Dec 28, 2011 / News

Looking Back at Post a Day 2011 — How’d You Do?

Remember when you first decided to take on the Post a Day/Week Challenge?

Well, you made it to the end — congratulations! Now is the perfect time to reflect on your 2011 in blogging, and your goals for 2012.

Here are eleven questions to help you determine your blogging strategy for the new year:

  1. Why did you start the Post a Day/Week Challenge?
  2. Describe the state of your blog at the time you started the challenge.
  3. How did your blog evolve over the course of the challenge?
  4. Did you post as often as you had hoped? Why or why not?
  5. What type of blogging strategy works best for you?
  6. If you could go back to the beginning, what would you do differently?
  7. What are you most proud of accomplishing this year?
  8. Name 3 great blogs you discovered through the challenge.
  9. What surprised you about the challenge?
  10. What advice would you give to others who want to blog regularly?
  11. What are your blogging goals for 2012?

Don’t forget to use the postaday2011 tag to make it easy for others to find your 2011 reflection when browsing the latest in postaday2011 posts!

Happy New Year from all of us at The Daily Post!

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  1. When I started I never expected to actually make it all the way through but here I am 1 year later I have blogged every single day, my blog following has Increased by more than 500% my views have skyrocketed and what started out as a hobby has actually led to several paid jobs simply because people saw my blog.

    Here is to hoping 2012 becomes just as awesome!!

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  3. Erica, I am so grateful for the challenge. I’ll be writing a reflection on day 365. I started this blog because of PostaDay 2011 and was able to post every day! I thank you for your encouragement with being Freshly Pressed on January 20th. I was ready to give up by that time because no one was reading my posts before then. I cannot thank you enough for the PostaDay Challenge, for the WordPress community, and for the daily support. I’ve met some nice people and have learned a lot! Thank you so much, WordPress!

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  4. I too am really grateful for the challenge. I’ll be posting a reflection too, but on the last day. I took up the challenge because I wanted to get to know WordPress and the blogging platform. I’ve certainly learnt how to find my way around my blog. I’ve never been freshly pressed, but my ramblings probably aren’t ‘fresh’ enough. I have new goals for 2012, I’ll be blogging about those soon.

    Thanks for the encouragement everyone.

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  5. I made it to the middle of May, posting every day on my blog. After that, a few days off, a few days on, then more sporadic posts. I liked how much more aware I felt when I was blogging daily, but I got busy with other aspects of my life and then was too tired to blog. I also set myself up to post at least one photo with each blog, and there were days I did not have a photo to post, so I didn’t post. My favorite thing about the Post a Day challenge was to be featured one day on “Freshly Pressed.” Wow! That increased my blog following, and it introduced me to some blogging friends I would not have otherwise met.
    I’ll give it a go again for 2012!

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  6. I begin to make one post by day and Jetpack was coming. So, i continue on an other host with buddypress. But the social network like facebook is more attractive for french people. The visitors are always the same…But I like it and I will continue 😉

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  7. I actually started in back in around February but eventually gave up because I figured that I was more into “what I blog” than “how often I blog.” So, it didn’t really work out for me. But I’m happy to see that thousands of other bloggers had a rather busy blogging year because of the prompts. So, ya, head up to you guys at wp.

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  9. This year I averaged a respectable 1.3 posts per week. Maybe one day I’ll graduate to the Post a Day Challenge, but for now the Post a Week Challenge is about all I have the bandwidth to do.

    One of the highlights of last year was getting Freshly Pressed.

    That said, I’m extremely pleased with the results and look forward participating again in 2012!

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  10. I didn’t do the challenge but I have just given my blog a makeover and I am sticking to the at least one post a week for now. I may post more frequently, but given that I have brought something of my Professional life into the mix, I am still defining for myself just how I want to go about it. I finished a social media marketing course fall 2011 and I am using some of the things I learned in the blog makeover, which is why I am commenting here since a post a day is a great strategy. My professional background is in Resort and Destination Spas and too many Spa blogs are all about marketing and that is something I want to avoid. I want to inform peopole about Spa Sensibility without shoving it down their throats with constant ads or promos for products and plugs for individual spa brands.

