With tremendous increase in growth of blogsphere, it has become very difficult to compete with others and stay on the top. Actually, if you aren’t striving for perfection, you are killing your blog.

Most people know it doesn’t take much to destroy the reputation of a blog. It, however, happens much quicker than your comprehension. Reasons? Oh, there are many. However, let’s have a look at some of the most important ones.

For people who are concerned about their blog, here are few ways to enhance it. And for people who intend to destroy it, here are few ways to kill your blog.

• Stop Planning and Preparing
  Effective planning and preparation helps you to keep up with the pace, if not ahead of the competition. Stop planning and you are all set to destroy it.
• Fail to remember your goals
  

  If you know your goal, you know where you are heading. If you don’t, you wander around.

• Forget humans, impress search engines
  Your target audience should always be humans and not search engines.
• Stop Being Creative
  If you think your blog is doing well and it doesn’t require any dose of creativity or introduction of new things, be prepared to tumble at the bottom of the grid.
• Stop doing SEO
  Yes, I suggested you to write for humans. But doesn’t mean you must stop doing SEO. It’s important or, to be precise, it’s a necessity for your blog.
• Earn Quickly
  Don’t place any ads on your blog till you are established well in the market. If you want to destroy your blogs, go ahead, try it.
• Bother about what people think about you
  If you think your content is good, don’t be afraid to post it. There are pessimists all around the world. If you fear them, you wouldn’t be able to climb a single step.
• Stop posting personalized articles
  More than your blog design and tips, people come here to read you. Your personality should be evident in all your posts. The time you start posting informative, unbiased articles, you star losing readers.
• Don’t promote your blog
  It’s obvious. Without promotion people wouldn’t know about your blog’s existence and it would die, quicker than expected.

There are probably hundred other ways to kill your blog. These, however, are some of the most dangerous ones. The call is yours. Do you want to kill your existence on the web or enhance your blog?

Doubting your own capabilities and hesitating to write an effective content is a problem faced by numerous bloggers these days, which has led many careers to end.

Many bloggers, trust me on this, have given up blogging because they don’t trust their capabilities. Yep, it’s definitely good to quit if you don’t think you are capable of handling a task, but throwing off the towel much before the game start wouldn’t help.

I must admit, and am not bragging, I faced similar problem during initial years of my blogging career, but I have now overcome it. And it is not difficult. Here is what you can do to eliminate this hesitation.

Face it – There are no shortcuts

We start doubting our capabilities when we don’t receive desired results. You cannot attract many readers on the day you launch your blog unless you are a celebrity. Understand, it takes time; at least 8-12 months to get results. By results I mean attracting traffic, making money, receiving comments, etc. Every job demands hard work. You don’t get a promotion on the first day of your new job, do you?

Act Before You Doubt Yourself

People start doubting their abilities and hesitate to blog because they aren’t able to attract any readers. This happens probably because they do not take appropriate action. I would like to share a very short story with you. Recently, I met a guy who asked me about affiliate marketing. Out of everyone I have interacted in my blogging career, I must confess, this guy pissed my off terribly. I explained him hundred times that it’s impossible to earn money unless you work on it, but he refused to understand and opposed my views constantly. At last, I gave up explaining him, and few days later, he gave up affiliating marketing.

The logic is simple. If you want results, take action. If you think you are weak at something, learn about it. Doubting yourself wouldn’t help. It would kill your morale. Spare some time to work on your blog and give it some time to grow. Short cut, in any case, is just a myth.

There was a guy who provided free content to his readers for approximately 11 years. He worked hard and watched his readers list grow. Later, he launched a paid website and as expected, thousands of readers followed him. People say he succeeded immediately. What about the 11 years of unpaid hard work he had put? What if he too would have doubted hi abilities and quit?

The secret is to keep going and never give up.

Year after year, if you intermittently repeat the same mistakes, you definitely need an affiliate marketing teacher. Despite of endless information available on the internet, this is what a new internet business owner does – Builds a new, attractive website, provide links to a dozen of products, and waits impatiently for the sales to boost. A couple of weeks alter, there is no sale in the basket and the business concludes that affiliate marketing is the most useless business on the web.

Being a part of the internet marketing business, it’s very upsetting to announce that this is the story of 8 in every 10 new internet business owners. And why does this happen? Due to five common mistakes mentioned below. Hope we all learn from 5 most common mistakes of 2009 and make this year a success.

