Alas, tomorrow is the last day of NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month. I typically publish a Wordless Wednesday post, so the final day will be easy.
I made it!
It’s been a long month of writing, but I have to say, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Once I made the commitment and planned ahead, the ideas just seemed to come to me. And while I certainly didn’t have a ton of time to just sit down and blog, I made sure I published a legitimate post each day.
Along the way, I learned a few things:
- Writing posts and scheduling them to publish the next day, or over the next few days, makes me feel less stressed about blogging. This was particularly helpful during the Thanksgiving holiday and when I was under some project deadlines. Knowing a post would publish while I was in a parent teacher conference or traveling to another state took a lot of pressure off.
- Committing to a specific blogging schedule, out loud and in public, gives me way more inspiration than just blogging when a subject hits me. I found myself thinking way ahead of time. The first day I committed to NaBloPoMo, the ideas just rushed into my head. I looked at a calendar, figured out when posts would be most appropriate and went with it. I now have an inspiration board filled with blog ideas that I will use for future posts.
- There are a lot of great blogs out there, written by some really great bloggers. While I knew this before, it has been great to interact with more bloggers this month via reading and commenting. NaBloPoMo helped me discover several new blogs that I will continue to follow.
- Blogging is easier with a little support. Knowing that there were a couple thousand other bloggers in the same boat as me made daily blogging easier. I wasn’t alone. When I needed a little inspiration, all I needed to do was visit the NaBloPoMo site, check out the daily writing prompts or find a new blog to visit. Twitter was helpful too.
- Daily blogging improves your writing. It’s easy to come up with excuses as to why you don’t have time to blog. The truth is, the more you blog, the better your writing becomes. I also found regular blogging helped me write posts more quickly. Practice makes perfect, even if you’ve been doing it for years!
- The more you write and share, the easier it is to find like-minded people. Case in point, I connected with another blogger who is also a lefty, doesn’t like pie and watched the Headbanger’s Ball in high school! How fun and random is that?
- Don’t be afraid to publish a post. Some of my most popular posts are ones that I was convinced no one would read. They also took me almost no time to write. You just might be surprised which posts will connect with readers.
- Consistent blogging increases engagement. We hear it all the time. Yes, it’s true. More content means more readers. Compared to October, visits to anotherjennifer.com went up 79% during NaBloPoMo. Comments went up significantly as well.
While I can’t say I’m surprised about these lessons, it’s nice to experience them all at once. Before NaBloPoMo, I was making an effort to blog 3 times per week. Now that I know I can blog daily if I wanted to, I’m hoping to increase my weekly blogging. I might even sign up for another blogging challenge.
For now, I’m going to soak in my accomplishment. Woot!
Photo credit: END BUTTON © Stanko Mravljak | Dreamstime.com
