8 rookie mistakes to avoid when it comes to running a business

8 rookie mistakes to avoid when it comes to running a business

When starting out, I made a bunch of mistakes and I didn't just pack up my bags and quit, I learned from those mistakes.  I made mistakes such as using other peoples content as my own and not getting credit for it from the search engines.  I used spun content without knowing what I was actually doing and I even built 1,000,000 profile backlinks to my homepage thinking I would rank #1 for my top keywords, which never actually happened lol.

Below I'm going to go over 8 rookie mistakes that you might be doing, or might want to do, and you should avoid them.  Why?  Because they will only harm your business and make it more difficult for you to profit in the long run.



1. Start blogging for your visitors, they'll read your posts
While it's a great thing to put a blog on your website, if you're not posting to it at least once a week, you're not doing a good job as your business's "blogger".  You will need to learn how to optimize your content, and that means your blog posts too, so that you can increase your rankings within the search engines easily.  You'll need to promote your top read articles to bring people in and share them more than they already have been, if at all.


2. Leave your old blog posts alone
Many times I've read that people will go back and revise their content, which I don't get at all.  Your content has likely been indexed if it's been on your website for a while, so just leave it to age and gain traction in the rankings.  If you go about editing all of your old blog posts, you will definitely lose traffic and that means less sales for your service or product.

I understand that links will break, it happens, but that doesn't mean you need to edit the content on the page that link goes to. 

If you're writing up a prediction blog post and it ends up not panning out, don't go edit the post.  Write up a new post saying why your prediction didn't pan out and you can even link to the original theory


3. Add new content frequently to your website/blog
When it comes to writing up content frequently and being consistent to your niche, you don't have to re-invent the wheel when doing so.  Write up some nice content about your niche, product, review, etc. and make sure it's optimized for the search engines.  Do this a few times a week and your website will be seen as "Active" in the eyes of Google who will increase your rankings hopefully if you do everything right lol.


4. Don't collect emails if you don't plan on using them
Having a newsletter and sales funnel is a great thing for every website, but if you don't plan on using the emails for a while, don't think about collecting them.  People will usually forget that they signed up if they randomly get an email from you in 1, 2 or 6 months down the road.  This wouldn't be a bad thing if they couldn't so conveniently hit that "Spam" button and kill the email. 

Not sending out canned emails right away to people who signed up is like a death sentence to your list.  You will get a ton of unsubscribes after your first mailing if you wait too long to do it.  I would recommend setting up mailchimp and automating your first 5 to 10 emails so people get familiar with your newsletters.  Of course you'll have to write up the 5 or 10 emails and set them to go out to new sign ups, but that's pretty common and can be done in one sitting.


5. Be on as many platforms as possible, sort of
You'll need to be on as many platforms as possible, but not too many so that you get burned out.  You can be on facebook, twitter, instagram, pinterest, snapchat, etc.  But if you're being stretched too thing then you'll just get burned out or your marketing abilities won't work as well as they should. 

I like to focus on the platforms that have the majority of my target market on.  Usually I start off with Facebook because I can run paid ads and target my ideal candidates, but that costs some money because you're obviously doing a PPC campaign to bring in the traffic.


6. Social media platforms are FREE
Like I mentioned above, I like to use the PPC platforms on social media to bring in readers/buyers.  If you're not into that, you can always post quality content in order to bring people in through the search results after a user looks something up from the internal search bar in most of the platforms.

You'll of course need to be specific to your niche and website if you want to attract the right clientele, which isn't difficult.  If you're an automotive shop you don't want to talk about kittens even though they are adorable and that post would likely get a lot of likes lol.  Stick to what you know and what your business is about and you'll do just fine over time.


7. Share your content just a single time
This is one of the biggest mistakes I've seen done on almost every social media page out there.  Someone will post a link to their blog and if it doesn't get enough traction, they will do it again.  People will take the time to write up a great post on their website or blog and share it to their social platforms.  They think that because they did such an amazing job at it, others would love to see it multiple times, which isn't the case.  By sharing the same thing multiple times you will usually get people to un-like your page because you're just pushing the same material time and time again.


8. Don't get too personal
When you're with friends and family, you can get personal as long as it's not in a social atmosphere where your business is seen.  If you're getting personal with random commenters on a social media platform, you're playing with fire.  You can show your personal side, but don't get to involved with the conversation or you will get flamed for not giving out discounts or other benefits to those people.

Having common interests is a safe ground because you can talk about a sports team, fishing, a hobby of yours, etc. 




In Conclusion:
You can easily avoid these 8 common rookie mistakes when it comes to your business and marketing.  You just have to play it safe and know what you're doing before you actually do something that might harm your website or your rankings.  In the end, you will be better off taking it slow and reading through a few of the discussions here on SEOclerks.com in order to get a better understanding on what you should do when starting off


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Thanks!

Razzy