For Business Blog Content Writers, the Practice is in the Doing!

“How much time does it really take to get great?” A lot, according to Mental Floss’ Magazine’s “Genius Guide to Success”, if you judge by the routines of various prodigies.

• Mathematician Paul Erdos put in 19-hour days, publishing 1.525 academic papers.
• Jonas Salk spent 16 hours a day for seven years researching the polio vaccine.
• Tightrope walking Nik Wallenda practice 3-4 hours every day before walking between Chicago skyscrapers.
• Stash of Guns ‘N Roses practiced 12 hours a day.
• Jerry Seinfeld practiced 200 times before his first comedy set on The Tonight Show.

In contrast to that reality, admit the Mental Floss authors, a 2014 study showed that practice accounts for only 12 percent of mastery.

After almost ten years of blog content writing and training others to write corporate blog content, I’d have to say the old saw about practice makes perfect definitely applies. There’s a difference, though. For content writers, practicing consists of actually writing and posting, not in getting ready to do that at some later time!

Years ago, in the process of explaining the way my company Say It For You came about, I talked about the “drill sergeant discipline” needed by blog content writers. What I meant was that, while all my business owner clients knew that writing blogs in their area of expertise was going to be a great idea for them, not very many of them felt they could take the time to compose and post content on a regular basis.  I also knew that the main key to business blogging success was going to be simply keeping on task.

Going back to the example of Jerry Seinfeld’s practicing 200 times before his Tonight Show appearance, Seinfeld understood drill sergeant discipline as well.  He’d figured out that the way to be a better comic was to write better jokes, and that the way to do that was to write jokes every single day.  For every day he writes, Jerry puts a big red X on his wall calendar, and all that matters is not breaking that chain of X’s.

That’s a good model for blog content writers, I’d have to say. Far too many business owners start out strong with their blogging, but months or even weeks later, begin to fizzle. On the other hand, we bloggers get more of a “shot” with readers than we think. In any one post, we have hardly as much “on the line” (pun intended) as a Nik Wallenda.  Sure, we strive for high quality in every single post, but there’s always tomorrow or next week to complete the thought, clarify, and bring in more information.

We’re lucky. As content writers, we get to practice AND perform at the same time!