Blogs are an excellent tool for promoting your start-up or business. If you’re not careful however, it’s easy to end up putting in a lot of effort into something that yields little in the way of reward. SynapseIndia founder Shamit Khemka enlists a series of common blogging pitfalls that entrepreneurs should be aware of and which you’ll want to address when it comes to your own blog.

1. 5 Crucial Mistakes that Start-up
Company do with theirBlogs
By Shamit Khemka

2. Introduction
Blogsarean excellent tool for promoting your start-up
or business. If you’renot careful however, it’seasy
to end up putting in alot of effort into something that
yieldslittlein theway of reward. Thefollowing isa
seriesof common blogging pitfallsthat entrepreneurs
should beawareof and which you’ll want to address
when it comesto your own blog.

4. Mistake #1 : Not Prominently
Linking to yourMain Site
It can beextremely irritating for visitorsto arriveon your blog,
and not havean easy way to reach your main site.
Yes, thereader could removeblog. Or /blog/ from their
addressbar, but you should work under theassumption that
inertiaisastrong force. If it takesmorethan anegligible
effort, alargepercentageof visitorswon’t bother doing it.
Oneof thechief goalsof your blog isto get peopleto check out
your product. You need to makethisprocessaseasy as
possible.

5. How to Fix it!

Link to thehomepageor landing pageof your choicefrom within
your navigation bar. Homeshould link to your main site’s
homepage, not your blog’sindex. Call that link within the
navigation bar Blog instead.

If your main site’slogo ispresent at thetop of your blog template,
haveit link to themain site.
If themain site’slogo isnot included in thetemplate, add such alogo
or afairly good sized icon derived from it within your sidebar, then
link that to themain site. Finally, link generously to theproduct or
servicewhen you mention it, beit from ashort description in your
sidebar or from within your posts. You want aperson to look at
your blog for asecond, blink, and immediately know whereto click
to check out your offer.

6. Mistake #2 : Not integrating with
social properties
Linking to your social propertiesalso actsassocial proof. When
someoneseesalargenumber of fansor followers, it leadsthem
to consider you asbeing moreauthoritative, established, or worth
following aswell. And sinceyou areshowcasing theseproperties
to your blog visitors, thiswill in turn boost thesenumbersand
increasefurther your social proof.
Finally, it’samistakenot to promoteyour blog postson social
properties. For example, when someonelikesyour fan pageon
Facebook, they subscribeto your updatesthere. By posting alink
to your articleswithin that pageon Facebook, you automatically
reach visitorswho may haveotherwisevanished for good after
their first visit to your blog.

7. How to Fix it!

Link to your main sitefrom social mediapropertiesthat allow you
to do so.

Add asocial widget to your sidebar. Notethat thisFacebook widget
should beused to get peopleto likeyour fan page(therefore
subscribing to your updates) and not your site. Specify theformer
URL, rather than thelatter, when configuring thewidget.

Show faceswhen it comesto Facebook, asthey arevery effectiveat
helping you immediately connect and capturetheinterest of your
readers(after all, you’reshowing them facesof their friendswho
likeyou, aquasi-direct endorsement for you).

8. Mistake #3 : Making it harderto
subscribe to, and regularly follow
Blogsthat don’t makeit easy to subscribeto new content rarely
achieveagreat deal of success. Theseday, browserslikeFirefox
and Chromeeven ignoreauto-discovered syndication feeds,
making theprocessof subscription much harder.
You might think that RSSdoesn’t matter anymore. In truth it does
matter —morethan most peopleassumeactually. Even
conceding for asecond that your prospectivecustomersarenot
theright demographic for feeds, you still need to provideand
promotewaysfor them to keep up with your new content. You
simply cannot expect them to comeback to your siteperiodically.

9. How to Fix it!

Keep track of your subscription stats via FeedBurner

HavealargeorangeRSSicon linked to your feed URL (seemineas
an example).

Includeaway to receiveyour new postsviaemail. You can use
FeedBurner (enableit through Publicize-> Email Subscriptions) or
much moreideally
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SynapseIndiaworking in tandem to achievegood feedback from
clients

10. Mistake #4 : Only blogging about
product announcements
Whileyou certainly should useyour blog to talk about and promote
your products, unlessyou havemorethan oneblog, it would bea
big mistaketo focusyour sitejust on announcementsabout your
products. You’d bemissing out on thetruemarketing power of
your blog if you went thisroute.

11. How to Fix it!
Write for the audience you want to attract. If you prospective SaaS
customers are people who intend to lose weight, don’t spend
90% of your blog time discussing cool features you introduced in
your app. Instead, write about topics that interest this particular
demographic such as weight loss, fat burning, healthy foods, lean
mass gain, etc. This way you’ll gather a community around that
topic.
Make it the blog that absolutely anyone who is losing weight should
follow, whether they use your app or not. All the readers that
you’ll attract will be exposed to your product either by sheer
branding (ergo the importance of logos and links in the template
mentioned previously) or by following your blog regularly, and
then ending up reading your occasional bona fide product
announcements.

12. Mistake #5 : Hiding what your
product is about
I hateit when I’m fiveminutesinto apost of astart-up, and I have
no ideawhat theseguysactually do or what they’retrying to sell
me. Thisisfar morecommon than it should be.

13. How to Fix it!
If your post has anything to do with your product, quickly
introduce what your product does within your post. Don’t just
assume everyone knows. For example, “The investment we
received means that we’ll be able to allocate far more resources
to the development of our calorie tracker and healthy recipe
generator application”.

14. Conclusion
These are not by any means the only mistakes businesses do
when trying to succeed at blogging. They are however some
of the major, and perhaps most common, ones. Thankfully
simple, effective fixes, as shown, are far from hard to
implement and can be such a massive boon to you and your
company.
You can also know more on better success achievement online
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15. Thank you forWatching it!