Blog Exercises: The IKEA Effect for Bloggers

The Ikea Effect was coined by researchers who found out what we all know but rarely admit, we put too much ownership into our own brainchild ideas and concepts.

In other words, we tend to fall in love with our own ideas and creations.

If you have ever been around kids, you’ve probably had that moment when they rushed up to you with their latest artwork. You look and see scribbles, no definitive shapes or clue as to what this is. The child is thrilled and proud of their accomplishment. The best you can do is praise them, as you should, even if you think this is crap. The child’s ego is the most precious commodity at that moment. This need to be recognized for our creativity is important, but the self-empowerment associated with the creation encourages us to go on creating, making new crap.

Explained in “Beware of the IKEA Effect, a.k.a. Being Biased Towards Your Own Ideas” from Lifehacker:

The IKEA Effect is when we attach greater value to something we make than the same product built by others. That seems natural enough, since the act of creating inspires confidence and pride. In a series of studies, however, Mochon and his colleagues also found that people who feel incompetent might be more vulnerable to the IKEA Effect, since building your own stuff is a way to “signal to others that you are competent.” Conversely, if you’re given an esteem boost, you’re not as interested in having to prove your competence and, perhaps, will be more objective about the value of your ideas/creations.

The psychological phenomenon extends beyond handcrafts, arts and crafts, and do-it-yourself. It impacts the board room, and it also impacts bloggers.

Bloggers tend to fall in love with their posts, especially if it is a big idea. If they believe it hasn’t been done before, there is even more emotional attachment and investment in the idea.

They tend to fall in love with their own points of view on a subject, sometimes not seeing the forest for the trees, or the tree in the forest.

Blog Exercises: How to Link to Comments

Do you have brilliantly intelligent and thoughtful commenters? I do. I often find something someone’s left in a post comment worth writing a blog post about and quoting.

In this Blog Exercise we’ll look at how to link to comments on your site and how to properly reference them and cite the original author in WordPress. The technique may be similar in other web publishing platforms.

Within the WordPress Administration Panels > Comments Panel, each comment features a date and time. This is wrapped in a jump or page link that goes to the comment ID number for that comment. Click this link and you will be taken to the comment within that post.

This is the link you may use to link to the comment.

Putting the comment permalink into a properly formed link, I can reference the comment with a citation link in a sentence or blockquote. I could quote the entire comment or an excerpt, whichever meets my needs for the post I’m writing featuring the comment.

For example, in the comment by Jonathan Bailey on the article, “What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content,” this expert in online copyrights justified calling copyright violations “theft.”

Blog Exercises: Stand Up For Freedom of Speech

There are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is! 399,993 to 7. They must really be baaaad. They must be OUTRAGEOUS to be separated from a group that large. “All of you words over here, you seven…baaaad words.” That’s what they told us, right?

- George Carlin

I adored George Carlin, his concerts, his books, his brilliance. If you are unfamiliar with the wisdom and comedic genius of George Carlin, start with his Wikipedia page.

George Carlin achieved fame early in his career but rose to superstar status when the US Federal Communications Department (FCC) confronted him over the usage of his famous “Seven Dirty Words” comedy routine. They used his comedy routine to create (some say reinforce) the law that gave the US government the power to regulate indecent material on public airwaves such as television and radio. This affront to the concept of freedom of speech was protested long and loudly by many, yet it continues to be in place today.

Carlin was arrested for violating obscenity laws in 1972 at Milwaukee’s Summerfest after performing his “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” routine. While that case was dismissed, in 1973, a man complained about a radio station in New York playing the same routine over the air, which brought the FCC into play and led to the prohibition on “indecent” content “during the hours when children are likely to be among the audience.”

He fought it every step of the way, and over the many years of his career, the list of words you can’t say on television, or in public, grew to hundreds, many contributed by fans. The absurdity of words “you cannot say” caught the imagination of millions as they reconsidered the concept of appropriate language. The American vernacular loosened up and many of these “dirty words” are now considered acceptable, though some words continue to be on the “bad” list.

Today, while some of these words cannot be said on television, many can be. In a recent episode from the television show Parenthood, they used several words associated with sexuality and puberty rarely heard on television, an example of the impact Carlin had on not just television but our language in general.

