Shortly before I left for Relevant, I revisited ProBlogger‘s 31 Days to Build  a Better Blog.  I printed out just the daily assignments (without all the explanation), so I would have a quick-reference list. Then I began the task of creating a list of all of my old posts.  From there, I brainstormed new post ideas from each of those posts.  This took a while because, as I (re-)discovered in the process, my blog has been around for a long time!

My first post went up in August of 2005.  Five years ago!  I can’t believe I’ve been blogging for five years.

During that process, I learned some things about my blog, and my blogging.

• First of all, I’ve never been very consistent.  I needed a plan, a system, in order to blog more routinely.  (I created a post schedule form, which I’ll share in a post next month.)
• Second, I actually have some really good posts (if I do say so myself) from very early on.  But because I’m not good at interlinking my posts, no one ever sees them.  I mean, come on, is anyone going to go through five years’ of archives?!  Even I didn’t do that until last month, and it’s my blog!  So I need to be better about getting some of these back to the forefront.  Because…
• I also rarely or never re-post about a topic I feel like I’ve covered already. If I “already wrote a post about that,” I tend to not write again (unless I have something new/different to say about it).  This has the unfortunate effect, again, of burying some of the best stuff.  I need to draw this out better.
• I’m really bad about using pictures.  (Well, okay, I already knew that, but it was really emphasized through this process.)  The biggest reason is time. It takes me forever to add a photo to a post, as compared to the overall time to create a post.  One of these days I will find a more efficient way to do it, and then I’ll use pictures more consistently.  (If you have a good system, plugin, etc. for doing this in WordPress, let me know!)

I think there were other things, but I forgot to write them down.  Oops.

Then I left for Relevant, and learned even more while I was there!

• Crystal reinforced the need to find efficient ways to do repetitive tasks, so when I came home I found some plugins that help with some of these.  (I’ll be sharing these next month, too.)
• I learned that different reader bases are to be found on Facebook and Twitter, and that I can set up my blog to automatically send my updates to these services.  (I also learned how to make a little bit of sense of Twitter.  Yay!)

These were not the most important lessons learned (or brought back to mind) at Relevant – those were messages about message itself, about priorities, etc. – but these are some of the “nitty-gritty” things I learned about my blog, blogging style, and blogging skill (or lack thereof!).

Maybe something here will spark a helpful thought for someone else.  (And stay tuned for a post next month about specific tips, tricks, and plugins that have been helpful for me as a blogger.)