I was tagged by the lovely Hannah over at Budding Smiles to write about my blogging pet peeves; what would I put in a blogging Room 101?

I don’t claim to be any kind of expert but I’ve been blogging in one form or another for seven years now and here at Toby Goes Bananas for two and a half years and I’ve read hundreds if not thousands of other blogs in that time so here’s a few things that annoy me when I see them on a blog, or being done by a blogger…

Poor readability

By that I mean anything in the blog design that make it hard to read the posts. The main culprits are; centred text; fancy fonts for main text; coloured text; and for me a column that is too wide makes it hard to read too. I’m also talking about really bad spelling, or using the wrong words in here too. I don’t mean the odd typo but if you insist on saying you brought a new coat instead of bought, and you don’t know the difference between there, their and they’re I will eventually stop reading your blog.

LOL

I write very much how I speak, so it’s not always grammatically correct, I start sentences with ‘and’ and ‘but’ and my punctuation can be a bit haphazard at times (I put far too many things in brackets for a start) but you will never find me writing LOL in a blog post (or anywhere else for that matter). It’s not just LOLs that rub me up the wrong way, ‘haha’ at the end of a sentence will do it too, as will emoticons – keep them for your Facebook wall please people!

Bad or small photographs

I know not every blogger has a DSLR, or any desire to be a photographer but if you are going to put photos on your blog then I really think they should be big and the best quality you can manage. I sometimes put the odd slightly dodgy iPhone photo up if it’s the only picture I have of a moment I really want to capture but when it’s a photo you’ve had time to plan then I really think you should be making that the best photo you can. [Having said this I seem to be having some issues with the quality of the photos on my blog at the moment – the originals are fine but I seem to be losing quality somewhere along the editing/publishing line and I really hope I can sort it out soon].

Awkward commenting

I’m really trying to comment on other blogs more these days, especially as I’m joining in a lot more linkies now and it’s really frustrating when I have to sign up to something, or fill in loads of details when I’m trying to comment. Or even worse if your blog tries to make me comment from my Facebook account. If you want comments you’ve got to make it easy for people. It’s worth checking how easy it is to comment from a mobile too. I do a lot of my blog reading on my phone and will only comment from there if you make it super easy for me.

Over promotion

I know we all want people to read our blogs and the only way to make that happen is to promote them but it drives me crazy when I see bloggers tweeting the same post over and over and over again. I’ve definitely unfollowed people for this particular crime – which is a shame really because it means I don’t get to see any of their other posts either.

Irrelevant sponsored posts

For some bloggers their blog is their main (or only) source of income and I get that. I don’t have a problem with sponsored posts, I’ve been known to do them myself on occasion. But I do think that sponsored content should be relevant to your blog and your readers.

Vlogs

OK, now this one is a bit of a personal problem I have and I know lots of people will disagree with me….but I just don’t really get vlogging. I guess it’s because I usually read blogs while I’m feeding Gabe, or waiting until he’s properly asleep before I can but him in bed, or while I’m watching TV in the evenings, and so I don’t want to to be watching a video when I could be reading. And I definitely don’t get the phenomenon that is the ‘haul’ vlog – I’m not the only one either!

Floating icons or pop ups

This kind of falls under over promotion too I guess. I appreciate people want their readers to sign up for email updates, or follow them on social media, or read another post before leaving the blog…. but things popping up all over the place will not encourage me to do any of those things. I assume they do work for some people otherwise why would anyone use them but they just really annoy me, especially if I’m reading on my phone. Oh and don’t get me started on those social media icons that follow you down the page!

I could probably go on but I think that’s enough moaning for today! Oh and please don’t take offence if you do any of these things….remember ‘all opinions are my own’ 😉  (and even I break my own rules sometimes!)

I’m tagging the following bloggers to share what they would put in their Blogging Room 101:

Clare at Mumsy Midwife

Georgina at Spread a little luck

Sarah at The Parenting Trials

Chantele at Two Hearts One Roof

Beth at Twinderelmo