I am currently leading a group of 200+ bloggers through my 4-Week Live Blog Coaching Program. Last week, we talked about how to better monetize our blog posts, and I assigned them the project of writing a blog post using at least one affiliate link.
They submitted these blog posts to me, and I chose some of them to critique on live video. I noticed three things over and over again in posts that people need to stop doing.
I got up on my soapbox on the live video critique to talk about why my coaching students need to stop doing these things, and I thought they were so important to remember, that I wanted to devote an entire post to them, too!
1. Stop Using Boring Titles
If you use a title that doesn’t make sense or doesn’t sound interesting or intriguing enough, you’re going to have trouble getting people to click through and read your blog post!
For instance, one of my coaching students had titled her post “Counting Games for Preschoolers With Pompoms”. While that does tell you a little bit about what the post is about and it does use keywords, it’s a pretty bland title.
After my critique of her post, she changed the title to “How to Teach Your Preschooler to Count With Pompoms”. Do you see how much better that is? It tells you how she’s going to solve a problem and help you with a struggle that you might have (i.e. teaching your preschooler how to count).
Another student wrote a fantastic post on gift cards and how she had lost money by not having a good organizational system for them. She had originally titled her post “Tackle the Gift Card Chaos” — which didn’t really tell you what problem she was going to solve or cause you to be intrigued enough to click through.
When she changed her title to “Never Lose a Gift Card Again”, she completely transformed how interesting her post was. Because now you know that she’s got some extremely helpful idea or system and you have to click through to see what it is!
2. Stop Using Stock Photos
I know, I know! Taking your own photos is more work — and it requires a little bit of practice to take decent photos. But it will take your blog from blah to amazing.
Why? Because truly, “A picture is worth a thousand words”.
Real photos of your real house and your real books and your real life make you human. People don’t have connections to stock photos; they have connections to humans.
This is why Instagram is so effective. Because people love real photos. They love following people who they feel like they know through photos (and sometimes, videos) online.
Now, that said, I do think there is a time and a place for stock photos. For instance, I mostly use stock photos here because this is a more professional blog, and I’m not blogging about my life or my family or even much about behind-the-scenes. This blog is about helping you take your blog to the next level.
But if I only posted stock photos over on MoneySavingMom.com, people would never have the connection to me and my husband and my kids and my life that they do. They’ve watched my kids grow up. They seen photos of my messy house and my clean house.
They’ve seen photos of flopped food I’ve cooked and amazing food I’ve cooked. They seem photos of my grocery shopping trips, failed frugal experiments, amazing savings, freebies I’ve gotten in the mail, and many, many photos of our every day life.
This is why they trust me and continue to follow me as I grow and morph and change. This is why they read what I wrote, watch my videos, tell their friends about my site, buy my books and courses, check out products I promote, and continue to come back day after day.
Photo tip: Turn off the flash and all lights and take your photos mid-day in the brightest natural lighting possible (I sometimes take photos outside if I’m struggling to get good lighting!).
3. Stop Using Long Paragraphs
People skim posts. It’s just the nature of readers on the internet. They rarely will stop and read every word of a post — especially a long post.
That’s why breaking things up with header text, bullet points, and short paragraphs is essential.
I recommend no more than 2-3 shorter sentences per paragraph and no more than 3-4 lines per paragraph. If your paragraph is longer than 3-4 lines, figure out how to split it into two paragraphs.
Yes, it goes against all the rules you probably learned when you were writing short stories and essays in English class, but trust me, your readers will appreciate it. And there’s a good chance that people will read more of what you’re writing if you’re making it easier for them to read.
What are some of your biggest blogging pet peeves or things you wish people would stop doing in their blog posts? I’d love to hear!
Thank you for this post, I am making baby steps towards starting a blog and this is so useful.
Thank you again.
I’m so glad you found it useful!
My biggest pet peeve is the number of pictures people put in their recipe posts. It takes longer to load sometimes and I think it is totally not necessary. It actually makes me not want to read their post and skip right to the recipe. I think one or two pics is good!
I think that load time is something really important to consider when writing a blog post! Thanks for mentioning that.
I am with you Lou!
Love this list Crystal… I need to get better at snapping my own photos more too!
Lou, I feel the same way! Too wordy and too many pics are a turn off for me.
