YNOT – Like every other creative endeavor, blogging is more art than science. Even artists, though, tend to look for “shortcuts” — tricks and techniques they can employ over and over again in order to add some structure to their existence and ease the creative process.

The thing about shortcuts is, they sometimes encourage bad habits. So does routinely performing any task that becomes a regularly scheduled chore. It’s human nature to grow a bit careless when any activity becomes repetitive. Though blogging is creative by its very nature, it’s no less repetitive than applying shingles to a roof. Bloggers, like roofers, are subject to bad habits that can have a negative impact on their careers.

Avoiding common blogging bad habits can help make your blog more effective. Here are four suggestions to keep in mind.

1. Remember the reader
If you think your blog’s raison d’être is marketing and promotion, you’re wrong. The biggest and most common mistake bloggers make is forgetting the primary reason for blogging: capturing the attention of readers. Marketing and promotion are secondary goals that will take care of themselves if you take care of readers.

Always think like a reader. If you were reading your blog, what kinds of things would you like to encounter? Would a sales pitch impress you, or turn you off? Readers want two primary things from blogs: education and entertainment. Provide tips and tricks, amusing anecdotes, honest product reviews, celebrity interviews, gossip … in short, whatever interests your target market. If you need to slip in affiliate links or product endorsements in order to ensure you can afford to keep entertaining and educating, do so — but have the decency to let viewers know that’s what you’re doing.

In the U.S., Federal Trade Commission regulations now require bloggers to disclose financial relationships, but even without that legal threat, readers appreciate knowing they can trust you not to try to deceive them.

2. Give readers credit
Almost as bad as forgetting to think from a reader’s perspective is implying superpowers you don’t have. No matter how knowledgeable you are, how long you’ve been an “insider” or how many famous people you know, someone out there has bigger, badder credentials. Count on it. And sooner or later, one of those bigger, badder individuals will challenge something you wrote. If that individual can prove there’s a hole in even one of your posts, your credibility is shot. In all likelihood, so is your career as a reliable authority.

Unless your blog is designed to be a rant that sparks controversy and outrage among readers while harboring no pretensions about factuality, always be open to comments, tips, suggested corrections and differences of opinion. Some commenters simply enjoy tossing monkey wrenches in wherever they can, and other readers will recognize those people for the trolls they are. However, readers who honestly possess more knowledge and experience than you do usually are willing to share graciously when they think you may have overreached or slipped up. Accept their words of wisdom in the same spirit in which they are offered. Who knows? You may even discover the germ of another blog post during the discussion.

3. Don’t give readers too much credit
Don’t forget: Regardless how you target your blog, it’s likely you’ll attract readers from across the experiential spectrum. Some will be old pros at whatever you’re discussing, and others will be rank newbies who genuinely want to learn. Even if you’re writing a blog about advanced theoretical physics, it’s wise to define terms, concepts and especially acronyms with which everyone may not be familiar.

The adult industry, in particular, employs some unusual euphemisms and abbreviations. Don’t risk losing a significant portion of your audience because they have no clue how to interpret dirty Sanchez, DP, ATM or other terms your vocabulary incorporated long ago. And don’t be tempted to think you can define uncommon terms in one post and then blithely use them forevermore without redefining them. At least link to the posting where the term originally was defined, so those who are unfamiliar with it can satisfy their curiosity.

4. Be original
Finding a concept you like and riffing on it is a time-honored way of making a name for yourself, but be wary of following the crowd too closely — or of following too large a crowd. If everyone else is doing what you’re doing, unless you’re the one who started the trend, you run the risk of disappearing into a black hole populated by faceless, nameless second-class imitations.

Of course you should study the best of the best and try to figure out why what they’re doing works so well. Once you’ve done that, however, don’t duplicate what anyone else is doing. Incorporate topics and themes, design components, attitude and other elements you admire, but put your own unique spin on all of them.

Be an original, even if you’re original in only small ways. Make your blog a true resource that can’t be copied by anyone who isn’t you.