June 3, 2020. Dr Latha Vijayabhaskar, curator of the 30 Day Blogging Challenge welcomed us with a note, “We are back once again with a 30 day challenge to learn and push ourselves to do better. This time it is the blog challenge.”
Caution: Writing Daily Ahead
⚡Before you commit to this task and way of living, you should ask yourself if this is right for you and your business.
⚡Can you create good quality content for 30 days? Copying a few quotes and repeated examples from the internet will only make your blog drown in the vast ocean of content on internet.
Roadmap:
- Thursday, June 4th – Understand the anatomy of a reader
- Friday, June 5th – Analyse and position your pillar content
- Saturday and Sunday 6th and 7th – Plan your content calendar
- Monday, June 8th – Tuesday, July 7th – 30 day BLOG CHALLENGE
If you are interested, please join the group for the blogging challenge
I had the content calendar ready and this is how it looked on June 29.. I had marked the intended topic in light blue and the black colour indicated completion. Not that I always wrote on the topics planned, but it helped me to incubate ideas.
A week into the challenge, we had an expert Rajesh Setty talk to us on the various nuances of blogging. I was inspired by his no-nonsense approach and began the next week with gusto.
I had divided my topics broadly into three categories, 1. Influencing 2. Travel and 3. Humor. Under Influencing, I had two topics, communication and public speaking. I chose to broadcast my blogs on all the channels I was active in decreasing order of my involvement, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. Surprisingly my engagement was highest on LinkedIn with many new consistent comments followed by Facebook with Instagram and Twitter getting nominal hits.
Mid-way, I did get a bit skeptical about group support and tips and techniques. I then realised it was difficult to expect someone to read about 6 blogs each day and comment on them. At the end of the grind, I found three fellow bloggers who kept at it with a regular stream of posts. Please read these blogs to get fascinating perspectives on life.
Anup Sharma (https://anupsharma.org) An A+ for his attitude! He regularly projected fellow bloggers on his twitter feed and kept the momentum going.
Neerja Singh (http://linkedin.com/in/neerjasinghcom) She gave me a complex with the way she handled the English language. She wrote extensively on generational empathy and loved her branding of post- millennials as zoomers! Do follow her on LinkedIn for her updates on Gen Z!
Sivakumar (https://www.ssfamilyfirst.com). Siva chose Lord Ayyappa as a unifying theme to write on various topics of social relevance. He doesn’t just preach but practises all that he advocates.
Others like Bala, Krishnan Naganathan, Krishne Gowda, RM Palaniappan and Srijata Bhatnagar made valiant attempts but could not continue because they got busy with their profession. Please visit their blogs.
https://www.krishnegowda.com/5-life-lessons/ – Krishne Gowda. https://www.srijatabhatnagar.com – Srijata Bhatnagar. https://innovation360.com/krishnan-naganathan/ Krishnan Naganathan
http://linkedin.com/in/bala-iyengar-19119014 Bala Iyengar. http://linkedin.com/in/ananya-nori-tsunami-survivor-🌊-94b559179 Ananya http://linkedin.com/in/designthinkingevangelistsundararaman Dr Sundararaman Chintamani. http://ramapalaniappan.in Rama Palaniappan, the latest entrant!
While I received regular feedback from my friends, I am specially grateful to dear friend and master storyteller Indu Divya who heads The Narrative for pointing out that my output needed vigilant proof-reading. While apps like Grammarly had limited effect, I turned to a professional, Squadron Leader (Rtd) Delshad Master. https://edkronicles.com, who graciously accepted to proof-read my blogs. I haven’t yet uploaded all her revisions as I plan to migrate to a more secure site which will see the posts with all the corrections. Thank you, Indu and Delshad!
PSAI (psai.in) offers tremendous value for its members through periodic challenges like LinkedIn profile, book authoring, video tutorials and website creation. A HUGE THANK YOU to Kiruba Shankar www.kiruba.com and Dr Latha Vijayabhaskar, labelled ‘herd master’ by Anup Sharma! It was Kiruba who kick-started the challenge with his two insightful blogs but there was a prolonged silence. When I later understood the reason for it, my respect for him went up several notches higher!
Dear reader, thanks for staying around! This was the tonic that kept me going! Rest assured, you will be spared of the daily deluge from tomorrow but this experience has fortified me with a resolve to churn out weekly posts on both influencing and travel blogs! I hope you’ll be there to cheer me!
