Blog Exercises: What Are Your Reasons For Blogging

We all have our reasons for blogging. Having our say, sharing our experience, teaching, learning, creative outlet, money, reputation, because they told you to…all of these are good reasons to blog, but to keep blogging you need something more. In this blog exercise, I want you to consider the more. It is the answer to […]

Blog Exercises: What Are You Talking About Revisited

In “Blog Exercises: What Are You Talking About?” your assignment was to blog about what you are talking about on your site, to clearly define it for yourself and your readers. It’s now time to check in with them to see if you are being heard. Using Polldaddy, Google Drive/Docs (create form), or another poll […]

Blog Exercises: Footnotes

In “Creating Footnotes in WordPress,” the tutorial explains how to use footnotes in WordPress, and applies to other blog publishing platforms. Links are the footnotes of today, linking to citations, references, and resources on the web. Yet, there are still times when footnotes are necessary, especially when the citation isn’t online or if your topic […]

Blog Exercises: Site Policies and Bloggers Code of Ethics

It’s time to start working on all of your site policies, one by one. So far, we’ve touched on some of these in Blog Exercises: The Don’ts of Blogging, Blog Exercise: Taking a Risk With What You Blog About, Blog Exercises: Comments and The Blog Bullies, and Blog Exercises: Quoting and Blockquotes. The basic policies […]

Blog Exercises: The Royal We

People who refer to themselves as “yours truly.” What kind of grandiose crap is this? Some even speak of themselves in the third person. Athletes and entertainers are big on this demented shit: “I’m going to do what’s right for Leon Spinks!” I think people like this are mentally ill. And you can include those […]

Blog Exercises: Editorial Calendar Check-in

If you have been with me since January on these blog exercises, it is time to check in with your editorial calendar again. If you are new, welcome, and take time to read the previous posts on the editorial calendar to help you catch up. Blog Exercises: The Editorial Calendar Blog Exercises: Blogging with the […]

Blog Exercises: April Current Events

It’s time to blog the news and current events for April in our Blog Exercises. Has it been easy or hard to find news and current events to publish once a month on your site? Sometimes the muse hits us when we learn of a newsworthy event that directly relates to us. Other times we […]

Blog Exercises: Increase Your Thank You Ratio

As a teacher, trainer, social media expert, and advice giver on many blogs, I don’t want to hear your excuses in response to my advice. “Well, if I only had the money…” Really? Since WordPress, the tools I recommend, and the advice I offer is free. What does money have to do with anything I […]

Blog Exercises: What Are Your Reference Articles

What are the articles that drive people to your site? What are the posts that help people understand and benefit most from what you publish on your site? What articles represent you as an authority on the subject? These are your reference articles. We all have them, the articles that explain who we are, what […]

Blog Exercises: How to Add Headings to Your Post Articles

I’ve mentioned using headings in your post articles throughout these Blog Exercises. Let’s look closer at these HTML tags that help you structure and increase the readability of your blog posts. Headings are HTML tags used to set the section or subsection titles within your blog posts. They divide your content into sections, but they […]

Blog Exercises: Add Industry Events to Your Editorial Calendar

In the blog exercise to create an editorial calendar, I gave you many ideas for setting self-assignments and deadlines for content throughout the year on your blog. Don’t forget to investigate your industry to discover events, conferences, and news to add to the calendar. Whether you go or not, take time to research calendars and […]

Blog Exercises: April Random Editing Day

It’s the April Random Editing Day in our ongoing series of Blog Exercises. With Spring in the air, flowers and trees blooming, it’s time to flex your editing muscles on four blog posts this month. If you are having trouble finding random posts, think of a keyword that best describes your site or a topic […]

Blog Exercises: How to Respond to a Trackback

In the first blog exercise on trackbacks I explained how trackbacks work and how to respond to trackbacks. It’s time to revisit the concept of how to respond to a trackback. In the exercise, I described the unique quality of trackbacks for tracking conversations across the web. You publish something, someone likes it and publishes […]

Blog Exercises: When Will You Not Link?

There are few people I hate in this world. I think I can count them on one hand, mostly on two fingers. We all have them, people who did us wrong and taught us to disrespect, dread, dislike, and even hate them. As tolerant as we wish we all were, that’s just the way of […]

Blog Exercises: What Words Do You Abuse Redundantly?

So, it’s word check time. Well, time to check all the words we abuse. Specifically, all the words we abuse redundantly and unnecessarily. And I’d like us to focus on the little words we add to our content, words like like, and, so, because, cause, cuz, specifically, well, and so on. In the last two […]