I struggle to think of exciting titles, but you’ve encouraged me to keep trying! Thanks!
It sometimes takes me a bit to come up with titles, too!
This is a difficult idea for me too. Maybe another class idea, Crystal??
I love this! Thanks for the tips. I took your course last year and loved it.
Thank you so much!
This is a great list Crystal! I love how you pointed out about the long paragraphs. I think it’s hard for new bloggers to switch from writing how we were taught in school! Lol
I also believe that making the post all about the blogger’s personal life is a mistake also. For example, writing a post about our trip to Disney. Instead, turning the post into a tutorial or list post on the 9 Things you Must Pack on Your Disney Trip to Avoid Toddler Meltdowns. People are so much more likely to click on “what’s in it for them.”
Great post!
I loved your tip about bringing value to your readers!
I’m guilty of the first two! Gotta work on that!
One thing I have a hard time with is a light colored font. My eyes get too tired trying to read it.
It’s something I have to work on, too!
HA! thank you for that! I was *just* trying to put together a Pinterest graphic with a stock photo, because I didn’t have any of my own on the topic, but it just wouldn’t come together! Everything was off. I just decided I will have to make a photo myself (photography is actually my strong suit), and then I saw this post! I would love to hear your opinion on my post, but I haven’t published it because I still don’t have the photo….
Yay! I’m glad that this post inspired you!
My pet peeve is recipe posts with random thoughts about the bloggers day in between several photos before I actually get to the recipe I clicked over for. I dont really care if your 3 year old is a handful today, my problem is I need a smoothie recipe and I am having to scroll through a lot of irrelevant content to get to it..
Yes! I feel the same way. If it’s a recipe post, focus on the recipe and not your life story up to that point.
YESSS!!! I am the SAME!! Like, if I had all day to read three or four random mostly unrelated paragraphs about your life, I probably wouldn’t be here–just gimme the ingredients and instructions, please!! Then throw some interesting reading in at the end for while my dish is cooking lol…
Great tips!
I love using my own photos for my blog, although sometimes there is room for improvement. But hopefully, as you said, people will recognize that I am real. And yes, natural lighting is awesome!
I’ve worked on my titles and can’t say I’m an expert, but fortunately, my husband does some SEO work and is very familiar with blogs and such, so he’s a great resource when I can’t figure out how to title a post.
The one I need to work on most is not making paragraphs too long. I tend towards being long-winded, so I need to continue to learn to write concisely and package it in a way that folks want to read. (But at least I followed the paragraph rule here. 😉 )
My biggest pet peeve is when bloggers put that strip of social media links that pops up on the left side of the screen. It blocks the post info and to get rid of it is very tedious. If I go to a blogger’s website and that strip pops up, I immediately leave. I refuse to try to get that tiny arrow to come up so I can try to touch or click it away to only accidentally hit a link that takes me to an entirely different page. It makes me feel like the blogger doesn’t really care about me at all.
I loved that tip on titles. Thanks Crystal!
You’re so welcome!
Hi, Crystal,
Regarding your post about not using stock does this mean each time a blogger creates a post for their blog, they should use their own (real) photos? How does a blogger decide what to take a photo of when creating a blog post? Lastly, can real photos and stock photos be used interchangeably on their blog – what if you have memes with inspirational quotes? Sorry for so many questions at once – thank you.
I just always think of what would go along with the post. Or, if it’s just an inspirational post, what kind of pretty picture I could take. You can use real and stock photos in one post… and I’ve definitely done that before!
Thanks for this article, what great tips. I would love to learn more about posting your own photos. I just took a course that the author said to never post pictures from your phone or even your camera because the files are too big and it will slow down the loading time of your site.
How do you work around that? I must be missing something. I would love to use some of my photos because I completely agree with your point that people want to get to know you. Thanks for any tips you might have!
You can just re-size the photo when you save it or upload it. I usually just email the photo from my phone and choose a smaller size.
Thanks, that doesn’t sound too hard. Do you have a good size that you have found to work well and would recommend?
Hi Chrystal,
It can get frustrating when you see a free printable that you’re really interested in looking at and you keep clicking away never finding it – the spot to click on the tab for it was hidden away in a lot of other things. I just go to another site, most printables are easy to find on another person’s blog. Less is sometimes better.