Before I get deep into this blog post I’d like to share that I made a list of top leadership blogs. Pardon me while I take a quick moment for myself. 😀
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Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about blogging. About 2 1/2 years ago I wrote a post where I, on the last point of the post, stated that blogging is hard/easy. I said it that way because blogging can be easy or it can be hard; I’m sure most of you know that, and I’m betting the majority of you think it’s pretty hard.
Let me ask you this question; have you ever challenged yourself to try to write a blog post every day for at least a month? If you haven’t, why not? I’m going to assume that puts you in the “blogging is hard” camp. If you have, what kind of experience did you come out of it with?
I know so many people who often get into a place where they can’t even write a blog post more than once every 2 weeks, sometimes once a month. Whereas that’s not the worst thing in the world, I also know that many of those people have lofty goals for their blogs.
Blogging takes work; trust me, I know, and I can sympathize. While I was traveling a couple of years ago I found that it was hard to blog on all my blogs as often as I wanted to. Even so, I made a commitment to blog at least once a week on two of my blogs, which I’ve continued to this day. Whereas that’s still pretty good, every once in a while I figure I not only need to do more, not only because it helps SEO but because I need to challenge myself and my perceptions of not being able to do the deed.
Not that I’ve ever doubted myself when I have the time. The first 3 years of this blog I wrote just over 1,000 posts, which means I rarely missed a day when I didn’t write something. I knew that every post I wrote wasn’t going to be War and Peace or even a Pulitzer Prize winner. Some of the posts were going to be dogs, but at least a few were going to knock it out of the park.
I’ve taken on some challenges within the last couple of years to not only show that I could be prolific but to challenge myself to do it. For instance, last September for this blog I said I was going to write 12 posts for the month and I did. That’s 3 posts a week, along with all the other writing I do, and I got it done. On my business blog (the one referenced in that first link above lol) in December 2015 I decided to create a post a day for the month, and I did. On both of my video channels I picked a month and did a video a day. And this month on my local Syracuse blog I’m once again putting together a post every day for January.
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Here’s the thing. I put out notice that I’d like to see if anyone wanted to join me on the quest; I got no takers. Truthfully, the only person I think I know who did something similar at least once in the last few years is my buddy Holly some years ago. I really thought that at least one person would give it a shot with me; nah!
This time around, on the Martin Luther King Jr holiday, I’m putting out the challenge via this blog, but it’s more of an encouragement than a challenge. It’s the beginning of the year, which makes it a good time to break out of your blogging funk and giving it your best shot. However, I’m not going to totally leave you hanging. Instead, I’m going to give you some ideas of things you can do, some of them with examples you can check out.
First, not every post needs to have a lot of words or verbal content. In this post I’m linking to, I put together 26 motivational quotes from my years of blogging on my business blog and included an image with each one. It took time to find the images I used to match up with the quotes but it was still a pretty good post if I say so myself.
Second, I did a similar thing on my local blog this month where, instead of images, I posted 9 short videos highlighting things I’ve seen & filmed around central New York in 2016. I gave a short blurb and then added the video, which it turns out you can load from your computer without having to upload it to YouTube first, and the WordPress program will condense it for you; sweet!
Third, it’s not about trying to write Nobel Prize in literature worth articles every single day, it’s about being creative. In this particular post I took some lessons I’ve learned from Star Trek over the years and turned it into a pretty epic post, while still staying on my topic of leadership. You might not believe how easy that post came to me, since it was over 2,500 words, but Star Trek is a subject I know pretty well. I’ve always said that people should try to write about what they know best and try to fit it into their niche if need be; this was proof that it can be done.
Fourth, you can try finding something you can repurpose while adding new things to it. That’s what I did in this relatively short post where I gave 10 communication tips that were pretty short, then linked to every other article that was part of a years long series of posts where I gave short “10” items posts and threw in a couple others. It not only achieved internal linking processes but gave those other posts a nice little boost again.
I’m going to stop there, otherwise I’ll never finish this post and go to bed. I want to encourage you to give it a shot… the post a month shot. If that’s a bit much for you then how about doubling your output for a month, which means you’ll write less than 30 (or 31) posts but you’ll still write more than your norm? Trust me, you’ll discover things about yourself that you’ve never expected to learn, and it’ll definitely help your blogging long term.
Come on; get ‘er done! 🙂
No thanks. I did the post a day for a year on my main blog. Then later for a good span of time I did a post a day spread over 5 blogs.
Yes it was a challenge for me. I’m glad I did it, but I wouldn’t do it again. Well, not counting April A to Z when I write 26 posts during the month and in the last couple years I wrote 26 on 2 different blogs making it a total of 52 posts during the month. Not long posts for the most part, but I think I did some pretty good ones.
Arlee
You’ve already done it so you’ve proven that you could; you’re allowed to skip it again, especially with your 26 posts in April. 🙂
Daily Posts Destroy Social Proof. Social proof is evidence, left by your readers, that your blog is interesting, popular and worth reading.
All you had to say is that you can’t do it. Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. I’m thinking that testing yourself by writing a post a day for one month, once ever, isn’t going to destroy anyone. That is, unless they decide afterwards to quit blogging, in which case maybe they shouldn’t have started to begin with.