1. Your website and affiliate products are quite contradictory

   This is true and this is the most common mistake made by newbie’s. If you website deals with kid’s health and parenting, you cannot sell dog food there. Your products should be in sync with the content and theme of your website. Having two contradictory things on you website clearly gives out the message that you are a new business owner and don’t really know much about affiliate marketing. So, how can you expect sales?

   

   Also, if you have multiple affiliate links, please ensure that they are closely related. If your website, for instance, is about graduate programs or something to do with college, you can have links like Amazon.com or Dell.com. But you definitely cannot have links about pregnancy products.

2. Your website is too flashy, has too many banners, and is overflowing with affiliate links

   If your website is swathed with 21 affiliate product links, 36 banners, and 13 advertisements, the reader will make ‘yucky’ faces and simply move on to other site. I loathe such sites and obviously every visitor loathes it.

   People love to halt at the websites that is simple and clear. They will love it more, if you include an honest product review and consumer comments. It’s always preferable to use text ads instead of flashy, multicolored banner ads. The logic is simple. They aren’t small kids who are attracted by colors and graphics. They are here to do some serious shopping. Provide them value instead of foolishness.

3. Targeting the wrong market

   This is what usually happens – The product is awesome, you like it and hence you link it in your website. But you don’t know who your target audience is. Instead, a better way is to know a potential market, niche, or your target audience and then select the appropriate product or service. You can use various tools to know which markets are saturated and which have the required potential, where you can sell new products. Don’t go for very big markets because they have many well established affiliate products and many selling websites. Instead, select a niche area, where are not many websites and products.

4. No information about your product

   Answer this honestly – Do you really believe that building a website and placing few links can make you a millionaire? If you do believe, it’s time to face the fact. It never happens. Affiliate marketing is like working as an agent. You have to compel them to buy with the power of your content. Tell them about the benefits and disadvantages (yes, disadvantages as well) of the product, and why they should buy it. If your content is quite convincing, they will buy it. If it isn’t, very few will buy it. But if you don’t have any content, trust me, none will buy.

5. Not promoting your website at all

   Not doing an effective Search Engine Optimization (regularly) means hiding your website from the audience. How will they ever know about the website and products and how will they purchase it? Just making a site, attaching links, and writing content is definitely not enough. You have to promote your website. Let the readers throughout the world know about the site and products.

   Register will local directories, search engines, yellow pages. Be an active forum’s member and discuss your product there. Post classified ads regularly, send press releases, exchange links. If you want your website to be reached internationally, don’t forget to provide text in various languages. Don’t miss even a single opportunity to announce the world about your website and useful products it offers.

There are numerous other mistakes that beginners and experienced online business owners commit. But these five are universal and most common ones. Let’s ensure, we as affiliate marketers do not repeat these mistakes in 2010 and help each other to be successful.

Along with the variation in usage, the dependency of web users on social media amplifies every year. And I don’t really declare anything without proof. We have seen the significance of social media during Barack Obama’s campaign, which led millions into action. The population of Iran protesting against the election was widely known due to social media. Hence, the magnitude of impact cannot be termed as “less” or even “mediocre”.

It’s not possible, today, to detach social media from online users. For instance, last month, the strength of facebook was 350 million users, only 30% Americans among them. This figure comprises 25% of the total web traffic. Almost every one of them uses Tweeter or some other similar service to confirm status messages. Over 94% of the active enterprise tends to uphold or raise their investment in social media. It isn’t just a vogue now. People use social media in houses, SME’s, and business giants. It is now reaching health, education, and non-profit sector. From excitement, freshness, and bewilderment, social media is now a form of communication, to be precise “a language.” From entertainment, to importance, it’s now “a necessity”.

So, what would it look like in the coming year? What would be the meaning of being connected? According to me, social media will change in 2010 in following 10 ways:

1. Social Media Will Emerge As One, Interconnected Experience Entrenched In All Our Gadgets and Actions:

   

   By the end of 2010, social media won’t be just ‘Social Media.’ It will emerge as a combined, inseparable element of your online and offline activities. The presence of unified social media will be single across platforms, and on all the devices and gadgets like Television, internet, mobile, radio, video, etc. It would not be, then, possible to detach social media and any experience.

   Web users will view content from any platform through any gadget, mashup their pics, send text and video, and communicate with everyone effortlessly. New games, new content, new videos, and everything new will be uploaded for the amalgamated population. People will be able to get everything on their desk or palm, like the world is exactly in front of them, ready to be edited, loaded, or vacated from any device, any platform.

