I recently did something over on my personal blog at MattWolfe.net…

I attempted (and successfully completed) a 30 day blog challenge.

In this challenge, I wrote a new blog post every single day for 30 days, including the weekends.

After running this little experiment, I now recommend that everyone who starts a blog, kickstarts it by giving themselves their own 30 day challenge.

Reasons for a 30 day challenge:

1. It tests how passionate and excited you are about the topic. If you can’t blog about something for 30 days, you may be going down the wrong road. I’ll give you some tips on how to constantly have enough to talk about in a minute. However, if you struggle too much with your topic, you may have picked the wrong topic.

2. It quickly builds your blog’s archives. People have a hard time taking a blog seriously if there’s only 3 or 4 posts on the blog total. This causes a big problem for blogs just starting out. It’s difficult to gain traction or build momentum when there’s not much for new visitors to see.

3. The SEO benefits are awesome. Neil Patel from Quicksprout did some research on 20 of the most successful blogs. One thing he learned was that posting more frequently helps you get more traffic. The blogs that posted daily or even multiple times per day seemed to build traffic much quicker than blogs that only posted once per week or a few times per month.

4. It gets you in the habit of writing. Once you’ve written for 30 days straight, you’ve created a habit. They say it takes 21 days to create a habit… This has been scientifically disproven, however, 30 days straight definitely doesn’t hurt to get in to a groove with blogging.

5. You will improve your writing skills. Being a good writer is a learned skill. It’s a skill that gets better with practice.

6. You will learn how to dig deeper on your topic. Most people learn that after about 5 or 6 days, they struggle with what to talk about next on their topic. Forcing yourself to write on that topic daily, you’ll learn how to dig deeper, finding sub-topics of your main topic. You’ll learn how to research and find more things that would interest you’re potential audience.

I know that a 30 day challenge sounds a bit daunting… The truth is that it is going to be hard. That’s why it’s a challenge. However, with a little bit of game planning, and bit of a template, you should be just fine.

Start by listing out 30 topics that you can blog about in your first 30 days…

Here’s a list of post types to help you get your 30 posts:

1. Start with the posts you already know you’re going to write. There’s probably already 5 or 6 ideas that you have for posts. Write these down and make these your “Pillar Posts”. Pillar posts are the posts that you spend the most time on. These are the posts that you put a ton of research in to, that you know will get shared, and that you’re most excited about writing. Spread these throughout your 30 days. These are going to be some of the main magnets to your blog.

2. Think of 4 or 5 list posts that you can create. Top 10 experts in your industry, the 7 most influential blogs to your niche, etc… These lists posts are great because they tend to get shared a lot. Often times, you’ll see the people or the websites that you mention in the post sharing your post because they’re honored to be mentioned.

3. Think of who you can interview in your niche. Interview one or two people and either use the video, audio, or transcribe the text to a blog post.

4. Create a multi-part blog series. During my 30 day challenge, I used 4 of the days creating a multi-part training on how to effectively build a mailing list. Is there any long topics that you can break up over multiple days?

5. Are you getting some blog comments? Pick out some of the best comments or questions you’ve received on your blog and turn your response in to a full blog post.

6. Create case studies. Talk about something you’ve tried or seen someone else try in your niche. Turn it in to a case study on that topic.

7. Tap current events. Check out Google trends or Yahoo’s homepage to get insight in to some hot topics. Can any of those topics be related back to your blog’s niche? Leveraging current events is a great way to get your blog post shared.

8. Create a post with a list of your favorite blog posts from other bloggers. If you read a lot of blogs yourself, compile a list of your favorite posts from the week and share them with your readers.

9. Create a YouTube video and post it to your blog. With WordPress, you can just copy and paste the YouTube URL in to a post and the video will magically appear. Having videos of you teaching or explaining something is a great way to build credibility and a bit of celebrity in your niche.

10. Towards the end of the challenge, link back to your favorite posts of the month. It’s always a good idea to create internal links to your other posts anyway. Use the end of the challenge as an opportunity to show off all the posts you’ve written.

11. Create a Google Alert. With Google Alerts, you can tell Google to send you an email whenever a new website pops up in their database talking about your specific topic. Have them email you whenever your topic is mentioned. Check out the posts being mentioned and use those for inspiration for posts.

Everyone should do a 30 day challenge to kick start their blog.

Just to hammer this point home, when I did a 30 day challenge over on my blog, I grew from 0 visitors per day to averaging somewhere around 100 visitors per day. During that time period, my list grew by a couple hundred subscribers, and several of my posts where shared by other blogs. It was the kickstart that site needed.

I haven’t posted on that blog very recently and, to this day, it still receives somewhere around 50 visitors per day.

All I did was write consistently.

So if you’re wondering where to start, stop wondering! This is it. Even if your blog has already been going for a bit and you haven’t seen much interest from others, use this as your jumper cables to kick new life in to the blog.

I promise that you will be shocked by the results (pun intended).

Let me know your thoughts. What are some additional ideas for blog posts? Can you think of other reasons a 30 day challenge is helpful?

I’m looking forward to interacting in the comments!

By the way, there’s a ton more ideas for keeping up with content in the Insiders Member Area. Be sure to check it out if you haven’t already.