I’m proud of George Carlin. That’s an odd thing to say about a comedian, but it’s the truth. He was a big influence on my life, my use of language, and how I write and the words I select. Mostly I’m proud of how he continued to fight in his own way for our freedom of speech, even when the government fought back.

Your blog exercise is to consider the words you can and cannot use on your site.

In the blog exercises on site policies and blogger’s code of ethics, and an upcoming one on creating a comments policy, I want you to seriously consider what words and “language” you will or will not allow on your site.

Freedom of speech does not mean you can say anything you want. It means that you have rights and responsibilities towards the words you use in public. You need to set the terms and conditions for what language is acceptable on your blog.

We all have our moral values and guidelines about language. While I may cuss like a truck driver or logger in my day-to-day life, I won’t allow anything harsher than “shit” to be published on this site in the content and comments. Other sites I’m much more lax about profanity, but each site needs its own guidelines and rules.

What are yours? What words will you allow or edit when encountering them in the comments?

Once you’ve evaluated the list, update your comment and other liability policies to clarify your language guidelines, or stay tuned for the upcoming comments policy blog exercise.

Remember to include a hat tip link back to this post to create a trackback if you blog about this topic, or leave a properly formed link in the comments so participants can check out your blog exercise task.

You can find more Blog Exercises on Lorelle on WordPress. This is a year-long challenge to help you flex your blogging muscles.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen.

Blog Exercises: The Search for Like Minds

I tat. My 95 year old grandmother-in-law taught me almost 20 years ago. Tatting is 17th century lace making based upon island and coastal women looking for something to do besides fixing fishing nets for the men of the village. They got creative with their netting shuttles to make fine lace doilies, scarfs, edging, table cloths, clothes, and even bedspreads.

After learning the basics, I headed down to my local fabric and craft shops and found they knew nothing about it except that they needed to keep a few plastic shuttles and thread around for the old grandmothers who came in once in a while looking for tatting supplies. No one knew anything about it, so I turned to books. Even these were hard to find, written 25 to 100 years ago or more, often in another language. Instead of giving up, I felt compelled to keep tatting if just to keep the skill alive.

When the Internet finally got to saturation point with enough people and information to make it valuable to the researcher, I started hunting for tatting information. Low and behold, I wasn’t the last tatter, the youngest among the ancient women familiar with the antique technique. There was a huge world of tatters out there from Australia to Netherlands, Russia to Japan, and many men!

All these tatters had felt isolated and alone, the only ones in their community familiar with tatting. Together, we represented thousands and thousands of like minds fascinated with this old lace making skill. On the web, we gathered virtually and patterns were shared, stories told, projects photographed, and enthusiasm encouraged.

My husband’s hobby is woodworking – not just any woodworking. He wants to build furniture, big and small. He isn’t interested in the DIY home woodworking projects like making planters and benches for the yard. He wants to make chairs and tables, lamps, bookcases – serious furniture. He wants to build the tools to make that furniture, too. After months of investigating woodworking forums, he finally found one not only dedicated to furniture, but right up his alley. They love to make the tools that make the furniture. These are extreme woodworking specialists, as fascinated with their tools as much as their projects.

No matter what your skill or talent, there is a community out there for you. Today’s blog exercise is to find it.

There may be more than one group specializing in your talents. Explore them all. Create a list of all of the social media groups. Explore them thoroughly and consider sharing the list with your readers.

What makes one group different from another? Do they have different rules and processes? How do they share? What do they share with each other?

It may take more time than you have today, but schedule time to thoroughly explore these forums and social media groups. You don’t have to participate to learn about them. Read, watch, listen, and lurk. Do they look like your kind of people? A community you in which you could invest yourself?

Write up one or more posts about the groups you find and share them with your readers. Be sure and describe the value you found in each group so your readers may find a new community for themselves, or be open to sharing their opinions about the groups if they have experienced them.

Remember to include a hat tip link back to this post to create a trackback, or leave a properly formed link in the comments so participants can check out your blog exercise task.

You can find more Blog Exercises on Lorelle on WordPress. This is a year-long challenge to help you flex your blogging muscles.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen.

Blog Exercises: Battling Self-Doubt

Self-doubt happens to everyone, even bloggers. You are blogging away, full of inspiration, motivation, and energy, then wham! Something happens in your personal or professional life or you get hit upside the head by some bloggy or social media incident and your confidence is sucked away. Self-doubt moves in, and it doesn’t move in pretty.

