Blogging isn’t a challenge. It’s a group of multiple challenges at a special set of times for various people. The journey is unquestionably amusing, profitable, thrilling but never easy.
I am scripting this post to assist you to set your journey to ease with overcoming a number of these biggest blogging challenges. I even have asked people, researched in forums, spoke to my friends about their blogging challenges. I will be able to update this post regularly to deal with more challenges within the future as I get asked. So here we go!
Table of Contents
1. Lack of motivation
One of the most reasons behind the lack of motivation to write down and maintain your blogging routine is wrong expectations. We presume big returns too fast. These returns may involve readers, comments, feedback, traffic, and even money. once you don’t see your efforts converting into these returns, lack of motivation creeps in.
Another major reason is the lack of clarity on the purpose of blogging. Why does one actually want to blog? What is often one biggest drive to form your blog and wouldn’t cause you to quit easily. Find that drive. If you’re clueless that purpose, you’d face a lack of motivation sooner or later.
How to address this
Before you begin blogging, do a self-assessment of your purpose and expectations. consult a teacher or veteran blogger to ascertain if your first steps are right and realistic enough to stay you moving for a few times until you begin seeing some results. Even smaller rewards and milestones will keep you motivated.
2. the way to finish an idea. It doesn’t seem to finish.
Unless you’re a blogger for hire who would never face any challenge finishing a limited wordcount gig she is purchased, you’d always be trapped in “still making it a touch better”. Here are a few tips to place an end to your wandering thoughts and post.
1. It doesn’t need to be perfect. Done is best than perfect. Finish it with a tough push to your mind.
2. the instant you are feeling it’s becoming too wordy, put an end. once you yourself feeling clueless, consider your readers.
3. If still helpless, provides it ahead and begin another post with Part II
4. End with a quote, be it yours or someone else’s. Let it be.
5. End with an issue.
They act once they are told. You get once you ask. Simple!
3. Not having the ability to stay to my plan
We aren’t ready to do as we planned in two situations. (a) We had set unrealistic goals out of over-excitement (b) The goals aren’t motivating and high priority enough
There are often several other reasons but your will-power can beat them most of these.
How to address this
Start with small tasks. for instance, decide to do one post every week and plan to publish regardless of what. Fix half-hour every day to write down. Whether you write content for this planned post otherwise you write other thoughts and albeit you are feeling blank, spend this half-hour every day. Make it a habit. albeit you happen to take a seat idle writing nothing but keeping a blank screen or notepad, on the 4th or 5th day, you’d scribble something.
Pick up a topic/subject you recognize well and your audience is usually willing to listen to about. Attach a readership goal thereto. Basic keyword research and therefore the search volume will motivate you to write down it faster and better. it’ll be easier for you to pen down your ideas and thoughts on such topics. More original you write, more confident you’d get.
4. arising with new post ideas
This is one among the foremost common yet easiest to crack blogging challenges. This one is usually faced by new bloggers. they’re trying to find ultra-amazing post ideas to impress their audience. Whereas, the key lies elsewhere.
The best post ideas are the foremost common and prevalent pains and problems of your chosen niche. curiously enough, most of the bloggers underestimate these ideas.
How to address this
Begin with a FAQ of your industry. Turn them into short or long blogposts whichever is best.
Look into Quora, Reddit and Buzzsumo for up to date questions and posts in your niche
Refer to your Google search analytics and are available up with new ideas from the queries that are bringing people to your site.
5. arising with original content
This blogging issue looks almost like #3 but it’s more of a block than a challenge. We all want to write down original content that has never been written or seen. It’s generally impossible for routine blogging. simply because these ideas seem wiped out or written already by many, many bloggers lose interest from writing.
Additionally, you’re either pertaining to textually original content or contextually unique. the sole original content is your own thoughts and not all of them could also be useful to your readers. Your readers would like to read more meaningful, useful and latest information rather than original stuff they need never heard of unless it’s way too amusing and entertaining.
You can make the content textually unique by presenting in your voice and elegance with additional valuable information. You can’t reinvent the wheel and neither you’ve got to.
How to address this
You don’t always need to come up with 100% original ideas or content. Write opinion posts instead. they’re equally original since your thoughts, experience, and inputs are going to be completely unique and yours. Moreover, readers anticipate reading such opinion posts since they provide a special perspective to a thought.
6. Blogging everyday
Some of the news blogs and review blogs work well with daily blogging. It’s a serious challenge to publish a blog every day since it doesn’t just involve writing but publishing it properly and initiating to promotion as well. The whole process makes your daily blogging effective.
