30 in 30: Lessons Learned

lessons learned

(image from emergingrnleader.com)

This is it. Post #30 in 30 days. (If we are being accurate here, it’s actually 31 since I posted what I as going to do the day before I started.) Anyway, I wanted to post a summary of my lessons learned from this little experiment.

1. This is hard. There were many days when I just didn’t want to write. It might have been because I wasn’t feeling good, or because there was just too much on my plate, or some other reason. The bottom line was that I had to, on a couple of occasions, just force myself to buckle down and get it done.
2. This was very helpful. To myself anyway. I can only hope that I brought value to my readers, but it was very helpful to me in allowing myself to really think things through. It’s easy to say you believe something, but it’s different when you have to explain why you believe something. At the end, I know myself much better, which is a really good thing.
3. My content did not suffer. At least I don’t think it did. I had a fear in the beginning that I would end up just posting any old drivel just to say I did it. But that did not happen. I was very conscientious to make sure I brought, at least to my mind, thoughtful and relevant content every day.
4. I understand my readers better. This might be one of the better lessons. There were days when I posted something that I thought was killer and the response was very lukewarm. Then there are a few posts that I didn’t think would garner much interest and they blew up. It really made me understand where people were coming from and what types of info was important.
5. 500 words is a perfect target. I started out writing always targeting a post of approximately 500 words. When I read blogs, I’m not looking for a book, but I want just enough depth to make it a teaching/learning experience. I think the 500 word barrier is a great benchmark for that. When writing, it almost always came out to that mark to make the point I was reaching for. I think there was only one post that FAR exceeded that and I had to cut back, and only one where I had to really stretch to make it close.
6. My friends are great. I had a few people that really supported me on this. They were there to comment and like my posts, and even send me a couple of e-mails to discuss. Engagement is the perfect result of this type of experiment.

So, if you have your own blog, and haven’t tried this experiment, I really encourage it. It doesn’t even need to be a 30 in 30 challenge. Try a 7 in 7 (or a seven and seven for that matter) or a 15 in 15 to start. One friend tried a 365 challenge. I think he said he made it to 340ish… Mad props for even getting close. I’m only at 30 and I doubt I could make 60 in a row. So, I will be taking a short break from posting, recharging my batteries, refreshing my list of topics and hopefully I’ll be back writing just as strong. Maybe a target of once or twice a week.

Did you follow me for all 30 days? What did you think and/or learn? Leave me a comment and let me know!