Blog Improvement Experiment – The Morning After
I dedicated last month to improving my blog. It was a part of Darren Rowse’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge. Let me share with you the results of my effort. 
About 31DBBB
The composition of audience surprised me. There were only few PR and marketing bloggers. Most of the participants blogged about freelance writing, healthy lifestyle, or they were “stay at home moms.” I had expected more marketers joining the challenge.
The program was well structured. The e-mails Darren was sending us were clear, concise and easy to read. The posts at Problogger were not cluttered with meaningless pseudo-information. They were to the point, yet comprehensive. It is my fervent hope that Copyblogger would pick up on this program and create its own version focused on becoming better writers. That would be awesome!
Content
Most of the daily tasks were focused on research and writing good content. I tried to support all the writing tasks with articles from Copyblogger, and the research tasks with some literature from my marketing classes and Jeremiah Owyang’s posts.
Even though I knew a lot of things Darren was writing about in terms of writing well and editorial planning, some of his ideas really added value to my blog. Creating a sneeze page made me finally finish the series on “Job Hunt!” New posts on cover letter writing are coming soon.
Added value
What I deemed as the best about this project was the opportunity to network. All the bloggers participating in the challenge united at the forum to exchange experiences, ideas and links to their best work. This has increased everyone’s traffic, as well as contact base. I’m in touch with several blogging buddies, like Kirsten Wright or Michael Cowen because of this program, and I love it. They are both very inspiring. In the aspect of networking, Darren’s challenge was invaluable.
Drawbacks
To my taste, the program could have focused more on promotion techniques and writing. Sometimes, I felt it was trying to master the obvious. The tasks could have been more challenging and writing-centred.
Overall
The last month proved to be great not only in terms of extending my social network, helping my blog to stand out, and writing good content. It has also affirmed me that I’ve been doing many things connected to blogging right. I thank Darren for the wonderful opportunity and his time.
As a closing remark, let me encourage everyone to take part in programs like these. The benefits of increased network and improved blog clearly outweigh the time costs associated with the challenge.