How to address this
You either got to be an avid writer to blog every day or hire a team of bloggers to translate your ideas into posts. Whichever you choose, starting with a topics calendar and scheduler helps. Create a list of 30 topics along with keyword research done. I call it a blogging ideas bank. This ideas bank will help you pick and write or assign topics to your writers. When you have an idea ready, sitting and writing becomes easier.
Secondly, fixing a time for daily blogging helps. No matter what, write something in that hour. Once you have the content written, publishing the same wouldn’t be a hassle.
7. Should I write what I love or what people would love
You want to stay outspoken. That’s the reason you chose to blog. You want to express yourself. You want to be heard. The challenge is – why people would like to read you? Should you write what they won’t see or what you want to say. This is one of the most frequent questions I receive in my blogging coaching sessions.
How to address this:
People would be interested in what you say for two reasons. Either you say something different or say the same general things differently. You’re heard when you seem to make a difference.
If your original thoughts are making even a slight difference in your readers’ life, you’d be read and they will come back. This difference can be some value, shaking their mindsets and beliefs, provoking their thoughts and opinions – anything that brings a point of common interest between you and your reader.
8. Getting high-quality traffic
Getting traffic is a challenge but getting high-quality traffic that converts is a twice big challenge. Many of the blogs end up failing because they manage to receive traffic but fail to build up high-quality traffic that converts into money.
How to address this
High-quality traffic looks for the highest quality information resource. A resource that provides accurate, innovative, and well-researched content consistently and in the simplest possible manner. Be selective about the topics. Stay focused on your niche and what your targeted audience is looking for.
9. How to get more comments
Getting comments is one of the most lucrative rewards for your blog and it is the most challenging aspect at the same time. First, understand that your post worth and quality is not determined by the number of comments. Your readers may read, may not comment, and still love your post for the value they have received.
However, here is what you can do to encourage readers to leave comments.
Jon Morrow shares a 3 part formula for more comments
Traffic & Engagement & Emotion will give you = Bunches of Comments
-To expect a decent number of comments, your blog needs to receive good traffic.
-To have people share their opinion, you have to write the way they read most or the whole of your post. Hold their attention.
-To make commenting inevitable for readers, you have to be even with them at an emotional level. Excitement, sadness, anger, or whatever it is, it has got to be strong enough to make them write back.
Lastly, they won’t comment until you ask. Never publish a blog post without a call to action at the end… and consider adding subtle calls to action in between the posts.
10. How to get people’s responses to posts on social media.
While question number 9 answers most of it, what you would need additionally to get more response to your posts on social media is
-The number of fans and friends who may find your posts relevant and of their use. More such readers higher will be the response.
-Your description and call to action to present your blogpost. A curious and short description showing at least one of the best reasons to read the post encourages readers to click.
-Timing of your posting on social networks
11. Lack of time
Every blogger has the same amount of time. Just be disciplined to have the following things and you’d never face the time challenge
-Own a blogging bank where you have all your blog post ideas saved and briefed to be written as you get first free moments
-Make writing and blogging your priority. If it’s not one of your most important routine tasks, you would never want to spare time for this. Forget the last time challenge.
-Use a timer when you write and finish something. It’s easier to club several short and make a big one then holding on one big perfect post and never be able to finish it. It only leads to disappointment and a lack of motivation.
-You face time challenge when you think you need a lot of time for something. Build your blog post templates to give it an easier and faster feel to finish. It makes a difference.
-Create a reasonable schedule and stick to it. Start with small that you keep up.
-Consider creating a trigger
12. How to beat the competition when I have just started
Competition has an acquired a good loyal audience but not all of it. You can still attract a good share of this audience with content that has newness and originality.
Secondly, the ultimate decision-makers to choose a blog are your readers and viewers. And they always look for new blogs, new entrants, new information and even new style.
Just because there are several other contenders already, you can’t give up even before starting.
13. How to find a profitable niche
Your blogging success and failure depend on your niche and focus. You would have two options for your blog
-You write yourself
-You get content written
If you belong to the first option, picking up a niche with competency and your interest can take you far without much struggle. You would be more independent of what to write and the accuracy of your content. Remember that, anything in blogging can make money as long as people are looking for that information. All you need to do is to offer that information better than others and implement the monetary tools to cash upon the audience.
If you belong to the second niche, finding a niche with a bigger audience and more searches is profitable. Niches such as health, technology, news, reviews, etc. have been and will always be in trends. This option can be extremely challenging and slow initially because of competition but you can crack through it if you manage to come up with brightest ideas and aggressive promotions to delight your readers.
