It never lasts long, but following a fit of cleaning, clearing and moving-stuff-around frenzy at the weekend I managed to create myself a fresh, light and new space to work in my study at home.
Flexible working is a wonderful thing, but I do need my own space to shut myself away from everything else and get productive. Every now and then I need to refresh it to clear my desk and my head.
Rather pleased with the result.
This week I discovered the many pros and the major curse of staying regular.
Since re-branding my blog1, I’ve been blogging to a steady schedule of Monday, Wednesday, Friday for new, authored content, with Pick of the Web linked-content on a Tuesday and Thursday.
Last week, I didn’t blog on Thursday and Friday as I was busy taking stock of things in my life. In those two days, my readership on the blog halved. Just three days when the blog was devoid of new content.
But worse than that, it’s stayed at a lower ebb and is only now (after 3 days back on the regular schedule) starting to pick back up towards its previous numbers.
Blogging regularly is great in terms of building an audience; if people know when you’re posting, they know when to come looking and they know what to expect from your blog. But beware of committing yourself to a schedule of posts you can’t sustain.
Much better to follow a simple, one-post-a-week formula (such as that employed brilliantly by Clive Davies-Frayne on Film Utopia), than it is to attempt daily posts that you can’t keep up, or to release new blog content in a scattershot manner whenever you feel like or are able to write it.
Work out what you can realistically achieve, define your schedule and stick to it. Staying regular is the key to creating value for the people who read your blog as religiously as you write it.