5 Benefits From My 14-Day Blog Challenge (And It’s Only Day 6!)

I awoke this morning feeling a little sad.

Jack, my oldest boy, turns 18 today.

Where on earth did those years go?!

He’s also on this last term break before exams. So it’s head down and bum up.

His English teacher set him the challenge of writing one practice essay a day for the 14-days of the break.

To make it easier (and more enjoyable for him) I agreed that we’d both sit down for an hour each day and write. Jack would write an essay, I’d write a blog post.

So the 14-day blog post challenge began. And, five posts in, it’s going beautifully.

Beyond spending quality (albeit silent) time with my now mature son (!), there’s been so much upside already to blogging regularly.

So, if you’re a blogging beginner, here’s five benefits I’ve experienced already, six days in to my 14-day blog challenge:

1.   A dynamic website: My website is being updated every single day with fresh, new content. This is an additional opportunity for Google to index my business. Remember, Google don’t index one website, they index the number of pages that website has.

2.  Building of momentum: Only five days in and I look forward to the next post. In fact, after getting over my early morning sadness, my next thought was what was today’s post going to be about. I love it when a marketing activity generates excitement in me. That’s how it should be. In fact, I often talk about the ideal situation for a business owner is when marketing becomes a hobby.

3.  Becoming a better writer:  It’s amazing how quickly your writing starts to improve. I’ve found myself becoming less verbose, having fun with writing magnetic headlines and generally just ensuring that I get my point across simply and clearly. (Some may argue that ;0)

4.  Increase engagement:  I’ve noticed as I blog more consistently, the number of comments, Facebook shares and retweets has increased. Maybe it’s something about setting an expectation with my readers who now look forward to the next post. yesterday’s post went up 12-hours ago and has already had a decent amount of sharing.

5.  Improved Google rankings: Building on point one, as you populate you website with more helpful content, the quality of your site in Google’s eyes improves (ie. its Page rank), and the follow on effect is that you’ll start to see your rankings for keywords improve. The post I wrote last night (12-hours ago) on business strategies is already ranked on page 2 for one of the keywords I was targeting.

So, these are just five benefits I’ve noticed within 5-days of blogging daily. I’ve no doubt there are many more that will start to show themselves as the week’s progress. (Yes, I intend to continue beyond the 14-day blog challenge).

Do you blog? If so, what benefits have you seen for your business?

If you don’t, then why not?

Share your thoughts below.