Last month I was giving a lecture about SEO, blogging & content marketing, in Paris when this subject popped up. 90 young and full of dreams bloggers attended the 4 hours of lecture. Among the many questions, one made quite an impact on the gathering. How to keep a blogger motivated to write one new piece of content every single day.

Creativity and discipline are the 2 major must-haves skills. And then comes reality! So how can a blogger actually keep up with the demands of everyday blogging?

By setting up a content calendar for the next 30 days and breaking it into 7 days of specific steps. All attendees expressed their discomfort with this approach.

So, I gave my promise to accept a mutual 30 blogging challenge starting on 1 March and ending on 31 March 2019. Free topics, without any specific theme, but with the obligation to state the challenge process.

Each blogger will publish 30 posts on their personal or business blog. On the last day of March, we will check each other and the “winners” will receive a shout-out in our blogs.

Create your Content Calendar

Take a piece of paper in front of you and start writing the ideas you have. What would you like to read? What interests you more? Write it down!

I adore digital technology, music, cats, creativity, art, philosophy, traveling, SEO, content creation and books. So I combine all these to make a meaningful content calendar that has more chances to reach the finish line.

Here is my list of topics for the following 31 days:

1. Welcome Spring, Welcome March
2. 30-Day Blogging Challenge
3. How Blogging Made me a Better Listener
4. What is blogging?
5. WordCamp Europe 2019 Contributor Day
6. Women’s Day Giveaway
7. 12 SEO Speed Check-Up Points
8. Women Who Changed the World
9. Why You Should Use WordPress
10. Social Media Marketing World Conference 2019
11. Giveaway Winner Announcement
12. Benefits of Guest Blogging
13. 30th Anniversary of the World Wide Web
14. Blogging Tips for Beginners
15. Facebook Down for Almost 24 Hours
16. Google Update Florida 2
17. Why You Shouldn’t Blog
18. Promote your Blog on Social Media
19. Why I Love Twitter
20. The Next Big Player in Video Games is Google
21. How to Plan a Stress–Free Wedding
22. How to Write the Perfect Blog Post
23. The Art of Catchy Headlines is Made by Robots
24. Create a Professional Media Kit in 5 Steps
25. WordCamp Europe 2019 Speakers Business I
26. Philips Wireless Dictation For Bloggers Who Love Coffee Breaks
27. 12 Truths to Reach your Blogging Nirvana
28. Generosity is the Secret Key to Everything
29. Learn to say NO like a Princess
30. Vogue is coming back to Greece
31. Public Speaking Workshop
32. The Results of our 30 Day Blogging Challenge

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Why you should or shouldn’t blog daily?

Just because blogging is a strong trend doesn’t mean that daily engagement in creating new content is always the best choice for everyone. Before you commit to this task and way of living, you should ask yourself if this is right for you and your business.

Fashion-related website owners should adopt a daily frequency of publishing fresh content in their blogs and social media channels. The demands for new content are huge! Not to mention that Beauty & Health, Travel, DIY, Magazines, Home & Decoration, and News industries are facing the pressure of posting multiple times per day. There is no human out there that can cope with the demands of a daily multi-posting schedule. Only teams can deal with this routine!

Why you should blog daily:

• Blog posts keep your content fresh and that is a major positive SEO factor.
• As the number of posts increases, your writing improves.
• The search machines are scanning fresh content more often.
• Gradually, your blog/website views increase (that means you get traffic).
• A well-formed and rich blog shows credibility to visitors & search machines.
• SEO-sensitive keywords & phrases are easily developed in different kinds of blog posts than just on one page. We can present the same topic from several angles and still have fresh content.
• Visitors tend to share more blog posts than pages from a website. Sharing on social media is extremely important for SEO.
• Thin content, low-quality visuals, plagiarism, and offensive content are not an option. There is no excuse for using bad practices just for the sake of getting it done. Quality is not negotiable!
• Blogging can improve your writing, communication, and observation skills. If this is something you want then start blogging immediately.
• Blogging can become an excellent PR strategy tool for event organizers and community managers.

