As I was saving my blog posting from yesterday, it suddenly occurred to me that I only had one more day left to fulfill my “30 days of blogging” pledge for the month of December. Today is my last official posting in this exercise. It’s been a fun exercise and far more work than I anticipated! Thanks to those of you faithful readers that braved my site everyday, not knowing exactly what to expect!
Here’s what I learned over the last month about blogging.
1) A plan is a good thing. My first week I had a loose plan. My second week a more developed plan. My third and fourth weeks no plan. By far, the third and fourth weeks were the hardest! The more detailed the plan, the easier it was to focus on my topic, do the research and comment appropriately. The weeks without direction were tough. There is certainly no shortage of information out there, so it’s just a matter of finding good sources and pulling from them when needed. I also felt bad for my readers – they had no idea what to expect from my blog since I was kind of all over the place. Part of this is symptomatic of the fact that I’m still not sure in which direction I’ll head with my business after the first of the year (Aaccck! That’s tomorrow!)
2) A good blog posting takes far more time than I thought it would. 300 words? No problem. That should take about 10 minutes. Uhhh…no. Most of my postings took about an hour from start to publish.
3) My personal ideal posting length is about 600 words, double what I was required to do. I’m still not sure if this means I’m too wordy or if it just takes that long to make a point in the way I like to make it.
4) It’s a small world. I was surprisingly amazed at the people that came out of the woodwork and posted comments on my blog. I even had someone from Russia ask if they could use my posting on their site – how cool is that?!?
5) I’m into it. Nope, I probably won’t be blogging on a daily basis, but I will be blogging regularly, with a plan (when I figure it out). I really had fun finding like-minded people and reaching out over the internet to connect with a completely random person.
So thanks so much to Eric Mann for coming up with this crazy idea!
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