Lessons from Daily Blogging
Today is day 141 of blogging in a row (I’ve set myself a challenge to blog every day for 2 years). That means I’m about 1/5 of the way through, so I thought I’d share some of the lessons I’ve learned in the past 4.7 months of blogging.
Writing in the day is so much better than writing at night, last-minute before bed. Yet mostly, I write in the dark because my boyfriend has already fallen asleep. The girl in this photo is not a good representation of me – imagine a glowing screen and rapid touch-typing.
Writing every day means some of the content I produce is inevitably going to not be ‘my best work’. The proportion of great content I create is still the same as before I started this challenge, but because of the sheer volume of content I’m creating, the overall number of great blog posts is much higher. Generating more content gives me extra opportunities to generate great content. More content = better content, overall.
Sharing my blog to social media every day is more draining than actually writing it, and therefore I tend not to share it to social media very often, which means my blog probably isn’t being read by many people – currently. I’m kind of torn between putting out my writing because I love doing it, not caring if one soul reads it, and the ‘Gary Vee Method’ of trying to get as many eyeballs on it as possible.
I’m writing for myself, not for anyone else. I have an audience in mind, but I blog because I’m deeply passionate about the topics I write about. It fuels me and it’s exciting to see a collection of works coming together, like an artist creating paintings for an exhibition.
I’m still finding the balance between personal and general on my blog. Am I creating ‘how to’ pieces? Or lifestyle photography with a small excerpt from my experience of my day? Am I just sharing my experience or is it more than that? I’ve tried all of these and I’m not totally sold on any of them. Right now, I’m just creating whatever comes to mind. I’m interested to see how it develops.
I don’t enjoy writing closing or openings to blogs. I just want to get straight to the point, the good stuff. Introductions and conclusions are generally fluff written out of obligation to the reader. Many posts would be better simply as tweets, as you’d get the point across without the unnecessary details. One of my favourite bloggers is Derek Sivers. He does this.
Even though I said I don’t like writing closings, this feels like it needs one. This is it.
