… sustainable writing, 200th post

Who would have thought!

It has taken 688 days (almost 23 months), but this is the 200th post on this blog.

The traffic here is not yet at a point where it is slowing down the internet – limited to an average of just under 3 visitors per day, and almost 6 page views per day – hopefully it will grow.

To celebrate the milestone, and perhaps to encourage others who are contemplating starting on the blog journey, here are the top 3 things I have l learned about blogging along the way.

It is all about the people

When you start on this journey it is not enough to just write your own posts. You need to interact with people who take the time to comment on your stuff – but more importantly you need to engage with other people on their blogs. This things tends to spread by ‘virtual word of mouth’ – so you need to promote other bloggers when you can.

I have been lucky to have had some very helpful people read my blog and promote it to their own community. In particular I should mention Paul James (unfortunately no longer actively writing) and Jan Husdal as two of the earliest bloggers to promote my efforts.

And of course Trevor Levine and Alex Fullick with whom I have also had ongoing engagement. The online exchanges with these have led to a few real-world meetings, and hopefully I can expend this real-world circle in the future.

The ultimate purpose of our writing is for other people to read, it is all about the people and the community.

You need to have a passion for what you are doing

Despite doing it for people to read and discuss, more often than not they don’t! Certainly comments are few and far between.

There are always the posts that you put your heart and soul into, but they are not always the ones that get the most views – nor the most comments. So be it. If I was writing for profit and commercial gain, then I guess I would produce more of what people read and comment on – but I am actually doing it for my own interest, so I write about what motivates me.

There are always surprises about what is popular. Ironically, as I had to pay to license the material, and unexpectedly – the most read material on this blog is the series on AS/5050, the recent Australian Standard for managing disruption-related risk (aka Business Continuity).

I would prefer if it was the series on “Culture and Resilience” – but then people and culture interest me more than standards. Unfortunately I find the bulk of the industry is just looking for a quick fix, that meets a governance and compliance requirement.

Passion is essential to keep writing, it helps with the motivation (to continue reading) and the inspiration to sustain the writing. It is also what keeps us hungry and foolish.

Interestingly my productivity has remained fairly constant over the period, very little difference between the first and second hundred posts – in terms of days per post. On average about 1 posts every 3.4 days, or 2 per week.