Today is the day you stop being afraid.
For a long time, you’ve been telling yourself, “Yeah, I should probably start blogging one of these days,” but you’re afraid. Afraid someone else has already written about a topic. Afraid that your writing isn’t impressive enough. Afraid nobody will leave a comment.
Well, Ed Leighton-Dick is calling your bluff. His #SQLNewBlogger Challenge is a dare to publish one new post per week, every Tuesday in April.
If you’re a new blogger, here’s how I’d do it:
- Sign up for a blog at WordPress. Use your name as the site name, and during the signup process, they’ll ask if you want to use a custom domain name. You do, because yourname.com is a better long term bet than yourname.wordpress.com. It will cost you $99/year, plus the cost of the domain name registration. Do it.
- Ignore the look/feel/theme. Stick with the defaults this month – focus on the content.
- Pick 1 topic you’re going to write about. Pick a topic you already know well, something that you believe is completely boring to you, something you think everybody already knows. You’re wrong.
- Write down 4 facts about that topic. Jot down 4 simple sentences with a fact. These are going to become your blog post titles.
- Write one blog post per fact. Start by looking at ProBlogger’s 52 Types of Blog Posts for inspiration. If one of those styles calls to you, use it for all 4 – but I’d recommend trying 4 different voices, 4 different styles of posts for your 4 facts. Write them all in advance, and schedule them for publication on each Tuesday.
As each one goes live, if you want feedback, email me at BrentO@BrentOzar.com and give me the URL. I’ll give short, honest feedback about what I thought, and I’ll help publicize your work.
Go do it right now. Seriously, you have nothing better to do. You’re reading my blog, for crying out loud.