interest me, but they're not necessarily of interest to every Christian parent of my age group. I now focus my blog posts on things which, by and large, will appeal. Of course there is still much subjectivity here - some posts will appeal more to certain readers than others - but, on the whole, I write about things which are in the common interest of 'Kate', and readers like her.

I didn't spend much time promoting my blog

I recently read that bloggers should spend 20% of their time writing posts, and 80% of their time promoting them.

As each blog post takes me roughly 2-3 hours to write, I can't ever see a time coming when I have the capacity to spend 8-12 hours promoting it!

But the statistic caught me short. What was I actually doing to get the word out about my writing, other than whacking it on Facebook and Twitter and hoping for the best?

I started to research good practices for promoting blog posts, and maybe I'll be able to share some of these with you in future months.

For now, let me tell you about two steps I've taken to promote my blog. Firstly, I decided to take a three-month blog break (April-June). This was partly because I have a big freelance deadline looming, but also because I want to spend this time better promoting some of the 200+ posts I have on my blog. What good is it for all these articles to be lost in the 'blogosphere' when they could be encouraging more people? But how can I adequately promote them under the pressure of having to write a new post each week?

So - a blog break was the answer.

Secondly, I'm taking an in-depth course about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation - getting your blog/website visible to Google and Pinterest). Part of my blog break will be spent getting stuck into this course, and tweaking past blog posts to see if I can increase their traffic.

(It's an expensive course, eating up a lot of my freelance income, but it comes highly recommended, and if it pays off then it might mean increased income for my blog. Watch this space!)

I didn't 'catch' readers with a subscriber list

A year ago I set up a subscriber list with Mailchimp (I wrote about that here), and I now have over 400 subscribers. I'm proud of that achievement - but dread to think how many readers I 'lost' over the previous six years purely because I didn't have any way of 'catching' them.

Once upon a time, I could post my blog on Facebook, and lots of people would see it. Not so now: Facebook is continually changing its algorithms, meaning that we don't see stuff we used to see. Or not as regularly/easily.

If you have a subscriber list, it is YOUR platform. You send an email, and you know that everyone has received it. You're not subject to the changing whims of social media. When you come to promote your books and other publications, email is a surefire way of reaching your readers - social media isn't.

So now when people come to my blog, I'm offering them a free, short ebook which is aimed at my target audience (Kate would love it!) in exchange for joining my subscriber list. If people like what I write, I'm able to 'catch' them and keep them in touch with future writings, be they blog posts or books.

I didn't seek to address my readers' challenges

Because I didn't have a subscriber list, I didn't have any real way to get to know my readers, other than if they commented on a blog post.

Now that I have a list, I'm able to plan future blog posts based on what my readers actually want to read about.

I do this chiefly in two ways. First, I've set up an automated series of three 'welcome' emails that a new subscriber receives, each three days apart. The final email invites readers to reply to me with a challenge that they're currently facing in parenting - or life generally.

I've been pretty gobsmacked at the number of people who bother to reply to this! But I'm so please they have. Several readers told me that their challenge was managing a toddler and a new baby - so I was able to gather five other Christian parenting bloggers and publish a post offering advice on dealing with two or more children.

The second way is simply by emailing regularly, asking questions and inviting interaction. One new subscriber asked if I'd ever written anything on home education. I hadn't - and felt underqualified to do so, since we don't home educate our kids. But I got a few friends and other contacts on the case, and published a whole week of diverse home education stories.

I have still more blog ideas which have been suggested by readers, and am looking forward to getting stuck into them - after my blog break!

Lucy Rycroft writes Christian parenting blog Desertmum. Formerly a teacher and PGCE lecturer, she now divides her time between freelance writing and raising her kids. She has two books coming out this Autumn. Lucy lives in York with her husband and four children.