We set great goals for ourselves, commitments like this Blog Exercises series – honestly, what was I thinking? Five days a week for a year? Tips to help you blog better! Really?

Yes. I used to publish 6 or more articles a day, so five a week is nothing. A slow down. Then why the sudden burst of self-doubt that anyone cares what I have to say about blogging or WordPress any more. Hasn’t it all been said? Who should care about my little site any more? Really, I’m not good enough.

Welcome to a peek inside of my brain. This doesn’t happen once in a while. Sometimes it happens multiple times in a single day. We all face our demons in different ways and on different schedules, but we all have them.

What do you do when your bloggy self faces self-doubt?

For me, prevention is the best protection.

Here are my tips.

• Friends: Surround yourself with energetic and passionate folks. There is no better recipe for a positive attitude.
• Get out and about: Socialize outside of your blogging world. Get your mind stimulated by things and people away from the web.
• Feeds: I love my feed reader and sometimes it can be a great source for inspiration and motivation, keeping me busy and not thinking negative thoughts. Feeds, however, can also overwhelm, so use them judiciously if you tend to get whelmed easily.
• Stay away from stats and analytics: Seriously. While you may think your blogging life depends upon the numbers, scorecards can be depressing. Traffic takes time and organic traffic, traffic led there by your dynamic energy and blog topics, can do more to generate traffic and community than number watching.
• Focus on the goals not the feedback (comments): If I blogged for comments, I’d starve. It is critical to focus on the goals of your site and your purpose for blogging, not the comments and feedback. You may get a ton of comments, you might get two. Be careful becoming dependent upon the comments as not all posts require nor need comments. Think bigger picture.
• Don’t listen to the naysayers: The world is filled with naysayers and pushers of negativity. Trust yourself to know what is right and stay away from the negative energy generators.
• Exercise your body and your mind: Exercise stimulates the creativity and positive thinking juices that flow through your body. Step out of your chair and move around. Make exercise a regular part of your life and you will find your mood and energy lifting.
• Resort to affirmations: When all else fails, I’m a fan of turning to affirmations, those quotes and sayings that motivate and inspire. Lately, I’ve been turning to Zen, Taoism, and even Confucius for those concise words that push me back on the right track. Everyone has their own sources of affirmations. Find yours and tap into it to straighten your own path.
• Focus on the long term not short term: The narrower our perspective and vision, the less light that comes into our hearts and minds. Open your mind up to the big picture, the long term view of your site and its goals to stay on track.
• Get a Physical: Negativism, lack of energy, depression, frustration – these are all part and parcel of blogging as well as work in general. These are also symptoms of a body out of balance or a medical condition. Get a physical annually, a check-up to make sure all the organs are in the right place, doing their job, and that all the natural chemicals are flowing as they should throughout your system. I’ve known people who blamed blogging for their mood when it turned out they had bigger physical problems. Get a check-up. Be sure you are blaming the right thing.

Your blog exercise today is to set up a prevention plan for when the self-doubts hit you.

You may blog about it or just make a list and hang it somewhere prominent to remind you to stay on track when you slip and slide.

We all do it. Let’s help each other out within the blogging community to make this industry a happy workplace.

Remember to include a hat tip link back to this post to create a trackback, or leave a properly formed link in the comments so participants can check out your blog exercise task.

You can find more Blog Exercises on Lorelle on WordPress. This is a year-long challenge to help you flex your blogging muscles.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen.

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 the “more” question that truly motivates us. Beyond stats, analytics, readers, comments, social media interaction, community building, income…there is more.

It’s the “bigger picture” reason to blog.

I believe in the saying, give without expectation of return. The moment I start expecting a return from this blogging business, I lose. I lose big. I think we all do.

Blogging is truly an altruistic and generous endeavor as there is absolutely no way that my income will ever match my efforts, so this isn’t the reason why I blog. It’s the bigger picture reason.

My passion for blogging is determined by a combination of my personal need to have my say, and my determination to help others have their say in this world.

I was raised at a time when “children should be seen not heard” was a popular saying. Children were a nuisance to adults. Underfoot, asking too many questions, making too much noise. We were taught to be quiet, still, and not to be annoying.

I was also hit by a truck when I was 6 years old, the consequences of the resulting traumatic brain injury leaving me with a speech impediment that took a time to overcome and other issues I struggle with even today. It takes a great deal of patience to sit through the attempts of a stutterer to hear the end of their sentence, and it takes even more patience and determination to be the stutterer trying to fight the words out of your mouth.

