Today is the halfway point of my 30-Day Blog Challenge. So far things have gone smoothly, but the other day I sat in on a Webinar with Brian Dean of Backlinko and a few things he mentioned continue to stick with me.
First – over 83,000 new blog posts are published…EVERY…DAY
Second – when it comes to SEO, it’s not necessarily only about the content. It’s about the effort you put into creating original, targeted content but even more so, it’s the time and energy you put into PROMOTING your content. You really can’t just throw up a ton of content on your site and expect it to move you up on the SERPs – it won’t work.
So – why am I contributing to the 83,000 posts-a-day “problem”?
It finally got me to start writing
Before I started my 30-Day Blog Challenge I found myself WANTING to write posts that would help small and mid-sized business owners and/or marketers learn more about the ever-changing world of marketing, but I never actually got started. There’s a lot of information out there – and while I felt I could help a lot of people, other commitments just kept getting in the way and starting something new just kept getting pushed back.
Once I started, though, because it was 30 days, I didn’t start/stop/start/stop over week – so creating that daily ritual helped keep things moving forward.
It started to make me a better writer
I’m not a formally trained writer, but I do know that conventional wisdom states that if you want to be an expert at something you need to spend 10,000 hours doing it. While I may have hit that when it comes to developing my marketing skills, writing is a whole other animal. So the 30-Day Blog Challenge is helping me get my hours in on my way to “expert status” (and it’s been a lot of fun too).
Writing every day also opened up the flow of creativity for me. I have to keep a notebook or my phone handy at all times now since I’m always writing down ideas (and these ideas seem to hit me at the weirdest times).
I’m developing a better understanding of where I should focus my writing
Extending the topics in my Content Calendar is getting easier and easier as I go through this challenge. When I first looked at a blank page with 30 little boxes it felt overwhelming, but as I started writing and started receiving feedback (good and bad) I developed a better understanding of what people are looking for and the format that is most useful to them. I also found that once I started writing, other topics started to come to mind, so I would jot those down in my calendar for future reference – my 30 boxes are no longer empty and I’m to the point where I’m deleting earlier topics for more useful new topics.
It is giving me plenty of content to promote
While Brian may have been able to build a big business out of a total of 31 blog posts, that’s not necessarily true for all of us. Since I was starting off at ground zero, once my challenge is over I will have plenty of content to promote –and I can always delete the posts that are collecting dust (or figure out ways to reinvigorate them if there is a seed of a good idea).
They say it takes 30 days to form a habit – good or bad – so at the end of these 30 days my habit will have been formed of writing targeted content for small and mid-sized businesses who want to know more about the ever-changing world of marketing. I’ll scale back on daily posts and focus on promotion, but I will definitely keep writing – especially since marketing is always changing so there will be plenty to write about.
