There are a myriad of ways to fail at blogging for business, in fact, too many! So we had to hack down this list to the top thirteen:
1. Don’t EVER plan
Failing to plan is planning to fail. Therefore, in order to fail at blogging, you must avoid planning at all costs. This means no keyword research, no editorial calendars and giving no thought whatsoever to post topics. The aim here is to stumble through the dark without even the remotest sense of direction.
2. Write a new post every blue moon
Successful bloggers drive large amounts of traffic by churning out new posts left, right and centre. Failing bloggers, on the other hand, churn out new posts every once in a while - essentially whenever they can be bothered. In order to fail, you too must restrict your posting frequency.
3. Serenade search engines
Another sure-fire way to fail at blogging is to tailor content purely toward search engines through over-optimisation techniques. Top failers recommend employing tactics such as keyword stuffing, repeated identical anchor text and generally ignoring human readability.
4. Focus on ME, ME, ME, ME
Constantly write about how great your own business is. In order to fail, you must ignore the needs of your audience by giving no consideration to the problems and challenges they may be facing.
5. Avoid being a thought-leader like the plague
You should avoid becoming a thought-leader at all costs. All successful bloggers are thought-leaders. In order to avoid this fate, you must take extra care to not write any posts that are original, thought-provoking, insightful or creative.
6. Give comments the cold shoulder
If you can't find a way to disable blog comments, simply pretend the function doesn't exist on your blog. Successful failers at blogging avoid paying any attention to blog comments in order to discourage discussion and interaction with readers. Furthermore, fail bloggers do not delete spam comments or moderate discussion, as these are tactics that lead to success.
7. Throw design out the window
In order to fail, you musn't give design a second thought. Good design makes it easier for people to navigate your blog and imparts a positive impression on visitors - this would be disastrous for aspiring failers.
8. Forbid readers from subscribing
To remain on the pathway to failure, you must distance yourself from readers by preventing them from subscribing to your blog via email, RSS or social media. Blog subscriptions drive repeat traffic - something which is sure to foil your plans to fail.
9. Make your blog an image-free zone
Images help to illustrate a point and may attract more readers. This is why they should never be used on your blog. To ensure failure, you should write posts that consist of large unbroken chunks of text without any visual appeal.
10. Scrap structure
It's also crucial to have nothing that resembles any sort of structure. It is advisable to avoid using logical and user-friendly categories and tagging architectures.
11. Boycott other blogs
You should make it a habit to not read any other blogs. Reading other industry-relevant blogs would help you to stay on top of developments in your industry and expose you to different perspectives, which will make failing much harder.
12. Forget to promote posts
Ideally, you should never promote your blog posts. In order to fail, you must ensure that you do not expose your content to new readers via social media or other means. You're much more likely to fail if you make your blog a musty, underground destination.
13. Trash talk about your rivals
Lastly, it's important that you drag the names of your rivals through virtual mud. Top blog failers will air their dirty laundry online, engaging in flame wars and attracting negative publicity. You don't want to make any friends in the blogging world, as that would help you to succeed.
For those who wish to succeed at blogging:
If you'd prefer to become successful at blogging, download our free Business Blogging Best Practices eBook:
Can you think of any other ways to epically fail at blogging?
