For everyone participating in NaBlPoMo, does writing a post a day make you a better blogger or does it allow you to express yourself more often? or both? I’m wondering especially for those of you who don’t normally post as often how it is changing your perspective on blogging?
Norm’s Twitter
- Today is frantic friday. where I get to catch myself up on all things that didn't get done during the week. 24 minutes ago
- @burghbaby you know it is only preseason. perhaps he don't consider preseason games worthy 16 hours ago
- Earlier today I called @Sorgatron a wizard. http://vimeo.com/14648543 Is he a war wizard? 17 hours ago
- No to be overshadowed by Rex students in the Sewickley Harold for art at the Mall at Robinson. http://bit.ly/auxsaN 17 hours ago
- @shireman that would be something. 17 hours ago
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I posted every day for the first week of NaBloPoMo, because I wanted to have a few posts up before I told anyone about my blog. It was harder than I thought because I refused to “cheat”, and forced myself to write posts that I was proud of.
Normally I would only post when I have a specific topic to cover (I keep a list for my personal blog and Shopping Bloomfield), but participating in NaBloPoMo required me to leave that comfort zone.
Towards the end of the week, I started posting later and later — I published one minute before midnight on Thursday, and Friday’s post didn’t go up until Saturday morning. I gave up on Saturday because blogging was taking too much time every day, but on Sunday I realized that posting to The G Spod counts. I posted to Shopping Bloomfield on Monday and Tuesday, so I’ve only missed one day of NaBloPoMo. I’ll probably write a personal post today.
I think that most bloggers should post more often, so NaBloPoMo is a fun source of extrinsic motivation. However, some bloggers may write subpar posts just to keep up, and that can weaken a blog. I wouldn’t do NaBloPoMo just to do it.
Last year was the first time I tried NaBloPoMo. I tried to write things that I thought my regular readers would enjoy. I didn’t shy away from posting YouTube videos or photos, but I generally wrote some exposition to go with them and to give them broader interest.
Since I was also doing NanoWriMo and DrawMo, many of my posts mentioned those challenges, and the difficulty of working on all of them. But working on all three challenges at once forced me to be really creative for a month. It was a great thing for me.
Afterwards, I decided to continue blogging every day for as long as I could. I managed for several months, and it continued to be interesting for me. It also had a positive effect on my site traffic.
In February, I wrote a throwaway post that contained just a photo of my niece and me and a couple of sentences, titled “pretty hats.” The post had some interesting results, and I’ve used it as a jumping off point for some business presentations on blogging and SEO. Which just goes to show you can’t always know what’s going to be a throwaway post and what’s going to lead to something much bigger.