A month ago, I challenged myself to post one article per day for thirty days as a test.  I wanted to see if creating new content each day would generate traffic.  For this little experiment, I chose my blog, The Bullshit Stalker.  I figured it would be easy to find and write content on that topic and I was right.  I’ve completed my 30 days and here’s what I learned:

1. The more often you write, the more distributed your search traffic becomes.  Not many people are searching for “bullshit.”  But when you cover a story, a current event, or a certain topic, you’re likely to get a few hits on that from search engines.
2. The more often you write, the longer people stay on your site.  I have Entrecard on the site, so the drop rate is still very high.  But since I started this experiment, the time spent on is much improved.  Some of you guys actually do stop and read every now and then.
3. The more often you write, the more regulars you see in your comments.  I wouldn’t exactly call them an entourage, but there are some regular commenters on my blog now.
4. The more often you write, the more you touch on different nerves.  I found that certain topics elicited more response and higher readership than others.  So far, television, sex toys and bad parenting seem to be hot topics.  Go figure.
5. The more often you write, the harder it is to stay keyword dense.  That blog was a bit easier to stick with a keyword, as you can imagine.  But if you have a lot of varied content, it will break away some of the keyword density and, if SEO matters to you, you’ll want to focus on retaining that.
6. The more often you write, the more you’ll have opportunities to build backlinks.  I didn’t spend much time doing the whole routine of pinging, stumbling, digging, repeat.  If I had, I’m thinking I would have seen some cool referral bumps here and there.  More on this later.
7. The more often you write, the more likely you are to write shorter articles.  Time is a precious commodity.  I found that I had to really manage my time wisely to be able to keep up with my plan.
8. The more often you write, the more you appreciate Wordpress post scheduling.  There were times I would write several articles at once and then schedule them to hit over different days.  It also allowed me to post around the same time each day, which was a bonus.
9. The more often you write, the better you get at breaking things down into bite-sized pieces.  You’re still reading this article because you care about the content.  With the droppers, they are taking seconds to decide if they want to read your article.  A picture, the title, the first paragraph.  That is about all you have to snag them for a bit longer.  If the article is too long, they’ll bolt before the end.  A short article will get more full reads than a long one.
10. The more often you write, the more you appreciate writing.  I had a topic area that I could be passionate about on a daily basis.  Therefore I was thinking about things more and researching more.  I received daily feedback from the comments (even though I didn’t spend a lot of time responding to them).  It felt good to go through the moderation for first time commenters and see the comments from people who were becoming regulars.  It was a fun month!

I hope this post helps some of you decide how to approach your blogging.  A daily blog posting might seem too daunting to you.  I understand.  I felt that way when I first took this on myself.  My girlfriend isn’t all that happy with me right now.  So, I still have some time management issues to work through.

What’s next?  I think I’m going to keep that blog going on a daily post.  I’ll hit this one about every two weeks with lessons and commentary on blogging.  Since football season is coming up, I’ll be more active on Whodowethinkweare.net (along with continuing to build that blog network) and I need to get back on target with my weight loss journal at FatBastard.org.  And there is always Ed Dale’s Thirty Day Challenge, where I’ve created yet another blog that I’m using his techniques on (still a WIP, but I’m learning quite a bit).

With my daily posts on The Bullshit Stalker, I’m going to do a bit more social network promotion.  As a result, I’ll likely drop off a bit on Entrecard dropping for that site.  I appreciate the traffic it provides, but I need to find a more time-effective route for traffic generation.  I’ll still drop for each of my blogs on the network, but I just can’t keep that volume up and do what I need to do to grow.  And that’s the name of the game, isn’t it?