What do we mean by a stale blog? A blog can’t grow fungus, and you don’t eat it, so how does it turn stale? Well, we’re talking about how people receive your blog and the reactions to it. A popular and thriving blog will be very active and have a large audience that’s keen to leave comments, etc. A stale one is pretty much the complete opposite of this. Nothing seems to be working, there’s hardly any activity, and you struggle to capture an audience.

 

Clearly, this is any blogger’s nightmare. It took you a long time to pluck up the courage to start blogging, and the last thing you want is for all your dreams and ambitions to go down the drain!

 

Luckily, unlike stale food, you can recover a stale blog. The secret is spotting the downturn of your blog before it gets too hard to remedy. No blog is beyond saving, it will just take more time, effort, and money to recover a blog that’s slipped all the way down.

 

Keeping that in mind, here are some telltale signs that your blog has turned stale and needs an overhaul:

 

Your traffic figures are low

It can be a bit boring to talk about technical things like web traffic and analytics. However, all bloggers need to be aware of these things! If you’re struggling to get web traffic, then that means nobody is visiting your site. It’s a worrying thing as this basically means you’re talking to yourself – so to speak. You’re pumping out posts, but there’s no-one there to see them.

 

The interesting thing about this is that it can be interpreted in two ways. Your traffic figures could be low because nobody wants to visit your site, or they’re low because nobody can find your website.

 

How do you solve this problem?

Now, web traffic doesn’t automatically equal an audience. People can still visit your site but not read anything – and we’ll discuss this in the next point. However, the chances of people reading your blog is a lot higher when they’re actually on your site.

 

So, you have to focus on doubling down your marketing efforts. Many bloggers don’t spend a penny on marketing, and that’s fine. But, you may reach a point like this where traffic figures are stuttering and you have to take action. Investing some money into a marketing strategy can really give your blog a boost.

 

If you don’t have much money to spare, then you need to try and use as many free resources and marketing ideas as possible. Or, look for something like a guarantor loan from Buddy Loans to give you the cash you need to make in investment in a proper marketing strategy. You might even be able to hire an agency or get a freelance marketer to help you out.

 

Anyway, improvements in marketing will help you gain far more web traffic for your blog. Then, you have to focus on getting these people to read your posts and become active audience members.

 

Nobody reads your posts

This point basically follows on from what we’ve already been saying. You need traffic, but you need to turn your traffic into an audience. One of the telltale signs that your blog is going stale is if you have very low readership. Your traffic stats might be great, but if your individual posts are bringing in no views per day, then that tells you most people are on your site for a second before saying goodbye.

 

While you definitely should focus on bringing in traffic, it’s important to not get too carried away. Hopefully, with your new marketing strategy, you can focus on bringing in your target audience. This will increase the chances of growing an actual audience.

 

Otherwise, if nobody reads your posts, then what’s the point?

 

How do you solve this problem?

Other than bringing in targeted web traffic, how do you get people to read your blog posts?

 

Well, it starts with the posts themselves. Make sure you’re creating content that an audience wants to read. Not only that, but ensure your content remains consistent and relevant to your blog. It’s okay to write about different things and have different categories on your blog. If anything, this is a smart way to diversify and grow your audience.

 

However, excellent posts will establish your loyal audience group. So, if you start neglecting them and writing loads of new posts on completely different things, then they’ll be unhappy. Typically, this is what makes people leave. If your posts become boring or irrelevant, then they’ll go.

 

Another irrelevancy issue stems from paid blog posts. If you get offers from brands to create paid content, it’s easy to say yes straight away. Readers hate it when they’re bombarded with sponsored content all the time – especially if the posts are basically just hard sales pitches. Acknowledge that you have to say no to some brand deals and only accept ones that allow you to create great content that your audience finds appealing.

 

In summary, keep posting creative content that your target audience wants to engage with!

 

You’re getting hardly any comments or shares

As mentioned earlier, the sooner you realise that your blog is turning stale, the easier it is to remedy the situation. You can have a blog that’s got consistent traffic figures and okay readership numbers, but it might still be going stale. Usually, this is because you’re not receiving any audience interactions.

 

A thriving blog will have lots of comments under the articles – if you’ve enabled them – along with plenty of shares on social media platforms. This tells you that your audience is fully engaged in what you’re posting and they’re keen to:

 

1. Start a conversation with you and discuss your content
2. Share your content with other people because they feel it’s that good

 

So, if you start noticing a decline in comments and shares, then it shows something is going wrong. You must have either changed something about your content, or you keep posting the exact same post just slightly altered over and over again.

 

How do you solve this problem?

The good news is that this is one of the earliest warning signs that your blog is maybe going stale. You will still have a relatively engaged audience, traffic still flows, so you don’t necessarily need to do anything drastic.

 

Instead, look at your content and see where it can be improved and why people are less into it than they once were. Have topics changed? Are you repeating yourself a bit too much? Sometimes it’s a case of needing to spice things up and really improve your content choices. A lot of bloggers can find a topic that they’re comfortable writing about, so they settle into a routine of talking about the same thing forever.

 

For example, you may run a finance blog and you used to get a lot of traction on tax articles. So, you kept writing them. Eventually, people get bored with this and don’t engage. Now, you have to review the situation and maybe write about more exciting or important topics – like the current financial crash or the new budget. Mix things up to keep your audience intrigued and encourage shares and comments.

 

 

You’re not posting as frequently

Lastly, a sign that your blog is going down the pan is when you’re not posting as much as you used to. Funnily enough, this can be the cause of all the previous problems. Infrequent posting means you’ve got fewer new articles for audiences to read. So, they’re not likely to be as active as they once were, and they will get bored and go elsewhere. This also means you don’t have any new posts to market and promote, which affects your marketing strategy.

 

Frequent posts mean you keep pumping out content and keeping your audience happy. New posts also help bring in new audience members, which increases your readership figures and may encourage more activity.

 

How do you solve this problem?

 

It’s simple, give yourself a kick up the backside and start posting more. Set reminders on your phone or create a blog posting schedule that you have to stick to. This gives more structure to your posting efforts and can motivate you to do more.

 

Alternatively, you might be in a position where you physically can’t post as often as you like. You may struggle to come up with ideas, or you have other ventures that demand a lot of your time – both business and personal. If you still want your blog to be successful, then think about getting people to guest post for you. This keeps the posting consistent when you don’t have enough time to be creative!

 

If you follow all of the advice and solutions in this article, then you can revive a dying blog. There’s so much competition out there, it’s almost inevitable that most people will experience these issues at some point. Remember, it doesn’t mean your blog is done forever! You can always remedy the situation if you know what’s causing it.

 

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This post is a collaboration.