In a recent post I talked about the ‘30 Ways To Upset Your Visitors With A Blog Post‘.

In this post let’s explore some more phrases that you should avoid…

I’m often talking on the blog about great language to use to pull readers in, ways to sell without turning your audience off, and good ways to engage your readers and increase your traffic. However, for every great phrase you can use to encourage sales, hook your audience in to your blog article and invite positive feedback, there will be another one which you could write, that would instantly kill off all of your readers and leave them scurrying away to find new industry experts to fulfill their need for information. Here’s the lowdown on the top phrases that you need to really avoid when you write, to make sure you don’t alienate your followers…

Under construction                                        

There are very few phrases that can incense a reader of a blog more than this. You know when you search online, and you see a link to a potential new great source of information? And then you click on the link, wait for the page to load…and you get met with an image of a little digger, a ‘men at work’ sign or something similar? A page under construction says something very clear to your readers: ‘I can’t be bothered to get this page up and running right now. So, I’ll put something up when I have a bit more time, but in the meantime I expect you to hang right on in there until I can find the time to meet your request’. Under construction can be translated in to ‘I don’t care about my readers’. If you haven’t got around to populating a page just yet, take it offline until you have time.

404 page not found

This is frustrating. Broken links show your readers that you are a bit slapdash, and can’t be trusted to check out your links to make sure they work before you publish a blog article. If you send your readers off on a wild goose chase to refer to another page you’ve referenced, you need to make darned sure that they are rewarded for following your guidance, and get taken to where they wanted to go. Use the Broken Link Checker plugin. This plugin will monitor your blog looking for broken links and let you know if any are found.

Buy now! Buy now!

If people were to list the reasons why they visit a blog, I should think that ‘being sold to’ is either on the bottom of the list, or not there at all. People want information, entertainment, guidance, advice, knowledge…but not sales patter. Avoid selling overtly in your blog posts unless you want to turn off your followers and send them packing elsewhere quicker than you can say ‘Blog FAIL’.

My competitors suck

No one wants to go in to a blog and read a long sales pitch about why you are much better than all of your competitors. Let them work it out for themselves, by reading pithy, interesting and informative blog posts that showcase you to the best advantage, automatically putting your competition in the shade without explicitly telling your readers that they aren’t as good!

I am angry

Reading about other people’s anger online is not just uncomfortable – it’s also unprofessional. Always resist the temptation to use your blog to vent off steam about people who you work with that have let you down. Take any strong negative emotions offline to make sure your readers aren’t left confused, unsure of your intentions, or simply fed up with reading your diatribe online.

I am bored

Bored bloggers make boring blogs. If you don’t have passion for what you’re doing, and lack the enthusiasm to produce valuable content for your blog, it may be time to consider a new way of marketing your products and services. Don’t make the mistake of letting your lack of enthusiasm spill in to your blog – keep it fresh, vibrant and passionate by writing about things that really whet your appetite for communicating, to give your readers something worthwhile to pop in and read.

What do you avoid?

Please share your views in the comments below.