Over the years I have been blogging, a lot has changed! I started when I was 15 back in the 90s and the word ‘blogging’ didn’t exist it was called either weblogs or online journal. I’m now in my 30s and I’m still going and sure over the years I have stopped and taken breaks etc However I always find myself coming back to blogging and now it my job – I seriously couldn’t be happier.
So you’d think I seen it all and done it all, right? Well yes and no is my answer. I still find things in blogging new and fun, well also sometime find things annoying and those are the annoyance/ pet peeves I’m talking about today.
I like to say none of them are particularly bad and it your own choice how you want your blog to look like. When I say pet peeves/annoyance I’m talking from a reader/visitors perspective and how when I visit your blog what I find annoying about it. I would like to point out I’m not calling out any particular blogs, it just something I noticed when visiting so and so blog. Visiting blogs and reading a new blog post I’d say is part of my job that is fun and enjoyable. There are a few pet peeves which stand out to me:
Popups:
Hundreds and hundreds of pop-ups, so many would loads in a sort space of time that it impossible for me to get to the actual blog. I visited a blog once where a total 7 popups greeted me simultaneously, I had to close it down as I would just crash my browser. Ok a short pleas to a lot of bloggers out there – stop with the popups! These popups slow down your site and really messed up your SEO. I noticed recently one would popped up and that fine but then another would appear from the side, I know there are plugins that helps you with that. But maybe have a think of what it like for your readers/visitors point of view and have a pop-up reshuffle.
The layout/colours scheme is all over the place:
I visited blogs recently a couples of blogs where the layout is all over the place, there no colours coordination. There a red here and yellow there and for good measure let throw in some pink. To make it worst the actual blog part is on a black background. OMG please stop! First the black background really hurts my eyes and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feel this, secondly sort out your colours scheme, get some proper colours orders in place. I understand if you don’t have photoshop but there are hundred of free online image editor to use which you can Google, also look on Pinterest for colours scheme board or look at this website which helps with colours coordination.
Common Bloggers Courtesy:
Recently a few bloggers have asked me questions about something and I have answered, but I never get a thank you. I find this to be really rude, I helped you out so the least you can do is say ‘thank you’. I feel as in real life you should have common courtesy to others online. Just take a few moment to say ‘thank you’ to someone who have helped you. It isn’t just ‘thank you’ it’s also ‘please’, or ‘would you mind?’ Just the little thing can make a different. I talk to people in the blogging world as how I would talk to people I meet on the street, maybe put that into practice.
Facebook/Disqus comment section:
I’d admit I did use Disqus for quite a while on here and I found it really useful to keep tracks of commented and helped me create a little community. But recently Disqus been messed up and I’ve stopped using it. I don’t mind Diqus so much – but I do mind the Facebook comment sections on blogs. For me as someone who is a professional digital marketing person, I do find it really unprofessional and really messed up the overall look of the blog, I would never recommend a client to install it. I think the other annoying thing about the Facebook comment is that when I do leave a comment it linked to my private -nothing to do with my blog – profile and recently I’ve been getting an influx of people asking to add them as a friend. It gotten so back I had to put up a statement on my private account for people to stop sending me requests, which amuses all my private Facebook friends. So yes the Facebook comment plugins/widget might not be such a good idea, perhaps use something else.
Music/java script/videos:
This was a big trend I saw perhaps 10-5 years ago with new bloggers excited about having there own blog space so they would add hundreds of music plugins, videos and little silly animation. And this was before Myspace was big. Recently I’ve noticed a few bloggers are going back with adding their music station (especially with something like the spotify widget) and also adding silly java script animations. I visited one blog and I was blasted with music and all these silly java script animations, I had to close it down as once again it would crash my browser. I know it exciting to have your own blog and yes you want to make it your own space and there is nothing wrong with that. But my god you got to calm down! A lot of people are now on tablets and on phone, it isn’t always easy to turn off the music and silly animation. Also the readers could sneakily be looking at your blog while in class or at work, they don’t want music to suddenly draw attention to. So my advice would be to lose all the music, silly java script and perhaps save it for your social media pages.
I think that is everything, please as always feel free to add anything else in the comment sections.
