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I Wish Someone Had Told Me About These 4 Writing Pitfalls

Published by Brad Johnson on 10/31/2019
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For many writers, the notion of being able to quit the nine to five and strike out by themselves is something of a dream. Making it happen is a challenge, and there are substantial pitfalls along the way.

Creating a blog is the most obvious strategy for thoselooking to build a sphere of influence, but how can you make it happen for you?How can you build a thriving online outlet for your writing and get peoplepumped about what you’re doing?

Here are some of the writing pitfalls that I wish someone had told me before I set out to build a successful writing career.

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Pitfall #1: Believing You Have To Reinvent The Wheel

Writers today have the benefit of being able to see howothers achieved their success. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. While youalways want to take a unique spin on something, there’s no reason you can’talso adopt proven strategies used by others to become a successful writer.

So, for instance, many writers have nailed the process ofbuilding an email list, creating a following and gaining traction, and there’sno reason you can’t use a similar strategy yourself.

Here are a couple of pointers that should help you takethe best insights from successful writers and bloggers online:

  • Analyze their blogs to see what kind of strategies they use to capture emails
  • Check out the type of promotions and advertising that they do
  • Look at what topics successful blogs niche cover and use them to gain insight into the kind of content you should create
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Pitfall #2: Focusing Too Heavily On Advertising

While advertising will probably be your primary source ofincome, you don’t want to make this fact evident to your audience. Yes, therecan be the odd nudge here and there, but your blog shouldn’t look like theinternet version of Times Square – an example of what not to do as a writer.

Here are some things you can do right now to ensure thatyour advertising isn’t too intrusive:

  • Make sure that commercial incentives never undermine your ability to provide your readers with value
  • Keep advertising space to a minimum and focus on native advertising content
fountain pen closeup with black background

Pitfall #3: Not Being In Love With Your Topic

Writing effectively about something is all about being inlove with the topic itself. How you write is primarily a reflection of thedepth of personal connection to it. If your heart’s not in it, your audiencewill be able to tell, and they’ll desert you for somebody who really does careabout the topic.

So, what does this mean in practice?

  • Only choose topics you know genuinely interest you
  • Make sure that you factor in your personal preferences when deciding what content to create for your audience
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Pitfall #4: Wanting To Be Just Like Someone Else

No matter how hard you try, you can never be just likesomebody else. Thus, it doesn’t make sense to try to emulate your favoriteblogger online. Worse still, it looks inauthentic.

Here are some pointers to avoid this pitfall:

  • Embrace your writing style
  • Focus on building genuine relationships with your audience: a tactic that can help you gain emails and subscribers.

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