Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

Thinking, writing, business ideas … You’re only a stranger once.

March 12, 2007

Mini-Session 6: Blogging Blunders

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 1:00 pm

Guest Speaker: Chris Garrett

Liz left a comment on my blog about bloggers who talk down to their readers. It got me thinking (as Liz’s comments do). I don’t think it was aimed at me but at the same time don’t want people to think I believe I have all the answers.

I firmly believe we are all learning, and should make every effort to. We all have experiences to share. Experience is gained through doing things wrong as much as getting things right. Sometimes I think we learn more from goofs than successes. I expect we have all made some mistakes that others could avoid.

The biggest blunder I have made quite a few times is switching blog URLs. My sites have broken links through switching domains, changing hosts or changing software platform Whatever the cause the end result was breaking the paths people were using to find me. In the early days it meant broken bookmarks and links. More recently having to start over with zero feed readers. You should always make the effort to keep consistant URLs. If necessary redirect the old to the new.

Another major mistake was at the launch of performancing. I posted too much too fast. Readers couldn’t keep up with it and I burned out. At times I was posting four long posts a day. Our readers would have been just as happy with one day, perhaps more so. Yes when you launch a blog it is important to have a good archive of posts but this was overkill.

My most recent mistake was going off on a self-righteous rant. It’s not my style. I can’t even do it very well. There are very few occasions where I regret posting, even fewer where I go back and change a post once it has gone out to feed, but this one didn’t sit well with me at all so I edited it. My lesson here was to never post angry.

What blogging blunders have you made? Share your “shame” in the comments …

Thank you, Chris!
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Visit Chris’ Blog Chrisg.com where he keeps us all thinking straight on the ideas of new media –Me “Liz” Strauss
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Let’s open the Q&A . . .

I’ll go first, my second week at Successful Blog, I asked a programmer with limited SEO to help me do a simple series on search engines. I had no idea what I was talking about, and didn’t realize that his ways were no longer current. I learned a lot about SEO, negative feedback, keeping cool under fire, and why you should stick to what you know.

Who’s next?


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17 Comments to “Mini-Session 6: Blogging Blunders”

  1. March 12th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
    Chris Garrett said

    Whoah, that’s a good one. Just the thought of having someone elses grubby mits handling my sites innards makes me shudder, for them to muck the job up too? …

  2. March 12th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
    Chris Garrett said

    I just realise you meant they wrote about it rather than did it - d’oh, I just made another blunder :)

  3. March 12th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
    Reg said

    My biggest blunder was trying to cover too great a topic area. It left many of my readers wondering if my work was really “about” anything at all.

  4. March 12th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
    ME Strauss said

    hi Chris,
    I had two things going for me. I was more than willing to admit what I didn’t know and when the SEO guys tried to make a big thing out of it. I just kept asking them why didn’t they teach me?

  5. March 12th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Chris,
    It feels good when a guy like you does that too. It almost makes it okay to be human. :)

    In the end of the SEO story, I got a gift of Aaron Wall’s book and I never wrote much beyond stuff on anchor text since. :)

  6. March 12th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
    Chris Garrett said

    Excellent strategy. In most cases the person with the level head comes off with least damage :)

  7. March 12th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
    Chris Garrett said

    Aarons book is great PLUS he is a really nice guy :)

  8. March 12th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
    Aaron M. Potts said

    I don’t know if this is so much a “blunder” as a learning experience (is there a difference?) but my blog is presently only 2 columns, and it really needs to be 3.

    I feel very strongly about showing the most important links “above the fold”, and a 2-column layout leaves very little room for that.

    However, since I started my present blog at the same time that I started blogging at all, I knew very little about the medium. My present WordPress theme is great, but it is SO CUSTOMIZED that switching to a 3-column version is going to take a huge amount of consecutive time that I’m not prepared to dedicate right now.

    So, in the meantime, I will use two phrases appropriate for this moment:

    “Live and Learn”
    “Scroll down, please.” :)

  9. March 12th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
    ME Strauss said

    The sad part is that most of my blunders are of the ilk that I think I’ve learned from them. Then I do them wrong in a new way. I figure when I learn all of my life and blogging lessons, I’ll get to go to the next level.

  10. March 12th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
    Chris Garrett said

    @Aaron - I hear you, sometimes we know what we need to do but we can’t bear the thought of the amount of effort it would take and keep thinking of the time already put in

    The good thing about blogs is most stuff is tweakable :)

  11. March 12th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
    Chris Garrett said

    @Reg - a common blunder but thankfully one we can recover from :) Sometimes it helps to have a statement on the page, preferably in the header or an about box stating who and what your blog is there for.

    One one blog I had the opposite blunder; too narrow a niche so I ran out of what to write about, even before I launched!

  12. March 12th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
    Rodney Rumford said

    Chris,
    Nice blog content and I like the tactic for getting the ebook. Very clever.

  13. March 12th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
    Chris Garrett said

    @Rodney - there is a blunder right there with my ebook. When I launched I passed a few people the download link so they could give me feedback - a couple of them posted the link on their blogs giving people direct access to the download - oops :(

    Lesson learned, next time I will provide instructions :)

  14. March 12th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
    Rodney Rumford said

    Yea, you need to tell other bloggers what to share and not share… or they will share it for sure. ;)

  15. March 12th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
    Chris Garrett said

    @Rodney you are sooooo right!

  16. March 12th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
    Steli said

    Talking TO the audience instead starting conversations WITH´em was probably the biggest blogging blunder I made! Mistakes are crucial for learning - it´s cool that I can make mistakes every day as a blogger and grow as a personality!

  17. March 12th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
    Chris Garrett said

    @Steli I agree it is very cool, we can learn with, from and for our readers :) I find many people who cross over from online marketing, particularly those with popular newsletters find “with vs. to” most difficult.

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