31 Days to a Better Blog--A Personal Learning Experiment and a Blogger Challenge

Problogger Darren Rowse is one of my favorites when it comes to tips for maintaining a blog. Unfortunately, I often click through from my feed reader to his site to bookmark a post and then fail to actually incorporate his suggestions into my own blog. That's about to change.

For the next 31 days, Darren is doing a series of posts--31 Days to Building a Better Blog. He did a similar series a few years ago, but this year he's focusing on practical tips with homework for each day. He'll be sharing ideas on how to find readers, how to build a community/keep readers and on how to monetize your blog. I'm less interested in that last goal, so I may have to make up some of my own homework when we get to that part. Maybe I'll go back to Darren's 7 Days to Rediscovering Your Blogging Groove--a series I also failed to act on here.

At any rate, I've been thinking that I want to focus on becoming a better blogger, so working through these assignments seems like it could be helpful.  My plan is to follow along with Darren's homework each day. If I miss a day, I'll double up. If miss more than a day, I'll assume I'm a loser and should lose my blogging license.I'm assuming that in many cases I'll be doing a blog entry for homework, but in other cases where there isn't an entry--like with today's homework to email a new reader--I'll blog about the experience.

To see if all of these new activities have an impact, I plan look at my baseline info for July and then see what happens when I get to the end of August. Will I have more RSS subscribers? Will there be more traffic? Will people talk to each other more in comments?  Don't know, but I'm going to give it a shot and see what happens.

Want to Join In?
I think it would be really great if other bloggers who stop by here took up this challenge for themselves. It would be helpful to compare notes and see how things work out for us. If you decide that you want to participate in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge that I'm issuing here, then:

• Read Darren's Introductory post to the series.
• Drop me an email to let me know that you want to participate, with a link to your blog. I'll start a list of bloggers who are joining in and we can all learn from each other and see the results.
• If you decide to blog along, then do me a favor and tag your posts with the tag "bb31days" (which stands for "better blog in 31 days, in case you were wondering).
• Darren's also inviting readers to share their own blog tips--so if nothing else, share a tip or two and submit them to Darren.
• And if you REALLY don't want to participate, then please at least spread the word to those you think might want to join in.

Yeah, I know it's August and you're thinking "no homework yet!" But seriously--it'll be fun. And I'd like the company.

Comments

[Darren Rowse]

Glad to have you involved in the project. There won't be too many days on monetization - it's mainly on other aspects of blogging which all help indirectly increase earnings. At this point there are only really 1 or 2 days dedicated directly to earning an income from a blog so you won't have to come up with too much homework of your own.

thanks for participating and linking up to it.

[Michele Martin]

Thanks for setting it up, Darren--it's a great learning experience!

[Brent MacKinnon]

Count me in Michelle.
Brent MacKinnon

[Alex Miller]

This is a great opportunity to learn and share, I just hope I can keep up!