4 blogging tricks learned from #BlogSomething2012

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#BlogSomething2012, Blogging

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The experiment that was #BlogSomething2012 has come to a conclusion. A week of blog posts of all sorts has ended. Let’s see what we learned.

1. Choose your imagery wisely. Some days, the content of the photo was easy to relate to the story. Some days, it was particularly difficult, such as the statue of the Puritan.

2. Participation scales with commitment. Despite a ton of retweets and comments on Facebook before the experiment began, in the end, only a few people took on the challenge and actually participated.

3. Confinement breeds creativity. The act of forcing pre-set topics and content had an interesting effect on my blogging habits: I came up with more ideas and topics I wanted to blog about last week than normal, each time reminded that I had to defer them until the week was over. Luckily things like Evernote can store them until later, but setting up a challenge for yourself like this may get your brain generating new ideas just to be contrary. This, by the way, comes from a martial arts exercise I learned from Bud Malmstrom way back when.

4. The one thing I would have done differently would have been to create a feedback mechanism for participants. Certainly, the hashtag helped some, but I think a dedicated Facebook group or page or some other collective mechanism might have been a helpful thing to have had.

To read all the posts in the series, check out the social media search for #BlogSomething2012 hashtag.

What did you think of #BlogSomething2012?

Comments

11 responses to “4 blogging tricks learned from #BlogSomething2012”

May 7, 2012

DCAutoGeek

Chris – Longtime fan, first time commenter. I hope this isn’t too off topic, but speaking of “more ideas and topics”, what does one do with ideas that don’t fit into their blog’s content focus? I would love to hear your thoughts (maybe a future blog post) on the options for homeless content. Make it fit, freelance it, create an alternate catch-all property?

Reply
1. May 7, 2012
  
  Helena Bouchez
  
  Hi Juan. In my experience if your content focus is mission-based (in other words, you talk about things in terms of why you do what you do, rather than how or what you do) you can usually frame the content in a way that will support it. CSP does this all the time with his posts that use WoW examples.
  
  Reply
  1. May 7, 2012
    
    Oz du Soleil
    
    WoW and martial arts.
    
    Reply
2. May 7, 2012
  
  Oz du Soleil
  
  Juan, I’m glad you posted this because your suggestions expand the possibilities. Maybe the content doesn’t fit, how about guest blogging in a place where it does fit?
  
  But I think next time I’ll use the images and bring them into my subject.
  
  When I review the images and see the fancy table and chairs, I can think of a post about “who’s at the Data Governance table? Are the right people there? Is anyone missing?”
  
  Reply
May 7, 2012

Helena Bouchez

You know I am always eager to participate in a CSP challenge, but took a look at the pictures and realized it would take me just as long to figure out the angle that would fit the picture as it would to actually write the piece and I just didn’t have time. I would love it if you’d do this again. Maybe you pick 5 blog posts and ask people to write on a different aspect of the post, challenging us to take your “cake” ingredients and make brownies or cupcakes.

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1. May 7, 2012
  
  Oz du Soleil
  
  Helena, your comments are similar to the challenge I faced: I blog about Data Governance and would have taken a while to retrofit the challenge to be appropriate for my audience. But after seeing what Chris did, the next time won’t be so much of a stretch.
  
  I could repurpose the cake ingredients into a cool scone or danish.
  
  Reply
May 7, 2012

Christina Pappas

This was a fun challenge for me. I honestly have let my blog slack these last couple weeks and this was exactly what I needed. I actually liked having the topic assigned – in fact, I had to chop my post into 2 because I found I had so m Yes, your images were not what I would have picked and had a hard time relating them to the topics. (I think I cheated here and just plopped it in with mentioning the relationship at all). Thanks!

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May 7, 2012

Iain Robson

It was a great activity. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was awesome to have the ideas already thought out for you, therefore, it just became an activity of getting the information to link up with the topic and picture.

Reply
1. May 7, 2012
  
  Oz du Soleil
  
  Iain, I like what you came up with. Thanks for sharing your blog & examples.
  
  Reply
  1. May 7, 2012
    
    Iain Robson
    
    Thanks for your support. I am still relatively new to this whole blogging business.
    
    Reply
August 13, 2019

Oz

I followed your BlogSomething week and liked how you tied your content to the images.

When you presented it, I seriously about jumping in, but I blog about MS Excel and Data Governance, not marketing or Social Media. HOWEVER, after seeing how you made this work, I am inspired to jump in next time and either modify the images to fit Data Management or, go ahead and find a way to make Social Media fit in my core subject matter.

As the week went on, I definitely caught on to your point #3 Confinement Breeds Creativity.

For your Point #1. Yes! Choose carefully. I didn’t know what 2 of those images were. Had I participated, my post may have started with, “Have you ever looked as some data and wondered ‘what the heck is this?’”

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