Blogging is an important element of marketing to your consumers, but have you been doing it wrong?

Many businesses make the mistake of using their blog as a tool that exists simply to get clicks on their website, and pack their articles full of keywords to get higher search engine rankings. More visitors to your site and high search rankings are important, make no mistake, but a blog is much more than those two things.

A blog exists to inform your customers of information that they can't find anywhere else on the internet. You want to be your customers only source of valuable info about your industry, your products, and your business.

If you think that you might not be using your blog to its full potential, check out these five things that might be causing your blog to fail, and what you can do to make it better.

You Don't Post Enough

You post on your blog, sure. But how often do you post? Once a week? Once a month? Once in a blue moon? If you're not keeping your blog updated with fresh content that keeps people coming back for more, then you're missing the purpose of a blog. For most businesses with blogs, posting once or twice a week is the magic number. Anything less and people might forget you even exist. Post a lot more than that number and people will get annoyed at the information overload.

Your Blog Is The Same As Everyone Else's

If you're writing the same content that everyone else is writing, are you really making a difference? How do you hope to capture their attention if you're recycling old ideas, and writing about topics that have already been covered by thousands of other blogs across the internet? In order to have a successful blog, you have to learn to stand out from the crowd. Don't just write about how your towing or restaurant business is different than everyone else's, make your customers truly believe you're better than all the rest.

You're Boring

What kind of content are you creating? Is it stuff that will grab your customers' attentions, or is it the same old boring stuff that everyone else publishes? In order to have a successful blog, you need to publish quality content. What does that mean for your business? It means if you're a restaurant owner, post about your favorite recipes, or new dishes you've created. If you're a boutique, show off your products, and write some tips on how to pick out the best summer fashion. Find out what your customer are interested in, and write content to appel to them.

You Aren't Mobile Optimized

You might have been able to get away with having a website that wasn't mobile optimized back in the early days of smartphone web browsing, but these days it's a website killer. Being mobile optimized means that your website looks good on any device, whether it's being viewed on a laptop, smartphone, or tablet. Nowadays, if you don't have a website that's optimized for mobile viewing, you even get penalized on Google's search rankings. To and see if your blog and your website are mobile optimized according to Google's standards, use this free web tool.

You're Too Focused On Selling

Yes, having a blog is supposed to help you get more customers. But do you know of any customers out there that love to be bombarded with advertising and sell sell sell! everywhere they look? Don't overload customers coming to your blog with really salesy sounding blog posts. Instead, provide them with the content that builds trust in your brand. You'll notice that when customers feel comfortable with your product and the information you offer the, they'll want to buy from you anyway.