The Top 5 Blogging Mistakes I Made When I Started

I can’t believe I have now been blogging for over eight months now, it feels like I just started yesterday. Whilst I am proud of how far I have come, I have definitely made some blogging mistakes along the way. I found a really interesting blog post with tips on starting a blog which got me thinking… If I was starting again from scratch, here are things I would do differently:

#1 on my list of blogging mistakes: I didn’t register my social media handles

I was pleased to see that my desired domain name was available via a whois search, but looking back now I should also have also immediately created Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts for my blog because I saw it as just a hobby, and, well, ain’t nobody got time for that. It turns out now I am being asked by PRs about my social media stats when they are considering sponsoring a post – awkward! I cannot stress how important it is to get yourself on social media asap if you have any hope to make money from your blog. Also, getting in there quick will give you a better shot of registering your domain name e.g. mumonabudgetuk would have been a great Instagram handle but it was registered by somebody else after I created my blog. Instagram is probably still the number one social network. You may wish to buy IG likes to boost your stats or you could choose to grow your following and engagement organically. So even if your social media accounts are just going to initially sit dormant, make sure you at least set up the following accounts: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest.

I tried to make everything perfect

Progress not perfection is the key when it comes to setting up a blog… just get writing. I probably spent two weeks tinkering with my blog layout and graphics when I should have been drafting posts. The finer details can be ironed out further down the line. Also, you don’t have to have weeks of blog posts planned… you could just wing it like I currently am!

I spent too much time messing around with graphics

I wish I’d found out about Canva sooner, instead of spending ages editing every image in Paint.net.

I compared myself to others

There will always be someone out there who claims to be earning £5k a month from affiliate income, or who is getting 20k visitors a month after only blogging for a year. It’s important to remember that it’s not a competition. It’s easy to think about throwing the towel in early on because there will feel like such a wide gulf between you, the novice blogger, and the superstar bloggers. But remember, they too were once where you are now. It takes time and patience to grow a blog – write good content, work on your SEO and you social media, and the visitors will come.

I Ignored Pinterest

Confession time… I haven’t rectified this yet, I still have a lot of work to do when it comes to Pinterest. I have mostly ignored it, but all I hear is how amazing it is for traffic. I wish I had invested more time at the start getting my posts Pinterest-optimised, but I guess that’s something I will catch up on, one rainy day.

Hope this post has been useful – would love to hear from other bloggers if there is anything else they would have done differently at the start if they could turn back time.

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