5 Reasons Why Your Blog Sucks
1. Your post titles suck.
As the saying goes, first impressions count. They count when you’re out on your first date, when you go for a job interview, and when you try to get a website visitor to read past the first line of your blog post.
Nowadays, with many visitors arriving at blogs through advertising networks like Entrecard and Adgitize, you have really only a few seconds to make a good impression. And your blog is competing with thousands of others vying for reader attention.
Your post title needs to be relevant and descriptive, but it also needs to jump out and grab the reader’s attention right away if they’re to continue to read your article. While there is no magic formula for coming up with a killer title, here are a few pointers to keep in mind when titling your entries.
“How to” titles are generally effective as many people visit blogs to find free information to accomplish a specific task like backing up a Wordpress database file or monetizing their blogs.
Did I mention free? Some words are inherently more attention-grabbing through their abilities to evoke certain feelings and emotions. Free is probably the most over-used word in advertising, but it continues to be a highly effective attention grabber. Truth be said, nothing in life is really free, which probably explains why people are always looking for something that is. Other attention getting words include killer, amazing, and even suck.
List titles like “10 Ways to…” and “7 Reasons Why…” are another effective method to engage the reader. Most internet surfers have short attention spans. The list titles are effective because they create the impression in the readers’ minds that what they are about to read will not be too lengthy and time-consuming (which may or may not be true) and that they can skip around and do not need to read the entire article to find information.
Creating curiosity is another way to engage reader attention. You can create curiosity by incorporating a short quip, a popular saying, reference to a recent event, or one-liner into your title. Suggestive titles, even sexual innuendos (e.g. “Size matters when it come to….”), can also create interest and get people to read further into your post.
Like I said, there is no magic formula for coming up with a killer title for your post. You should know your target audience, understand their temperaments, and balance these factors with what you’re trying to accomplish through your blog. Since RantstoRiches.com is a blog about blogging, I can get away with a colorful, but not overly offensive, word like suck in the title. If I were a physician dispensing medical advices through my blog, on the other hand, such antic could cost me my credibility.
2. You don’t come up with new posts often enough.
Actually, this blog is on the verge of sucking because I haven’t written a new article in a while. But I have a good excuse. While RantstoRiches.com is a blog about making money, it is not exactly a cash cow itself. Launched just over two months ago, it’s just one of a dozen or so blogs that I’ve created. Sure, I’d love to spend more time on this blog to flaunt my beachside mansion, Italian sports cars, and gorgeous women that I managed to acquire through the massive fortunes that I’ve made on the internet. And while I’m at it, I’ll even post fake screenshots of my Clickbank and Paypal earnings.
All joking aside, I simply can’t afford to devote too much time to this site. And the few dollars that I get here and there from this site simply are not going to cut it if I am to continue to make a living exclusively off the internet, unless I plan to move into my grandmother’s basement (actually, my grandmother passed away years ago and she never had a basement).
However, that’s not to say that I have no aspirations for Rantstoriches.com to become my main “money site” in the future, at which point I wouldn’t mind churning out a new post or two a day for this blog. But at this point I can’t really justify spending any more on this blog while I have 70 or 80 other websites to run.
At any rate, it’s vital to have fresh, updated content to get people to come back to your site. Although this subject has been beaten to death thousands of times before by countless others, fresh content is even more important to blogs (short for “weblogs”) since they are electronic diaries that are supposed to be updated frequently, even daily. Just imagine, you can have some great articles that captivate visitors who stumble upon your blog. They come back a few days later only to find out you haven’t added anything new. A week later they come back to find that you’re still missing in action. Sooner or later, they don’t come back.
3. Your blog is not you-nique.
“Content is king”, as the mantra goes. If you want your blog to stand out, it need unique and original content.
But what exactly is unique, original content? In all likelihood, you’re not going to come up with a cure for cancer or a new theory on the origin of the universe. Everything you have to say probably has been said thousands of times by countless others already.
So, how do you go about being unique?
The answer is, you. That’s right, you. There are some six billion people on the planet, and you are what’s truly unique in this world. Your looks, personality, temperament, education, views, and other personal traits are all you-nique to you. The way you express yourself, your choice of words, your writing style are an extension of yourself. By lending your personality to your blog, you add life to it and renders it you-nique and original.
4. You seek to take rather than to give.
Whenever someone visits your site, it had be worth their time. Why should a visitor read your blog rather than the million others?
One way to compensate your visitor for their time is to blog with the mindset to give rather than to take. But how do you go about giving through your blog?
If you share some specialized knowledge that visitors seek, then you’re giving. If you teach people how to do something they want to learn, then you’re giving. If you inspire them to take action to bring about positive changes in their lives, then you’re giving. If you can put a smile or laughter on their faces through your articles, however silly and trivial, then you’re giving. At the end of the day giving is about enriching people’s lives and making them feel good about themselves.
5. You don’t actively promote your blog.
To be sure, a blog doesn’t necessarily suck because nobody reads it, but it sucks to have a great blog that nobody reads.
After all, the idea behind blogging is not to talk to yourself, but to share with others. Blogging is a two-way, peer-to-peer communication medium in which there is little barrier, technical or financial, to publishing. What this entails, unless you’re someone famous, as a blogger you’re really no different from a million others in the blogosphere.
Although some blogs have managed to become popular without much marketing and self-promotion, most of us aren’t good enough to gain significant readership without active promotion. Besides, at this stage of the game, you need to promote yourself even if you’re an exceptionally talented blogger, because there are so many other talented bloggers out there already.
You should not ignore the social aspects of blogging. Aside from optimizing your blog for the search engines, joining traffic-generating networks like Entrecard and Adgitize, and submitting it to blog directories, you must be willing to devote your time to engage your readers as well as other bloggers. I read other people’s blogs regularly not only to get new ideas and for inspiration, but also to leave comments on them and make friends with fellow bloggers. Sharing your knowledge and expertise on forums and discussion boards is another excellent way to get people to know you. Writing articles and submitting them to article directories like EzineArticles and GoArticle is another way to bring traffic to your blog.
There you have it, folks, five reasons why a blog sucks. I could go on and come up with 95 more reasons, but I see that I’ve already surpassed the 1,500-word mark for this post. Considering the short attention spans of most web surfers, I had better stop because I’m dangerously close to exhibiting another characteristic of blog suckitude (is that even a word?): excessive verbosity. Anyhow, the point is not to give 5 or 100 reasons why a blog sucks, but to share some ideas to avoid blog suckitude into blogging suckcess.
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Comments
Nice post, thanks 
These are real reasons, especially one that new posts are not regular. I cannot agree more. I did that mistake and lost almost all of my readers, and that’s not a surprise, right? 
Blogging is a two-way, peer-to-peer communication medium in which there is little barrier, technical or financial, to publishing.
The way you express yourself, your choice of words, your writing style are an extension of yourself. By lending your personality to your blog, you add life to it and renders it unique and original.
You should know your target audience, understand their temperaments, and balance these factors with what you’re trying to accomplish through your blog.
You are right that some words like “free” are inherently more attention-grabbing through their abilities to evoke certain feelings and emotions.
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The theme of this article looks familiar.
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