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  13. I’m going to change to Post A Week 2012. I think it will be more appropriate as I don’t have time to blog faithfully every single day, or rather, I don’t want that kind of pressure, but I can certainly commit to blogging once a week and shall probably blog much more. I love these challenges. Go wordpres.com!!! We appreciate you!

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  14. I started the Daily Post challenge a couple months into the year but I figured it’d be good to post about stuff on my blog that I otherwise wouldn’t know what to say. Through the course of visiting this site, I found that almost all of the topics didn’t really get me to post much on my blog – or that it really only pulled out one or two sentence replies out of me which was not enough to make a blog post about. I’m not saying this is because of the topics or anything! Just the questions didn’t ‘resonate’ much with me personally.

    I really liked the weekly photo challenge though. I should make more of an effort to post pictures for that.

    As for goals for next year, I guess to still at least make a post per month. I know my blogging will pick up when I participate in Camp NaNoWriMo for June and August (Yes, I plan to do both months if I can think of a story for both months). Other than that…

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  16. Its been a fantastic challenge. I’ve learned so much about writing and about myself too. I’m feeling a little sad that its almost over and eagerly looking forward to the next challenge.
    Here’s my thoughts and answers to the 11 questions:

    5 Days To Go!

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  17. Erica – thanks for the opportunity to share our thoughts. It’s definitely been a great journey/challenge! Thanks for the ongoing inspiration: for the Weekly Photo Challenges, and for the topics/themes… I’d never blogged before, began this past March, and now, am totally in love with the process!
    And, taking advantage of one of WP features, I’d just scheduled my “last-day-of-the-year” post, looking back at 2011, and the posts… Ready to be read by midnight Dec 31st – so cool to do that, feel like an excited child when the ‘special day’ comes around… 😮
    Greetings from Brazil and wishes for a “challenging” and exciting blogging year of 2012!
    Here are my thoughts: http://wp.me/p1oMvI-26w

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  19. We were challenged last year to blog every day! I thought wow that’s impossible, well if you’re going to post content of value anyway… I started 5 days a week, info on digital, brand marketing, business and took time to site sources for the content. In April my blog became Digital Brand Marketing Education at http://dbmei.com, a nonprofit publication that now has 14 regular contributors of original content with sources and posts every day, thanks for these wonderful challenges and ideas!

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  20. I just started my wordpress account in November. I started my post a day and then in December, our 18 year old kitty died. The post a day challenge has been awesome for me to make sure i post my 10 day hommage to Tiki. I hope that i continue my post a day well into 2012. Thank you for the challenge!

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  26. I knew I wouldn’t be able to post every day since I do a fair bit of travelling out of the country and was literally at sea part of the time. And in early September I felt exhausted, like I had nothing left to say. But that only lasted a week.

    All up, I managed 317 images with poetry for the year. I self published 5 small softcover books of them. I also have gained a decent following, especially when I started mirroring myself on other photoblogs and flickr and a few other place around the web. I’m not exactly famous – but it’s a great feeling to know that people are interested in my work.

    Definitely will continue in 2012!

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  29. This is my first post. I am rebooting my life at this point. The end of 2011 is a time to contemplate what has happend in the last 12 months. This is a interesting time that we live in. Our time on this earth is limited. What we accomplish between birth and death is the story of our life. What will be on our obituary if we have one is what we are able to accomplish what will you do to be remembered after you are dead and gone. Think about it. And take the appropriate action. Enough said. Serius1

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  30. 2012 once again we have to say goodby to another year with all of the problems and good times we encountered during this journey called life. How will our future endeavers be in the coming year. That equation will be left up to the individual. Think about what you want to accomplish and go for it, and remember you are what you think about during the day. Serius1

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