Wisdom from the 31 Day Blogging Project

[Christine Martell]

I see another group is starting the challenge. It was a great experience for me, so I really want to encourage all of you to stick with it and share what you are learning. Reading others reflections was one of the biggest benefits and really deepened my learning. Sue Waters wrote a post encouraging those of us who did it earlier to post some reflections for you.

So here is a start. I want to write more later, but here are some of the posts I wrote at the time:



31 Days to a Better Blog- Days 1-4
31 Days Blogging Challenge- Days 2, 5 & 6
31 day blogging challenge: Days 7 - 10

31 days blogging challenge: Days 11- 14
31 Day Blogging Challenge Day 15-20
Learning about blogging on my bike
Catching up with the 31day challenge

Anyone else have wisdom for the new crew?

[Michele Martin]

Thanks for starting this thread up, Christine--you definitely got to it before I did! :-)

I want to say good luck to those of you who are starting the Challenge. It will be a grueling month, but well worth it. And the fact that you'll be working with others through the process will definitely help when the energy flags! Here's my entire write-up of the experience, including what I learned about building community, my stats, etc.

As you go through, let us know if you have any questions or need any help. We're here to help!

[Sarah Stewart]

One of the main things that has struck me so far, and Sue agrees, is connected with the blog audit. Whilst getting someone new to the blog to audit it (and new to blogging) is really useful, equally as useful to do in conjunction, is to get an experienced blogger to run an audit. Sue did this to my blog and I found it extremely helpful: http://tinyurl.com/3xxxvy

[Kate Olson]

There's another member joining us! Visit Michelle's blog at http://basementviews.blogspot.com/

[Michele Martin]

Thanks, Kate--I just added her to the list!

[Sarah Stewart]

Hi everyone, will be great to hear your various pearls of wisdom. Having said that...there's no rush as I am about to go away on a week's camping trip to Queenstown and Central, so I'll have some catching up to do when I get back. cheersw Sarah

[Justine Mize]

Is it possible to join the group? When did they start?

[Sarah Stewart]

We're just a few people who have got together to go through the challenge. You can join any time. We just felt we'd have more fun and learn more if we did it together, so please feel free to join us. We are supposedly on day 4, but we're all doing stuff at different paces eg I am just about to go away for a week so wont get anything done then. Have a look at our blogs and the blogs who went through the challenge last year - that will give you an idea of what's going on. cheers Sarah

[Kate Olson]

Justine -

Well, I'm on day 3 today, so must have been Tuesday :-) 2 of the members are leaving on vacation, though, so it's a pretty flexible gig. It's the goal (at least for most of us) to somehow accomplish the 31 things during the next month or so.

[Christine Martell]

I was never in sync with the actual days, and always behind. Michele and Sue were our super students and actually kept up with the pace. All of the rest of us did what we could when we could. There are still things I haven't done. That's why I'm hoping you will start a thread of lessons you are learning......maybe you'll actually inspire all of us to finish what we started and revisit the tasks again.

[Sue Waters]

Thanks Christine for starting this discussion thread - it was on my to-do-list but as you can imagine I have had a bit on my mind lately. I am so excited about this new team getting underway and look forward to gaining from their experiences.

My own summary, plus link to the daily tasks are located here.

I definitely agree with Sarah - there is benefit in watching someone read and navigate your post plus in getting more experienced bloggers to provide feedback. Would be great if people had an opportunity to pop past the teams blogs and share their insights in terms of:

* What is your first impressions?
* Where you able to easy work out what the blog was about and how is the author?
* How easy was the blog to navigate
* What grabbed your attention?
* What made you pause to read?
* What did you skip over?
* What did you like/dislike about their posts?
* How could they improve their blog?
* What words would you use to describe their design?

Perhaps to lighten the load we could each volunteer our assistance to a different member of the team. Participants in the 31 Day Project so far are:
Kate Olsen
Sarah Stewart
Andy Roberts
Jess McCulloch
Michele Hudiburg
Justine Mize

[Kate Olson]

Sue - thanks so much for the suggestion of people visiting our blogs, that's such a wonderful idea, and of course it's even better coming from someone outside of the team :-) I've been struggling with how best to compile our reflections on the journey and I keep coming back to the fact that if we start a forum/group for that here, people won't be visiting our blogs. I'm thinking that if we do our reflections on the blogs, that's one way of keeping/increasing readership? I really do want to share, though - any suggestions?

[Michele Martin]

Hi Kate--I say that you should definitely do your reflections, etc. on your own blogs. You're absolutely right that one of the goals is to drive traffic to you. Not to mention that it's your blog where you're trying to pull all of your thoughts and experiences together. We just wanted to help support you here by getting people in the BBB community to share their own experiences. And if you had specific questions or concerns, this might be a place to post them, too. This is just a little add-on--the main action is on your blogs! :-)