Day 9 check in – 30 day blog challenge. Is Seth right? Does blogging make you more creative?

OK, so I started this challenge to see the benefits regular blogging brings to me, my business and my network.

According to Seth Godin a good business practice is to blog every day.

Apparently the process will make me more creative as I’ll be constantly thinking of new and useful things to blog about.

There’s also the benefit of better Google rankings from producing regular fresh content.

Plus the act of sharing brings me more support from my network.

I’ve been more interested in understanding whether I can commit to the discipline of blogging. As I tend to come up with ideas in a fairly random fashion.

So what have I found?

Well, I think I was creative anyway, so the act of an online journal has not stimulated any additional ideas for me.

I am well aware that the best way to write and get ideas is to start writing.

Sometimes this process is easy. Sometimes it’s hard.

Where it has challenged me is I am wondering whether I really have anything intensely interesting and well founded to say. So I am always on the lookout for insights and information.

Not checked the Google rankings yet. I have paid more attention to the ideas rather than chasing traffic.

I have only shared these posts on LinkedIn and once on Twitter. But have noticed that the views on my profile have increased this week.

I have also been heartened by the number of people in my network who have commented, shared and liked these posts. So I do think the act of original content generation does work.

Can I commit to the discipline of blogging every day?

Well, I have not been able to sit down at precisely 8am and get cracking. So I do beat myself up a bit about that.

But the idea of making a public commitment has worked as I am writing this latest post at 9 pm on a Tuesday evening where I probably should have shut down for the night.

This process has accentuated the insight that I have had about my work which is that commitment to someone is a primary motivator for me to do something, as I don’t like letting people down.

Many experts say that content generation is easy. So as a consultant, I should have a lot to share. Anything I email as a tip to a client, for example, I could do so publicly and hence have a blog post.

I think it’s a little more complex than that. I can’t simply download and hit publish.

I am constantly checking for logic, flow and typos. Plus trying to obey the laws of good copy writing.

I am keeping going on this.

Seth suggests that by day 14 the creativity will kick in. So I am looking forward to seeing what happens.

If you’ve tried a challenge like this, I’d love to get your feedback on how it’s worked for you.