Over the last month, I have been taking part in a consistency challenge with Mattie James. The challenge was to write a blog post every week day from July 6-31, adding up to a total of 2o blog posts for the month.

To be totally honest, I started it but definitely did not think I would finish it. I knew we would be on vacation two weeks out of the month, and with my birthday yesterday, I wasn’t sure how I would realistically get it all done.

I decided to do the challenge for several reasons. The first was because my word for 2020 is consistency. The second is because I had gotten lazy with posting on my website. I was posting once a week or once every two weeks, and that definitely was not working out in driving traffic to my blog. You see, the way Mattie explained it, when you focus on social media, you’re focused on what is essentially rented space. Someone else owns your social media space. If Instagram gets shut down tomorrow (not likely but absolutely plausible – remember Vine?), where can your audience still find you? And are you still providing value there?

I wasn’t thinking of all those things, and my posting had gotten way too sporadic. I was coming up with every excuse under the sun to not post and I was claiming “writer’s block” wasn’t letting me come up with content. The truth is, I was getting in my own way. I wasn’t setting aside time to write and it showed. During the last month, I planned ahead, I wrote several posts at a time, and I scheduled blog posts in advance when I knew I would be tied up. They didn’t take nearly as long as I had built them up to in my head, and I’m grateful that I decided to take part!

While I don’t plan to continue to post every single day, Ido plan to post on a much more consistent schedule. And in any case, I’m proud of myself for getting through the month of July!

If you are new to blogging (even if you’re not) and haven’t been consistent with posting, I challenge you to come up with your own consistency challenge and stick to it. Let me know how it goes!

Happy Friday, friends!

Xoxo,