A Blog A Day 30-Day Challenge: Post Mortem

by Heather on 12 April 2009

On the 10th May 2009, I set myself the challenge to post a-blog-a-day for one month. In total, I managed to post 21 times.

So, whilst I didn’t actually manage to post every single day of that month, I wrote more (and procrastinated less) than I had in all the other months preceding it since the inception of this blog in September 2008.

Hopefully a habit has been formed. It certainly feels like I’m not short on topics to talk about (one of my initial concerns), and it feels like it has gotten a little easier to structure some form of coherent argument or article rather than worrying too much about where the line of reasoning is going (do let me know, however, if you disagree ;-) ).

As an experiment, my reasons for this challenge were numerous… but really it was because I just enjoyed the feeling of having posted, and wanted to get more of that feeling!

I’d like to feel that occasionally I may write something of value to an aspiring composer, or a director looking to get the best out of his composing team.

I also found it strangely therapeutic to analyse some of my working practices and techniques, especially when I was feeling a little bit stuck on a project for whatever reason. It actually helped to get me going again!

This post-a-day 30-day challenge has also had the added bonus of steadily increasing internet traffic to this site. I noticed that on the days I missed a post, the traffic went down but not significantly, and on posting again the traffic continued to rise.

I also found that it drove quite a bit of internet traffic to the main site, and that the most popular pages weren’t the ones I was expecting, so must work a little harder on those to make them more ‘new-reader’ friendly.

Because of the steady stream of new material, RSS subscriptions are up too. Yay!

I’m going to keep the blog-a-day schedule going in my diary, but not beat myself up too much if I miss a day here or there.

Thanks for reading, and do let me know what topics you’d like to read more about in the comments or the poll at the top to the right of the posts!

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Tagged as: 30 Day Challenge, blog, Internet traffic, therapeutic, value

{ 2 comments }

Brian Ledwidge Flynn May 6, 2009 at 9:50 am

Hi Heather,

Well done on you selection for Arthur C Clarke awards, you must feel terrific!

I’m a recent graduate of composition and I’m working towards working in film and multimedia.

I can relate to your blog-a-day idea. I have been writing and posting a new piece of music on my site every day since January. (piece #126 today!)

You can take a look at abraxas.brianledwidgeflynn.com

I’d really welcome any comments you might have.

I’ve subscribed to your blog and look forward to reading your excellent posts.

Best Wishes,
Brian

Heather May 6, 2009 at 11:15 am

Hi Brian

Thanks! Yes – it’s a really great honour :-)

Your new-piece-of-music-a-day idea is particularly admirable! Have you really managed to do it every day? Fantastic stuff.

It would be great to read on your blog what you’ve learned or discovered from this daily practice, what you were trying to achieve from the pieces, if you were trying to convey meaning or if you simply enjoyed the process and let the music ‘write itself’.

Plus I’ve subscribed – looking forward to more tunes ;-)

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