Blogging is all about building a good relationship with readers and fellow bloggers. There however exists a a set of ground rules / guidelines that we must adhere to else we run the risk of breaking those relationships.Here are the 10 most common mistakes made by bloggers especially those who are new to the game:
1. We copy images from other websites and upload them on our own blog without credit or attribution.
2. We indulge in bandwidth theft by hotlinking pictures, music(mp3) or video files on our blog.
3. Though we credit the owner of the image in our blog posts, we add watermarks or overlay text to the images without permission.
4. We do not disclose the actual source of information. Even if the idea is taken from an offline source (like a print-only newspaper), it should be given due credit in blog posts.
5. Plagiarism - We copy-paste content from other sources to our own blogs. Always remember that web plagiarism is easy to detect and might tarnish your credibility in the blogosphere forever.
6. We are using web icons from other sites. [Like other images, icons have to be credited to the designer]
7. Our HTML code has JavaScript snippets written by other developers who requested that the credit text be left untouched but we removed the "non essential" text so as to reduce the size of our HTML files.
8. We make it extremely hard for readers to subscribe to our blog. Always keep the feed icon and the email subscription form above the main fold where reader can locate it without effort.
9. We are not respecting the Creative Commons License. For example, if a Flickr image is available under "No Derivative Works" license, you are not supposed to crop or resize that image.
10. Our "About Page" is incomplete and filled with the default placeholder text. You are giving new readers an extra reason for not subscribing to your blog.