One of the keys to being a successful blogger is originality. It’s important to come up with unique, original content so that you can stand out from the other bloggers in your niche and generate more traffic. One of the things that can hold a blogger back is the continual use of blogging cliches. Let’s face it, we’ve all done at least one of these at one time or another, whether we realised it or not. So what are these blogging cliches you ask? While this list doesn’t mention all of them, it does list 5 of the most annoying, most hated blogging cliches.
1. Apologising for Life
While apologising for not posting regularly is courteous, it’s not necessary and annoys many readers. Life happens and everyone has crazy and hectic things going on that make posting regularly often impossible. Since most of your readers are more than likely subscribed to your RSS feed along with many others, they probably would not even notice a slight break in posting. Most readers don’t mind or even care that you are not posting regularly, so you pointing it out in your apology will only make matters worse. The best way to show you’re sorry is to immediately start creating new and improved content!
2. Top User Lists
These lists could be useful if they weren’t just about name dropping, but nowadays they’re pointless because they always seem to mention the same people. Readers want to learn about and meet new people in the industry, not the same “A-listers” who are always mentioned over and over again. More than likely, they probably already know everything there is to know about the “A-listers” you’ve mentioned. Who doesn’t? Plus, top user lists just make others upset because they feel that they or someone they know deserves a mention on the list as well. So if you just have to do a top user list, be different and list others that are not so well-known.
3. How to Make Money Online
We all know that there is money to be made online, but face it, everyone already knows about most of these methods. Can you honestly say that you’ve found a new, legit. way to make a decent amount of money, or are you just writing the post so that you can include your affiliate links? If the latter is true, then you’re writing for the wrong reason. The true methods of making money online haven’t changed and there’s enough content out there already covering all of them. Yes money can be made through freelance writing and blogging as well, but it takes a lot of hard work and it’s not something that can be covered in a blog post. Plus, what works for one blogger may not work for others.
4. Comments Are Closed
If you have the comment section closed on your blog, then you’re really missing the point of blogging. How can you have a blog without comments? You can’t because blogging is about sharing what you know or have found online and then having conversations about it with your readers. Without comments you can’t interact with your visitors and they can’t interact with you. So essentially, you’ll end up with very little traffic and a dead blog. Visitors can really add value to your content by making suggestions and adding feedback. So, if you do intend to keep your comments closed, make sure you don’t ask any questions in your blog posts because no one will be able to answer!
Now that you have an idea of some of the most annoying blogging cliches, what will you do? Will you continue to follow others and potentially repel readers? The choice is yours, but as you can see being original is definitely the best option.
Thanks to Lior Levin of 123 Neon Signs for this blog post.
