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31 Day Blogging Challenge

We're kicking off our 31 Day Blogging Challenge which means that during the month of August there will be a new post on the blog each and every single day.

When we first started Keen and Graev's Gaming Blog, we published practically every day. During those early years (can you believe it's been 10 years guys?) our traffic soared. Our reach expanded. Our coverage was more comprehensive, personal, minute-by-minute, and true to our mantra.​

Why a challenge?

These past few years, the blogging has become... let's just say it's not what it used to be, and for that reason it's time to see if we can change things.​

Proving We Can Do It

No one issued this challenge to us. This isn't a fad or a meme or whatever the social media world is calling it these days. I came up with this idea only a few days ago and decided August would be the month and it happened to have 31 days.

I'm doing it to prove we can do it. If I end up writing them all and Graev writes none, then I'm proving that I alone can do it.​

Impact on traffic and growth

Traffic ain't what it used to be. Video killed the blogging star. Yes it did. Lack of consistency also kills. I'm going to measure the change in traffic over 31 days to settle my curiosity and act as a case study for a few other web related projects.

Impact on Comments​

Does engagement change? This will be a fascinating one. I think comments are directly correlated with traffic and activity, which is directly related to the number of posts in a month. This will be measured.

What kind of posts are we going to write to satisfy the challenge?

I know this goal isn't going to be easy. In fact, it's going to be a bit of a stretch. In the past ten years, I think I can count on two hands the total number of posts we actually wrote and completed BEFORE the publish date. In fact, 99.9% of our thousands of posts were written the day of publication in one sitting.

To make this work, some posts will have to be batched -- and that's totally okay. In fact, I want to get better at creating a content calendar for both this website and my other sites.

Commenting on the video game industry lives in the here and now due to the nature of the industry, but I think there has to be some editorial flexibility that will allow for batching.

Here's a brief list of the types of posts we'll publish:

  • ​Anything - Hah, I love cheating
  • Reviews
  • Day-to-day commenting on what we played or what we did in a game (I don't care if it's 50 words or 5,000)
  • Photos posts with lots of screenshots
  • Video posts with a youtube video we took of playing 
  • Stream posts that we're live streaming (with the VoD added after)
  • List posts (5 reasons we like...  etc.)
  • How-to posts
  • Philosophizing posts (my old school favorite)
  • Link posts with links to various educational places or things we want to link to
  • A lot more follow-through and followup on topics we bring up in one or two posts but then fail to follow up with more (Examples: FFXIV, Ark, etc)

I'll reiterate the "anything." I've come to learn over the years that how you publish is just as important as what you publish.

You'll play a role in our 31 Day Blogging Challenge

As I sit here now I can promise you we need ideas. What do you want to read about? What do you want to watch? What content can we publish for YOU, our readers? I used to heavily subscribe to the idea that "I don't care what other people want, I'm going to publish what I want to publish!"

I'm easing off that idea as I learn and grow as a blogger. Even after 10 years I have a lot to learn.​ As the the industry changed -- perhaps MMOs dwindled a bit into obscurity -- it has become harder to fill the void with theorycrafting and discussion.

So please comment and let us know what you want, and get ready for a month of gaming blogs!

P.S. This counts as post #1!​

  • I think the mmo world has certainly evolved, but not dwindled. I’m currently playing Black Desert Online(psstt it’s only $10 on steam), and I’m constantly fascinated by everything you can do in game and the complexity of it all.
    I recently saw Allods Online pop up on my Facebook news feed which made me chuckle. You’re blog has been wonderful to read over all these years, and I really do wish you many more years of posts. ^_^ Maybe nothing as cute as Gibberlings will come along for us all to play, but we can only hope! 😀
    Maybe you should try playing games that you wouldn’t normally play. I don’t think I’ve seen you try League of Legends yet.

  • I’m guessing you haven’t heard of Blaugust? If not, Google it.

    Since Belghast isn’t running it this year, perhaps you could take over?