Some lessons learned from being a daily blogger

A month ago I gave myself the challenge of developing a daily writing habit. The ‘experiment’ is now over and here’s what happened.

• I did well. I wrote on all bar two of the weekdays in that time period. One day I didn’t work at all, the other day I was in reactive mode for the full day and it just didn’t happen. I think those misses are ok.
• On two days I wrote but didn’t publish. Two factors here: getting into a topic that seemed to grow in front of my eyes and I couldn’t finish it in the time I had, and my feeling that what I had written just wasn’t good enough for publishing.
• I didn’t always write first thing in the morning. I did that a lot in the first week or two but found myself getting looser on when I would write.
• I found that I enjoyed it. Sometimes I would experience real frustration as I searched for a way to expand or wrap up a particular point but most of the time, it was a pleasure to write.
• I found that I became more confident in my ability to express myself and to relate some of the ideas behind the work I do. We’re talking single digit percentages here but still, I could feel it.

There’s something big in that last point. Writing seems to help me clarify my thinking. When my thinking is clearer, I tend to express myself with more confidence and, obviously, clarity.

Of all the reasons to encourage me to continue with regular blogging, this is the one that appeals to me most.

And here’s a bunch of random things that may be of interest:

• The number of visitors to the website increased. Yes, there were more good reasons to visit. My readership is quite modest compared to some of the high-profile writers but still, more people stopped by.
• I used Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ to share links to the posts. Twitter’s the easiest to use and tends to generate some conversation. LinkedIn seems to be effective in driving traffic. It appears to me that my LinkedIn connections are more likely to be interested in my writing than my Twitter followers. Google+ is the nicest platform to use but I only have a small number of connections there as yet.
• I tend to include an image with the blog post. I don’t have the science behind this but it just looks better to me. But finding images can be a pain in the ass. And I’m probably breaking rules when I find them through Google image search. I even used some of my own.
• Some days I wasn’t really bothered if anyone responded or commented. I felt like it was a nice piece of work and I had achieved what I wanted to achieve. Other days, I was hoping for some interaction. It didn’t always come.
• There’s definitely a ‘pressure’ to perform when you set the expectation to do so on a daily basis. This can lead to an increased level of satisfaction when you get something good published early in the day but it can be an unwelcome additional headache as the day goes on.
• I was surprised how easily some of the ideas came. Often, they would pop into my head the day before and I would kick it around before writing about it. Some days, I just opened up the laptop and wrote about what was on my mind. This suggests there’s a lot more good stuff waiting to be shared.

So, what next? For a variety of good reasons, I’ll continue to blog in a purposeful way. I think I’ll be able to manage three posts a week. Whether I need to stick to a first thing in the morning routine remains to be seen. Practically, I can’t do that every day even if I wanted to.

One element of the original challenge was to ‘tame the ping’. I was only partially successful in doing that. I developed the writing habit but it didn’t really tame the ping. I’m playing with two ideas on that: only engaging with social media etc. while I’m eating (I eat more than I realised!) and keeping a countdown timer that limits me to 30 minutes over the full day. We’ll see how that goes.

Onwards and upwards then. The challenge has given me the taste for it. I can see the benefits. So, am I allowed to call myself a blogger now?

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