Thanks Francesca and team – I’m really excited to be working with you all on this one.

I’ve had a number of questions on 31DBBB via email from this group so I thought I’d jot down a few answers here in the hope that they’ll help others with similar questions:

1. It’s designed as a workbook to look at 31 activities that you can do to build your blog in different ways. As you’ll see from the list above – some of them are focused upon design, some are about finding readers, some are about writing posts. Most of them are independent activities that you can do at any point and in any order (a couple build upon each other).
2. The workbook gives you a little teaching on each one (talking about the ‘why’ and giving some suggestions on ‘how’) and then gives you a practical task to go and do. The idea is that it’s partly about learning and partly about doing. You can of course learn and do all these things by yourself without the workbook – but I put it together because I kept coming into contact with bloggers who knew the type of stuff they ‘should’ be doing to improve their blog but who never did it and who wanted a little structure. So some of it is common sense stuff, but if you’re one of those bloggers who needs some structure it can work well.
3. The tasks are all designed to take around 15 minutes a day. You can of course spend more time on them if you want. Some people do them all, some people pick and choose. Some people do them over 31 days, some rush ahead and do them all in a week and others do them one per week over 31 weeks.
4. I’ve found that when groups of people do the tasks together that it becomes more powerful/useful. Partly because it keeps you a little more accountable but also partly because when you’re talking about what you do each day with others in your niche you start to learn from each other, build relationships with each other and start to see how you might be able to grow your blogs together.
5. Lastly – I think it’s important to get expectations right about how your blog will be at the end of 31 days. This is not designed to be something that you do for 31 days and then suddenly have a successful blog – I don’t want to be accused of guaranteeing success by following 31 steps :-) It’s about learning and practising stuff that you can then implement over and over again. Many of those who’ve done it find that 10 or so of the activities become regular things that work well for your blog and that become a part of a new blogging rhythm. Many also find that doing something intentional for 31 days in a row helps to break ‘blogger lethargy’ and spurs them onto being more regular and committed (all of which can lead to a blog’s growth).

It won’t of course suit everyone but it’s great to see a group forming here to do it together. Looking forward to see how you all go!

Darren