2. The Modernization in Social Media Wouldn’t Be Restricted By Technology:

   With perpetual improvement in web services and extinction of constraints like closed platforms and separate logins, organizations are finding ways and will unquestionably come up with modern ways to exploit current technology instead of improving it. The world will witness a shift to influence the existing assets of content and abilities in a newer way that will transform knowledge into wisdom and insight into activities. We will watch more valuable pieces of information coming in, eradicating the useless one through collective oneness.

3. The New Fad – Mobile:

   Almost one-third of the total web traffic is brought in by iPhone. According to IDC, the number of internet users through mobile will reach 1 billion by the end of 2010. With the reduction in technology constraints and ease in browsing internet, people would prefer browsing through mobile while they are not using their PC or notebooks. Gradually, mobile will take the center stage. The decade, if not the year, will bring in thousands of mobile application, diminishing the usage of personal computers.

4. Battles for Content Enhancement:

   In 2009, content exploded throughout the web, making it accessible to everyone, everywhere, anytime, and by anyone. Google managed to sort out the information this year, but it will become intricate every year. Content will increase dramatically, but quality will be demanded.

   Along with companies, the content is now being developed by individuals. With lesser search result relevance delivered by search engines and hazardous effects brought in by free websites, people have started generating and integrating their own center of knowledge.

5. Social Media Will Be Reshaped By Enterprises:

   How effortlessly we forget that some of the major social media pillars like forums, intranets, collaboration tools, and listservs were introduced by large enterprises and not individuals. With social media taking the front seat, enterprises have planned to use the existing media to suit their needs. This year, they have planned to allocate 26% more funds in social media to market their services, solutions, and products.

   They have got the need and the resources. So, don’t fret if the future of social media is being shaped by the enterprises. They will amalgamate their current system with social media to meet their needs of sales, surveys, promotion, automation, monitoring, and developing. Recently, Salesforce.com came up with ‘Chatter’ that made the CRM and consequently, the company, social. It’s quite new, however it already has 69,000 users.

6. People with start gauging Return on Investment:

   Due to huge amount being invested in the social media, companies will start gauging the returns on the invested amount. Last year, although 18% of the investors were happy with the results of returns, the remaining 72% weren’t happy due to less return or their incapability to gauge the returns. Lessons from 2009 and more money invested will compel them to develop an infallible gauging system, and not results based on number of fans or users. They companies who will be successful in gauging the return on investment will be the ones that will survive.

7. Remarkable online-offline combination

   Varied avatars, games and virtual world replication was just the commencement of online offline combination. In the coming year, users will witness and experience innovative permutations as physical remoteness and barriers won’t matter. ‘Augmented reality’ now being available on iPhone, will help people to search relevant content on their mobile. Twitter360, of course through mobile, will let users contact each other, communicate, find status, and check updates. New products resting on the glass shelves of the stores would be observed from mobile devices and instant purchase would be possible. You will get discounts and offers on the products of your interest.

8. Re-hire older skills and professionals

   The upturn of social media and downturn of the financial system disappeared the conventional marketing and Public Relation roles. However, it is predicted that this year will be a comeback of these professionals. Most of the companies using social media tools will hire employees that can comprehend user psychology, and those who master the art of using online and offline social media. After sales service and customer support will be online, from top to bottom.

   The testimony developed by R&D department will be based exclusively on user experience and habits through social media, which will then be used for production and innovation. Very soon, you will come across job advertisements displaying vacancy for social media promoters, social media psychologists, and social media heads. These roles would be an integral part of the organizational structure and will handle the endless task of dealing with mass public.

9. The New Rulers of Social Media – Women

   The 2009 statistics shocked the world with some astounding revelations. It was proved that almost three-fourth of the buying decisions are made by women. The social networking sites have more than 50% female users, with women in age group 30-56 comprising a larger part of facebook users. Unlike previous decade, females today are free to express and involve themselves by the means of social media tools. Inherently equipped with excellent communication, grabbing attention, and building strong relationship, women will guide the social media, personally and professionally.

10. Entering New Spheres

    Due to the ease of use and interconnectedness, social media will enter new domains like education, hospitality, training and development, non-profit, and healthcare. The importance and pervasiveness of distance learning will surge as people can access much through their mobile.

By the end of this year, the introduction of social media would be a long forgotten topic. People would be discussing quality, value and relevance of these tools.

These are my predictions, what about you? How do you think will the social media change in 2010?