Live Curious is officially one month old!
It has been an incredible month of learnings and lessons.

Here are just a few of them.

1.Dont get obsessed with analytics. Just like when I have money in a company, I end up checking the stock market on my phone 81 times a day! It is like a drug watching stocks go up and down. I have quickly learned that watching daily views and visitors on my blog brings the very same emotions. On a day when the numbers, clicks and likes are up, I can feel prideful. On the days when they are down, I can feel jealous. Neither are feelings I want to cultivate in my life. So, I had to delete the WordPress APP, where I was constantly checking my analytics from my phone, after just three days of blogging.  I would say when it comes to analytics, specifically visitors & views, it is good and smart to learn from them, but don’t live by them.

[Tweet “Don’t Live Your Life For Likes!”]

2. Concentrate on getting better not bigger each week. If you curate and create better content each week, then your readers and subscribers will share the word, and your influence will get bigger.  So the objective is not to obsess with numbers but instead become committed to creating curious content for others to learn from and share. There are several avenues I often travel to discover and create curious content.

– Passion. Write about what you are passionate about. I have learned if you are willing to make public your passions people will rally around you.

– Expertise. Write about subjects in which you have gained some level of expertise. You do not have to be the “leading expert” on a subject in order to lead others a little bit further down the road in their journey.

– Trends. Write about things that people want to read about.  Google Trends is a great place to find up-and-coming curious topics to write about.

3. Construct creative headlines. A great article with a poorly crafted headline will get very few views. So, just as important as the body of your article is the headline. Here are just a few things I have learned about creating headlines over the past 30 days.

– If your headline is too long it will get cut off in Google search and thus reduce your traffic. Keep article headlines to 65 characters or less if possible.

– Numbers make great headlines, and odd numbers (like 3) tend to be better than evens!

– Make sure your article headline will fit within a tweet and also be re-tweetable, so less than 115 characters.

– If you are stuck, you can use headline maker tools like this to get unstuck and inspired.

– It is important for headlines to create “mind gaps” such as …

* 5 Facts About The Future Of The Church.
* What Do Meditation And Worry Have In Common?
* Four Things You Should Do Every Morning When You Wake Up.
* This Incredibly Easy Exercise Will Make You 10 Times More Effective At Writing.
* 4 Things Great Churches Do Before They Go Multi-Site.

These “gaps” give people a reason to click your post.

These are my first few lessons from my first 30 days. I will create another “lessons” list at 60 and 90 days as well.

What about you?

What lessons have you learned from reading or writing blog articles?