Mind you I have learned these from experience both from long-term personal blogging and ghost blogging; here are five things you definitely DO NOT want to do on your blog.
- Never talk about real-world customers. Never if you change their names and circumstances. They will see themselves in your blog post and be angry. Don’t risk the bad blood.
- Never trash competitors or a product. Blog posts are forever, you can do a review and present pros and cons, but trashing is simply crossing that line of providing information. Being vindictive in a blog post can get you sued. Don’t waste time doing it, vent to your friends.
- Don’t stray from your main topic. If you are blogging for business stay tuned to that topic and your readership. If you start offering toe nail care tips when you should be talking about Internet marketing you will definitely turn off your readers. You can digress once or twice but get in the habit of digressing and readers will chop you.
- Don’t make your blog post a dissertation. Shorter is better, but not too short. My guideline is about 250 words on one thread. Need more space, break the thought up into parts.
- Don’t get hung up on comments or lack thereof. People do read your blog. If you are not getting comments or feed subscribers this does not mean that people are not reading. Still only 7% of all readers will be getting your news via feed technology. Just a few will choose to get your blog posts by email if you have this set up on Feedburner and your blog. Most will actually bookmark your blog’s home page and visit using a browser.
I’m sure I have more deadly blog crashers, but this post is getting long so that’ll be another post. :0)