A very inspiring post Mitch,but……
I have tried both writing every day and doubling my output and finally have come to the stage where I blog when a suitable topic comes to mind. I however blog every Friday as part of a consortium where four of us write on the same topic every Friday. Beyond this, I will unnecessarily stress myself out and I don’t want that.
Hello Mitchel,
I must admit, blogging is really a hard task. At least for me. This might be due to lack of knowledge and less experience.
However, whatever I write, I try to put some meaning on it. I see many bloggers out there writes 4-5 blogs a week.
I tried that. Came up with no value.
I understood, pushing too much generates nothing. It’s better taking enough time and make some sense.
What do you think?
It depends on what you consider as value Rocky. As a “real” blogger, the main value to me is the writing. I obviously don’t write a post a day every day for every blog because that would drive me nuts. But I find that after nearly 12 years of blogging that sometimes I feel stale without a challenge. If more content wasn’t a good thing for traffic then sites like HuffPo & Buzzfeed wouldn’t be ranked all that well.
This post was talking about challenging yourself; it wasn’t about business or anything else.
Hi Mitch,
I tried writing a post on a daily basis but was not abe to write. Although, it is a lot easier for me to write a post after two days.
Hi Robin,
It’s not easy at all; that’s the challenge part. I certainly wouldn’t want to sustain it for longer than a month when I do it but sometimes I need to wake myself up and make sure I’m not just mailing posts in. At least you gave it a shot; you should be proud of yourself for that. 🙂
Hello Mitch, Thanks for sharing !!!
Few months ago I have no idea how to write my thoughts on blog, but after daily writing practice I feel more improvement on my skills.
Good deal Darwin. It’s hard not to improve one’s skills if it’s something they try to do on a daily, or at least regular basis.
Hi Mitch,
Writing a blog post daily is really hard task and you may loose focus. i don’t believe on quantity. i think a blogger should focus on quality content then counting number of post. When writing a post, please keep your user in mind.
Rajpal, if you notice I didn’t say do it all the time. It’s a one time challenge just to see if you’re capable of doing it. I like to challenge myself, as you saw in the post, so every once in a while I do it just to clear my mind and help me grow.
Young Mitch looks Cool & Hard-working…. 🙂
Mitch, I think daily blog writing should be the part of anyone’s life. It has lot of benefits and no side-effect.
It’s certainly not easy to do Robert unless you’re generating income from it but it’s definitely a way to challenge yourself every once in a while.
Thanks of the info on blogging! Blogging is one of our newest key focuses to drive traffic to our website and I will definitely keep these tips in mind.
Good luck Derek; I hope your new strategy works out for you. I saw some of your images; very nice.
I tried a lot but couldn’t writing, need motivation and research on new things to write post, but you are experience was awesome
Thanks. It might take planning the topics for all the articles before you start writing. Luckily I don’t need that kind of thing but I think it would be helpful.
Ahh, yes, I’ve done it.
I only recommend doing it if you have something interesting to say to your readers every day. And by that, I don’t mean they have to agree it’s all interesting – but it has to seem interesting enough to YOU to write enthusiastically on the topic.
If you feel like you’re “phoning it in,” you probably are. I can’t tell you how many of my posts hit the scrap heap because I just don’t CARE enough to finish them. If I don’t care, why on earth should YOU? Someone out there’s got something to say on the topic, and it doesn’t have to be me, today.
This is why I can sometimes write well on the dumbest sh**. Seriously. If I’m in the right mood and something tickles my fancy, well…let’s just say I could jazz up the blurb on the cereal box. (In fact, I often get irked reading Chipotle’s cups, thinking, “I could entertain diners better than THIS!”) Anyway, BTDT, donated the T-shirt to a homeless shelter. Personally, I think 2-3 posts a week is ideal, but even then, I have weeks – sometimes months – that leave me uninspired. I’m not going to fight it. No one’s paying me to fight it, are they? 😀 That’s the beauty of a personal blog.
For me, it was both a challenge and a test. For this blog I knew it’d be easy because I pretty much did it for my first 3 years. It was also easy for my business blog because I have an abundance of topics and opinions on those subjects. Doing it for my local blog last year was tough because I knew I’d have to write some things that weren’t about anything local, yet I still knew I had a lot I could write about.
For my finance and medical blog… that’s where a really tough challenge would come into play because I don’t have enough for either of those to write long enough posts to matter. Still, I’m thinking about trying it one of these days.
Hi mitchell. I publish one post perday. And publishing a stuff need lots of research and ideas on a particular thing. I tried to publish more but failed since I am very slow in writing.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your information mitchell. ☺
It looks like you’re a new blogger Emanuel. If that’s the case, you’ll find your blogging legs pretty soon if you know the topic you’re writing about. I’ll warn you against doing it for an entire year because you’ll find yourself starting to hate blogging, and that’s never good. If you need more time to do research to write about a topic, take the time and get it right before publishing. This was only a 30 day challenge, it doesn’t have to be a lifestyle unless you have lots to say for a very long time. I wish you luck.