30 Day blog challenge – I started my challenge on 18th December last year for a number of reasons. These were my “why”s and learning objectives.

1. Be of value to others.
2. Increase traffic to my blog
3. Learn how to write well and improve my writing skills.
4. Make new blogger friends
5. Learn how to monetize the blog
6. Create a habit of writing, publishing content every day
7. Have high engagement, comments, shares etc

7 Key Lessons Learned

1. Be of value to others

I want to be of value to other people by sharing valuable and helpful tips and hacks and I wanted to use the blog as a means to
share my learning.

One of the things about the blog said it’s a place for me to share what I’m learning. When I’ve learned something new I actually write about it.

I use my blog to revise the things that are actually recently learned.

2. Increase traffic to my blog

My blog was only born a little over 3 months ago, back in October 2015 and I needed to get lots of content on my blog very quickly.

I knew that this 30 day blog challenge was very good way for me to get traction and create really good quality content every single day.

And also get lots of readers on my website. Kinda breath life into my newborn blog.

I also want to get traffic into my blog from social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.

This strategy has proven to be quite successful to see a lot of them came from Facebook, a few from Twitter and YouTube.

No organic traffic just yet. That’ll happen probably in time as I work on some new SEO techniques over the coming month.

3. Improve my writing skills

I also did a couple of copywriting course online. It’s very interesting how learning a skill I copywriting can completely change the quality and focus of

the message in my blog content.

I learned how to write a really well crafted headline. A lot of readers actually will skip reading a blog after reading the headline. If the headline doesn’t pull them in then you’ve pretty much lost a potential reader. So it’s really important to get the headline right.

I learned that it’s important to write as if I was talking to one of my friends or my intended audience of a particular blog article. So you know, the language, tonality and all that kind of stuff
should come across more natural. This was an eye opener for me because of my years of writing very technical  instructional  articles and training scripts.

It’s all about creating a genuine connection with the reader.

4. Make new blogger friends

A success principle I like to live by is to learn from and surround myself with the best people.

I wanted to make new friends who were also bloggers or writers so I could learn from them. And I was lucky that I stumbled across a network of other prolific writers and online marketers and these guys come up with amazing content every single day. I learned a lot from them from simply observing the things they did and also asking loads of questions.

I also learned that there was a network of bloggers who reciprocate comments and social media shares. Its like a network of friends who comment on each other’s blogs as well as they share the blogs that they enjoyed on their own Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Pinterest.

All that sharing on all those social channels is a big deal when it comes to search engine optimization and how Google will give higher priority ranking for those blogs and blog articles.

5. Learn how to monetize the blog

I learned how it’s important to understand who your niche of your blog is. Getting a specific as possible.

I also learned how to craft a really clear call to action at the end of each blog post or even, you know, multiple times throughout the blog
post. How it’s important to ask the reader to do something like download an Ebook or subscribe to a webinar…something that captures their email address to add it to a list.

I also learned how it’s very important to make sure that you’re using the right keywords.

Choosing the right keywords in your blog post for the sake of search engine optimisation so that if someone does a search in Google for a particular set of keywords and your blog post is a match then that means that new reader will come on to your website and read your article. This increases something called Clickthru Rate and has a direct impact on improving the authority of your blog. Ultimately this means getting your message out to as many people as possible.

6. Create a habit of writing daily

I learned how challenging and sometimes stressful it is to create new blog content daily especially if you don’t have anything to write about or don’t have a blog writing calendar.

You have to come up with content that is a real value to the readers everyday. At the start of the challenge I thought I could simply write anything on those days if I had a writer’s block but if noone will ever read that particular low value post then there’s no point in publishing such low value content.

Speaking of value content, the readers don’t really give a crap about you, the writer. They’ve really come to your blog to have a question answered. Have some kind of
problem solved. I know what this is like because I’m always searching for answers online.

If my article, my blog post doesn’t answer their question or doesn’t solve a problem in some way then they’ll just leave and never come back. It’s actually creating articles creating blog
content that’s real genuine value because that’s how you have repeat missionary readers who come back and share your awesome content organically to all their friends and their network.

The next thing I also wanted to do was to form a new habit of creating content or publishing new content daily. Part of this is also planning or having blogging calendar
or writing schedule. This is something I really didn’t do well. I did write a lot of articles that were drafted and had in the “bank”. I currently have about 15 articles that aren’t published.

7. High engagement, comments, shares etc

I wanted to experience what it was like to have a blog with high engagement, have lots of comments left my article getting feedback and all that kind of stuff.

I was fortunate to somehow stumbled upon a group of bloggers that I mentioned earlier who each reciprocate comment on each other’s blogs.

It was a very satisfying experience to wake up the next morning and see you know getting notifications of 10, 20, 30 comments left on a particular blog post.

I really enjoyed responding to all those comments. Another thing it taught me was it’s not all about getting lots of traffic on to my blog.

It’s about getting quality traffic on each particular post. I rather have 5 readers a day come on to my blog and genuinely get good value from it, and hang around on the blog and
read my other blog posts than getting a hundred people on the blog everyday and skimming over some content and just leaving immediately, without ever coming back.

What next?

This blog challenge has led me to creating video content. I’ve been a long time lurker on YouTube. I’ve spend countless hours over the years on YouTube to learn and be entertained and now it’s my turn to give back. I’ll be following a format where I will create a video as well as a matching blog content.  Check out my YouTube Channel

So that’s all for now. If you found this blog or video of value do remember to comment and share it and remember…

Together We Are Better!

Previous articles in this series:

Lead Generation – Real Purpose of your Blog

Niche Marketing Targeted Leads – How to Maximise Blog Conversions

Call To Action – What is it and Why your Blog NEEDS One

Blog Comments – High Engagement Leads to Traffic and Sales

Secret to Get Quality Comments on Freshly Published Blog Post

Video Blog Content Workflow – How I get YouTube to write my Blog for me for FREE

Peter Reginald

Skype: peter.reginald.com.au

Email: peter@reginald.com.au

“For business owners who have hit a glass ceiling, I deliver predictable transformation by improving and managing its processes.”

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