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Why you shouldn’t blog daily:

• If you just started your website or blog, then daily blogging can be overwhelming. Wait for 6 months before you engage in such a demanding schedule. Posting once a week is perfect for newbies!
• If you are into writing long-form posts: + 3000 words, then daily blogging is not your desired goal.
• Research projects usually take more than 4-8 weeks to produce and get results. It’s a matter of common sense that long-term projects are not suitable for daily blogging activity. But you may publish one huge (+10.000 words) post once a quarter and several supportive (and shorter) posts in the between.
• In case you feel depressed only by the idea of spending 3-4 hours per day blogging, then please don’t. It is not for you!

Do You Have The Blogging DNA?

After reading all the above, I have to ask you if you have it in your bones. Blogging seems easy but has a way to filter who is cut for it.

Do you see yourself as a self-motivated person? Can you stand the discipline? Can you follow a plan like a soldier? Can you deliver even if you are having the worst day of your life? For me… is yes! What about you?

Read more thoughts on this topic here…

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Into Blogging Culture Since 1994

My first business website was on air in 1994 and my very first blog post was three lines long and took me a year to create the code in order to publish it. Can you believe that?

From 1994 until 1998 I spend countless hours mastering this “weblog” process. Sometime around 1996, Flash come into our lives and on the Internet. With Flash technology, we could include easy animations of images on websites. That made the content more appealing!

Around the same time, we were introduced to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and for a while, the design was easier. Later, Web Content Editors made our work friendlier. These HTML formatting tools allowed text customization – from turning it to bold, italic, or underlined, to various alignments, or the possibility to add media and so on without writing HTML code.

And then a small miracle happened! On August 23, 1999, Blogger was launched by Pyra Labs. As one of the earliest dedicated blog-publishing tools, it is credited for helping popularize the format. In February 2003, Pyra Labs was acquired by Google. Blogging became easy peasy!

WordPress & Blogging

About the same period WordPress come into our lives. If the internet is the father of blogging, then WordPress is the mother!

For professionals that earned their living through content creation & web design, the 21st November 2005 changed their lives for the better in countless ways.

WordPress made clear that blogging isn’t just for hobbyists. Thanks to its friendly environment all businesses, organizations, and professionals could blog to boost their site’s traffic and get noticed.

If the internet is the father of blogging, then WordPress is the mother!

It was WordPress that explained to us that blogging regularly is still the single most important thing you can do to increase your site’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization). People with a WordPress.com Business Plan can also use Advanced SEO tools to customize the meta description with a summary that does a better job at captivating readers and potentially increasing the post’s search page ranking.

Even if you have a website with mostly static content, add a “Blog” or “News” section, so you can regularly update it in order to make search engines see that your site is active.

All the SEO strategies in the world won’t help if you’re not adding content regularly, so get to writing!

WordPress.com (WordPress) is a blogging platform that is owned and hosted online by Automattic. It is run on a modified version of WordPress (WordPress.org), an open-source piece of software used by bloggers. This website provides free blog hosting for registered users and is financially supported via paid upgrades, “VIP” services and advertising.

WordPress.org was released on May 27, 2003, by its founders, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, as a fork of b2/cafelog. The software was released under the GPLv2 (or later) license.

The site opened to beta testers on August 8, 2005, and opened to the public on November 21, 2005. It was initially launched as an invitation-only service, although at one stage, accounts were also available to users of the Flock web browser. As of February 2017, over 77 million new posts and 42.7 million new comments are published monthly on the service.

WordPress’s Notable clients include CNN,  CBS,  BBC,  Reuters,  Sony,  Fortune.com, and Volkswagen. It is estimated that more than 30% of internet bloggers use WordPress as their publishing platform. Source: Wikipedia

100 People Joined 30 Day Blogging Challenge

• First day, 1 March: 100 people joined our 30 Day Blogging Challenge.
• First week, 7 March: – 22 people left the 30 Day Blogging Challenge.
• Second week, 14 March: – 35 people left the 30 Day Blogging Challenge. Only 43 people remained at the Blogging Challenge.
• Third week, 21 March: – 21 people left the 30 Day Blogging Challenge. Only 22 people are still following the challenge.
• 28 March: I am so sorry to announce that 18 people abandoned the 30 Day Blogging Challenge. That means only 3 people are still following the challenge.
• 31 March: Last day and only 2 people reached the finish line!

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Who made it to the finish line?

The results of this challenge. Read the complete article here…