I checked my email a few moments ago.
Two glaring mistakes screamed at my attention. I see bloggers make these errors on a daily basis. Both mistakes cripple your blogging career.
What are the blogging boo boo’s?
1: Writing Bloated Posts Way too Long
Someone submitted a guest post to me a few moments ago.
He completely ignored my 600-word MAXIMUM rule. I capitalize the word in emails to stress its importance. No worries though; we are human, and humans sometimes ignore rules from an energy of fearful mindlessness.
Anyway, the post was OK but way too long, bloated and filled with excess commas and wording. I could write the first paragraph in 10-20 words. He used 100 plus words, over 5 commas, and 3 long, bloated sentences.
He made a common error I see both via guest post pitches and all over the web: writing unclear, way too long, blog posts.
Why do bloggers go too long? Almost every single blogger picks an arbitrary word count and attaches meaning to the count. Imagine dreaming an idea that 1000 words mean you wrote a valuable post.
Nothing could be further from the truth. 1000 word posts are not valuable posts. Valuable posts are crisp, concise, clear posts solving a specific problem. Value is subjective; just like life. Some see value in 500 word posts. Some see value in 600 word posts. Perceivers create experiences. Never follow some idea that long posts are valuable posts because millions of human beings believe otherwise.
My posts drip value. None exceeds 600-700 words. I say what needs saying and publish the blog post or guest post because the value is in economical word usage, not in the word count.
I particularly see this problem in ESL bloggers.
If English is your second language, I almost guarantee you that you want to write MORE to make up for your lack of learning English as a first language.
ESL bloggers tend to believe they need to use more words to deliver value and to allow people to understand them.
But the opposite is true; deliver value and be understood by using few words to make your point.
2: Following Up Months after the Initial Business Contact
As I promote my eBook: 8 Tips to Gain the Trust of Your Blogging Audience
I want you to ponder this idea. Imagine if you reached out to a fellow blogger and loyal reader with a business idea.
You agree on charging a fixed price for cross-promotion. Excellent. Now imagine if you did not email the blogger back with a follow up for over a month? 34 days is a lifetime in the blogging world.
I guarantee that your blogger-reader-audience member loses trust in you because being prompt and timely builds trust while being slow to respond to dissolves trust.
This happened to me today. Someone followed up on a sponsored post price today after making initial contact over a month ago.
A month is a long time. I cannot list how many people I connected with via my blog, social media, and email during this time frame.
I may or may not do business with the person because I lost trust in them. I know multi-millionaire bloggers who respond to my emails in minutes. I know many powerful bloggers who respond to all emails in 24 hours. But 1 month goes by, and an unknown blogger responds?
Not good. Trust-buster. If you snooze, you lose.
Be professional, prompt and respectful by responding to potential business partners and other bloggers in 12-24 hours. I doubt you get 1000-5000 emails daily. You can handle scanning emails for a few moments, responding to a few in 5-10 seconds and moving forward.
Summary
Write clear, concise posts.
Respond to email requests business-wise and otherwise within 12-24 hours of initial contact.
Be professional. Be respectful of fellow human beings. Avoid these glaring blogging errors.