14. How to post perfect blogs
Writing perfect posts is half job done. The next half is publishing these great posts properly following all posting and SEO rules that make it more readable for users, searchable in search engines, and shareable on social networks.
Here are a few minimal steps to post perfect blogs
-Proofread and edit your post one last time
-Use “post from ” option to remove HTML code from word or any other writing tool
-Break the post in short paragraphs of no more than 4 lines or 5 sentences
-Assign H2 to your subheadings and prefer having 2-3 subheadings for every 500 words
-Highlight the most striking and shocking phrases in text block, “TweetThis” plugin, or block quotes.
-Interlink 2-3 of your old and related posts using appropriate keyword anchor text
-Link to 2-3 external and popular posts from other reputed blogs and bloggers related to the topic
-Add an unusually attractive and relevant featured picture. Write your post title or help text using Canva.com. Even consider adding your logo somewhere in the picture.
-Write a powerful call to action at the end that will encourage readers to leave comments, write their experience, share on their social networks, or even join one of your upcoming webinars. Without this step, your most awesome post will go useless.
-Review your blog introductory paragraph. It should hold readers’ attention, short, look highly relevant to what they came looking for an easy enough to walk them through the rest of the post.
-Add any funny or witty GIFs if you can find
-Write a simple, keyword-oriented, and reasons-rich meta description to prompt readers from search engines and click your post.
-Review everything again with this checklist and hit the Publish button or schedule it for the later publishing date.
Your perfect post is out to the readers!
15. How do I make my blog look great
A blog’s job is primarily to provide great content and information to its readers. They come for the content they are looking for. Design is secondary. So focusing on a great blog instead of great looking blog delivers better results.
A simple looking theme or template can serve well to create a great looking blog. Just ensure you have every element of your blog placed right. A great blog will have all the must-have pages to refer to in case the readers want to know more about the blog or blogger, calls to actions at right places, a functional contact page, responsive/mobile-friendly theme, subtle colors that help the main content stand out, catchy and easy to remember name and logo to start with.
Ultimately, remember that your content quality and presentation will make your blog look great, not just design.
16. How to find great data for your blogposts
Data makes a post rich when it is latest. The best way to find data is to create it. You can conduct surveys, quizzes, and polls. I love Twitter and Facebook polls to generate data at a smaller level.
For a larger scale data, there are sites that publish such latest data either for free for a minimal paid subscription at one-time fee. For example, digital marketing (and other industries) statistics are published at Statista.
Niche Forums are another brilliant way to ask people questions and help regarding data. You will always end up finding more than you required.
Using keyword combinations such as “Latest+stats+industry+Year” can help you dig some decent data.
17. How to find great topics
Topics are in the air. If you’re really serious about blogging and keep your ear and eye open, you can find 100 topics every day around you. Here is how
-Think of your niche and list down all the problems that you yourself are facing
-Ask your friends at least one issue related to your niche. Be specific in your ask to help them share one challenge. Use that challenge as a blog post topic. You will have a huge list of topics this way
-Go to quora.com and search with a few common and some uncommon keywords. Pick up the topics and see if you can come up with some great posts on these topics
-Search with keywords on Reddit.com, BuzzSumo.com, Rebelmouse, Scoop.it, and Digg. These are some of the most popular content curation and bookmarking sites to refer good post ideas. These will give you prompts to think of related topics.
-When mind is totally blocked, use prompt blog post topic generators – Hubspot and Portent blog topics idea generator
18. How to stay disciplined to blog regularly
Question number 3 answers this challenge. To stay disciplined with blogging, it must connect to one of your biggest life goals you can’t be without. It must be one of your highest priorities to make a big difference in your professional or personal life. Unless it’s consequence is scary enough, you wouldn’t be motivated to stay disciplined with blogging regularly.
19. How to make money from blogging
Making money from blogging is a much-hyped concept. True that some bloggers are making 6-7 figures income per month. True that a lot of them own their time and still make money in bed. However, the way bloggers are born every day or we see born bloggers around, it sounds like a money minting profession.
Reality check – it’s not as easy as it looks. It’s neither as glamourous as the bloggers show up on Facebook and Instagram. That’s the post-money effect. It’s not a short cut to be a millionaire on vacation. Money from blogging has its own long journey but you can make it fun and blast with your own attitude.
Here are the ways you can make money blogging.
