Days 6 and 7 of the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog project--How I managed to get behind already, I'm not really sure. Maybe it's because Darren is in Australia and a day ahead of me. Anyway. . .

Day 6: Email a Long-time Reader
My challenge is to email a long-time reader to thank them for reading and participating in my blog.

I'm in pretty regular contact with most of my readers, so at first I was going to blow this off. But then it occurred to me that there's a difference between having regular communication and actually taking the time to thank someone for reading and commenting on your blog. So I took the time to send out some thank yous and will be doing more later. It felt good, actually, to do this--like when I tell friends how much they mean to me. This is one of those activities that I probably got more out of than my readers did. As Carolyn Schwartz has discovered, good mental health is more closely linked to giving than to receiving.

I also want to point to an interesting post on this exercise from Sue Waters, who notes that because Twitter and Facebook allow her to stay in almost constant contact with her community, it may be changing her blogging practice. Some good thoughts and questions worth checking out.

Day 7--Plan a Week's Worth of Blogging Posts
The task for today is to plan a week's worth of blog posts. Darren argues that planning ahead will make me more productive and allow me to produce higher quality posts more consistently.

I will admit that I veer wildly between impulsive and planful posting. If something juicy comes across my feed reader, I usually want to post right away. Other times I've actually had a plan--usually when I'm doing a series of posts on a particular topic. I can definitely see where it would help, though, if I took the time to plan ahead more often. I can always pop something into the rotation if I really need to.

What Do You Want Me to Write About Next Week?
So . . . this is where you come in. I need to plan for next week's posts, so I'm open to suggestions.  What would you like to learn more about? Is there a series you'd be interested in me putting together? Just drop me a line or leave me something in comments. Otherwise you'll be at my mercy.

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Challenge Update--In keeping with our international theme (we have bloggers from the US, the UK, Australia and Canada), The Indian Blogger has now joined us in our 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge. It's exciting to have something like this spreading all over! Don't forget--it's never too late for you to join in the fun!

Be sure to check out what's going on with the other 31 Day participants, too. Links to their blogs are in the right sidebar or, if you have Netvibes, you can download a page of their feeds by clicking on the Netvibes button below.