My experiment to publish a blog every day for a month is officially over today.
As my last post here are 10 things I’ve learned from Daily December.
- Daily blogging give you something of your own to share every day. I know the importance of social media. It’s the current state of the internet, according to Gary Vee. I was never consistent with struggled with finding things
- 300 words is the sweet spot. The average post length this month I would guess was 300 words. The longest was over 900 words, and the shortest was 183 words. To me 300 feels like a good length for daily blog posting.
- After a few weeks it starts to become the new normal. Don’t get me wrong it’s never completely easy. Like most things you start to hit a cadence after about two weeks.
- Daily blogging trains your subconscious to hunt for ideas. When I was blogging weekly I always struggled with finding a concept to write about. Daily blogging starts to solve that problem. Soon you start to find ideas from anywhere. Even when you have no idea what to write about I still found three ideas worth sharing.
- Just cut the fluff. The first couple of post I tried to be cute. Trust me it wasn’t cute at all. Adding what I was listen to while writing the post. Trying to add random narratives to the post. I’ve found it better to just cut the fluff.
- Try to write like you talk. Keeping this in mind has helped me out a lot. At time I over think what I’m trying to say. When you’re trying to do something daily it’s best to keep moving. Writing how you talk helps with that.
- Daily blogging can boost your Google juice. My blog is now finally the top result when you Google “Saeed Gatson“. Even though my name is super unique it still took pumping out a lot of content to push me to the top. Other social sites carry a lot of weight in search engines. Blogging every day can be a big boost.
- You’ve got to steal time back. It feels like on average each blog post took about two hours to finish. 30 minutes of research, 60 minutes to write, and 30 minutes of editing / publishing. For me that was a few minutes during my daughters nap time. Or cutting an hour of lunch in half to write. Those small pieces add up.
- It’s hard to predict what’s going to work. My favorite post during d daily December was What Software Developers Could Learn From Naruto. I spent a lot of time on it, but it didn’t pick up much steam. The post that seemed the most popular was One Year in Eugene Oregon.
- Stick to a Niche. I think that the post would have gained more traction if I focused on one specific theme or topic. To be honest maybe this blog could use more focus. That’s something I’ll have to test in the future. My gut tells me that sticking to a niche helps, because it lets people know what to expect.
So have I become a better writer because of this? I’m not sure to be honest.
Will I do it again? Yes, I’m sure I will.
Was the experiment a success? That’s more difficult to answer.
All the numbers are up and to the right which is great. Total page views in December are up 91% compared to November. Maybe in the future I’ll do a full post dedicated to all the metrics.
So logic would say that I should continue. I will but at the same time I’m wont. A big part of this experiment for me was to build discipline and momentum. I want to try us the momentum gained here to push some other goals I have for 2017. Hope you’ll stay a long for the ride.
What was your favorite post in Daily December 2016?