-Affiliate marketing
-Direct advertising
-Selling banners and ad spots
-Sponsored posts and reviews
-Adsense and similar ad programs like info links, Chitika, etc
-Consulting coaching services
Money making from blogs comes with five steps
-Create content that pulls targeted traffic – from every possible place
-Convert this traffic into regular readers and subscribers
-Build trust, credibility, and authority among your subscribers with publishing higher quality content
-Suggest, recommend and sell products to your lists with email marketing
-Create such multiple virtual assets and repeat
What will actually push sales and money to you
-Start with affiliate marketing
-Don’t quit even if your initial posts seem to be failing. Use them as a base to improve.
-Recommend products and services you have either used yourself or highly trusted ones
-Don’t hesitate to recommend high priced products as long as they have an equally high promise and results
-Take help from free tutorials, courses and even paid coaching
-Have patience. It takes time to make millions from blogging and it is POSSIBLE
20. How do I reach a larger audience
You can reach a larger audience by 1. targeting a subject or keywords with huge search and 2. by marketing it aggressively using maximum ways and channels of promotion.
-Optimize every post with the most relevant and researched keywords to make your post searchable in search engines.
-Once you publish, use all or most of these 15 ways to promote your post.
-Your blogging effort will bring maximum returns if you spend 30% of your time in creating brilliant content and 70% of your time, money, and effort in promoting the same.
-Serving newer information to your loyal readers-helps making your audience larger when they love to recommend and share your posts on their networks.
21. What should be my first blog topic?
The first blog post comes with much pressure and more expectations from yourself than any of your prospective readers.
When it comes to the topic, for a personal blog, you can choose from the topics such as “X things you can expect from my blog over a year”, “This life-changing insight made me start the blog”, What really kicked me to begin blogging”, “X reasons you would hate my blog”. Anything personal that will make people curious.
For a niche blog focused purely at money-making, posts like “X answers my blog will target about +keyword/industry”
Whichever type of blog you’re starting, here are some handy tips to keep in mind for the first near-perfect post.
-Remember your target audience with every word & know that they’re picky readers
-Write only the latest information your readers are looking for
-Write as much as you feel like. Pour your thoughts, feeling, and heart. But be brutal when you edit it. Edit it twice, thrice until it’s an absolute delight to you and the readers.
– Ensure that you follow the publishing checklist before you hit Publish.
22. How to create a buzz from a topic that’s being written already
Give an irresistible title and provoking meta details. They appear both on social networks and search engines. Write an equally thought-provoking description when you share it on various social networks.
Add humor to the read.
To add, provide more and the latest information that’s not available on the existing blogs. Keep it shorter than other blogs.
You can create a buzz with this post using as many marketing channels and tactics as possible. Be it asking your friends to share it if they find it useful or boosting the post on Facebook and Twitter, mentioning some good names in the posts as references and asking them to share on their social networks (they do), use email marketing, and more.
Great marketing brings in the buzz even for the most boring topics. Focus on that when you’re confident about the content quality inside.
23. How to stand out with a topic when you’re not an expert at it
You can’t beat the experts. So bring the experts on board when you’re not one. Approach the industry experts with one brilliant question and ask for their short answer or opinion. Feature them and your post will stand out with multiple experts at the same time. More interestingly, they would even help you with marketing this post by sharing on their social networks.
24. How to meet the rising expectations of your audience
Even before you think of your audience’s expectation, you need to rise above your own standards after every good post. These are some suggestions on how you can stay at excellence with every new post.
1. Review your post engagement on blogs and social networks.
2. Review the views vs. engagement
3. Review how well it has managed to rank in search engines
4. Review if it could make people question you or leave comments
5. How did you feel contented if you read your own post after a few days?
6. Search similar topics and compare your own post. Edit and update if required for more value.
7. Stick to a posting frequency and schedule. Even if it once a month, stick to it.
8. Stay consistent with your voice, tone, and style except a few modulations to justify the subject. They are coming because of your persona.
9. Research and be serious about your homework before you’re confronting your audience with your expressions and opinions
10. Enjoy and have fun in what you’re saying. People fall in with confidence even if the opinions are ugly. It’s a different kind of amusement
11. If something doesn’t seem to work, change it immediately.
12. Readers feel more enthusiastic about seeing other readers’ presence. Get some action done on your blog.
25. Start and write the introduction
A powerful introduction works as a hook and it works just once. If you lost the reader, you just lost her. Here are 5 easiest ways to start your post
1. Begin with an interesting/unbelievable and uncommon fact.
2. Consider giving an idea of the climax of this post even disclosing the whole surprise
3. Ask a question
4. Begin with provoking (Be careful about this one)
5. Start with your own experience or story (Don’t stretch it)