Every blogger is different even if we all blogged within the same niche. I have come across many of bloggers who asks me the same questions when they face problems and wanted to share them with you. Take some time and really monitor your blog. Google Analytics is a great platform that I use bi-weekly to check the stats and other information I need to increase my blog traffic and create content that my target audience or readers prefer the most.

We are stepping into the fourth quarter and it is imperative that you finish this year strong, just as you started. If you need more help with blogging, social media management, building your email list or learning the basics of SEO as a blogger, click here and shop my digital products.

There may be more, so if you don't recognize any in my list, feel free to post more in the comments at the end of this post, to help our fellow bloggers out there.

NOT blogging consistently

There are some bloggers who blog on a whim and there are those like me with a blog schedule. However you choose to blog, just do it consistently. There were times when I would blog once a month (huge mistake) and only one person viewed my post. At a minimum, you should be blogging once a week to keep your audience engaged with your content. If you need help planning your blog content, I have a digital course here. I've learned that planning my content ahead of time, helps me stay consistent blogging. Of course you can always make changes to your planned content as needed.

NOT creating or maintaining an email list

I see so many bloggers have a subscribe to their mailing list or newsletter but don't actually create or maintain any content for their list. If you provide services or sell products, you're leaving money on the table literally, by not creating content for your email list. Using social media to market or promote your blogs is good but with the algorithms and those platforms are pushing for people to purchase ad space in order to make their posts visible to their target audience. If you don't know how to build an email list, I have a digital product here to help you.

Having an email list ensures that your readers can always see your content, you can let your readers know about any updates on your blogs, posts that's coming up on the blog, talk about something only with your subscribes and offer them discounts or freebies for your products or services. I send at a minimum, three emails a week to my email lists but if you're just starting out, try once a week.

NOT defining or knowing who your target audience is

Speaking of your target audience, do you know who that is? Saying to yourself that you want everyone to read your blog posts is too vague and you need to clearly define who those people are and create content and use images that is similar to those persons. For example, my blogs are for black women ages 34 and older, working and looking for new things to do in their lives, be inspired, live healthier, learn professional development tips and they are interested in my day to day life experiences and products that I use. Knowing that and again, Google Analytics confirms that they are my target audience, that's the type of content I create weekly on my website.

Although I have children, I'm not a "mommy blogger" because 2/3 of my children are grown and with all of this new technology out here and new products for children, I am totally clueless. Therefore, you won't see any parenting tips and other content around parenting on my website. But, my target audience are moms of smaller children and they read my posts for other reasons outside of being a mother. If you struggle with finding your target audience, click here.

NOT engaging with your target audience after you press publish

Don't post and ghost! Once you publish your blog post, stick around and engage with your audience. I've seen comments left on bloggers posts and they don't respond. If you have a huge following, you can't respond to hundreds of comments but you can at least respond and engage with some of them. Put yourself in that person shoes. How would you feel if you left a detailed comment on their website and they never responded to you?

Engage with your audience offline as well. I can't tell you how many times, I've gone to events and someone will walk up to me and say, "Aren't you Felicia T. Simpson (yes they say my whole name lol)???? I read your blogs and follow you on Instagram." I politely say thank you. I may ask for feedback or just thank them for reading my blog posts. Being an introvert has nothing to do with being nice offline with your target audience. If you see your target audience at events, in stores, hanging out at the park with their children, E-N-G-A-G-E with them and tell them all about your website or hand them your business card with your website on it.

NOT utilizing Pinterest to drive traffic to your website

The HOLY GRAIL to driving traffic to your website is via Pinterest. Pinterest is a large search engine and if you are not pinning the vertical images in your blog posts, you are making a huge mistake. Recently, I've been creating and adding Pinterest Graphics to my blog posts so that I and my readers can pin and repin them on Pinterest.

This is where reading a blog post from a mobile device is not helpful because you can't pin from it. I use my laptop or desktop to pin my images. I'll be doing a live tutorial on Pinterest soon so stay tuned for that. You can check out my Pinterest boards here.

BONUS: NOT creating or posting images that relates to your blog topic and/or target audience

The same goes for the images I use in my photos. If I'm not using my own photos, I make sure to use stock photos that look like my target audience. For example, if my blog post is inspirational, the featured image or images within the text won't be a 24 year old woman praying or a 34 year old Hispanic woman praying because they’re not my target audience. Take the time and study your target audience and create content for them.

If you are making these mistakes that I mentioned above, don't be hard on yourself, I've made them too. Most of these mistakes are easy to correct the only one that will probably take the most of your time will be pinning your blog post. Trust me, it will all be worth it and you'll increase blog traffic to your website in no time. Again, if you know of any other mistakes that bloggers make, please post them in the comments so that we can all learn together.