Maybe it was these two things that but me on the path to describe my job and life goal to help people have their say, making this the big picture of why I blog.

What is your big picture reason for blogging? Today’s blog exercise is to dig under the layers or reasons to blog to find your key reason to keep blogging.

You may have to dig deep into your psyche to figure out why you are compelled to blog. You might not, but it is important to find it as it dictates how you blog, what you blog, and what keeps you blogging consciously or unconsciously. Personally, I like being cognitive of why I’m so passionate about something.

Blog about why you blog. Go on, tell the world. I just revealed something very personal and private about myself and my reasons for blogging. It’s your turn. Let the world know why this is important to you and how it makes a difference in your life.

Remember to include a hat tip link back to this post to create a trackback, or leave a properly formed link in the comments so participants can check out your blog exercise task.

You can find more Blog Exercises on Lorelle on WordPress. This is a year-long challenge to help you flex your blogging muscles.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen.

The Brute-Force Password Attack on WordPress Sites

My mother emailed me and asked if WordPress was under attack. With all the news of last week’s attack of the Boston Marathon, the attacks on WordPress and other PHP-based web publishing sites was low on the priority list for myself and others, but this is something to take seriously. As we get back to some form of normalcy in this trigger-happy, frighting world we live in physically and virtually, it’s time to address this issue of brute-force attacks on WordPress sites.

Here is what you need to know right off the top.

• WordPress is safe.
• The brute-force login attacks are not aimed specifically at WordPress. Reports are that Joomla, Drupal, and other publishing platforms are also being attacked.
• The attack is directed specifically at logins, making use of vulnerable usernames and passwords.
• To ensure your site’s security, make sure all usernames and passwords are alphanumeric and complex enough not to be guessed easily.
• Do not share your username and password with anyone, even those you trust. Use your best judgement. Be cautious to the point of paranoia when accessing your site on shared or public networks and computers.
• Check that all WordPress sites, Plugins, and Themes are up-to-date with the latest stable release of WordPress. No excuses.
• If you or a client cannot log into a site or report an error when trying to log in, contact the web host immediately. Some web hosts have locked down direct access to the WordPress login file to protect customers until more information and a resolution can be found to strengthen login protection on their servers.
• If you are on WordPress.com, your site is secure, however your password may not be. WordPress.com forced new users to choose a unique username several years ago, and their sign-in encourages strong passwords, but it is up to you to make sure your password is strong enough.

How to Protect Your WordPress Site

All web-based sites with logins are vulnerable, not just WordPress. Here are the tips you need to know to help you secure your WordPress site.

An article on the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users, called “Brute Force Attacks” spells out what you can do from the simple to complex to protect your site from such attacks in the future. Here is a summary:

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 and survey service, create a poll inviting your readers to have their say about what you say. New to polls and surveys? See the exercise on Polls and Surveys.

You may word it any way you wish, but why not be blunt.

Ask them “Tell me what I’m talking about.” List the topics you think you cover on your site and allow them to check off multiple answers.

Let the poll run for a week, maybe a month. Then check in. What are they saying about what you talk about on your site? Is their perception the same as yours?

This isn’t a science project as it is completely subjective and not all of your fans will fill out the form, and many who know nothing about you and your site may respond, skewing the data. It is still a good way of checking in with your readers to see if your mutual expectations meet some form of reality.

Got the instructions for today’s blog exercise?

Invite your readers to tell you if you are on track, covering the topics you think you are blogging about.

If they agree with you, you are on the right track. If they don’t, it’s time to reassess your blog focus.

It may take some courage, but this is the time for feedback. You want to give them what they want, make sure you are doing so and meeting their needs.

Remember to include a hat tip link back to this post to create a trackback, or leave a properly formed link in the comments so participants can check out your blog exercise task.

You can find more Blog Exercises on Lorelle on WordPress. This is a year-long challenge to help you flex your blogging muscles.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen.

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 and audience is accustomed to footnotes.

The manual process of creating footnotes involves the use of jump or page links, links that jump to a specific spot on a page. That makes this exercise two-fold.

Today’s blog exercise is for you to use jump links to jump to a spot on your site, and what better way to practice than with a footnote or two.

Using the techniques in the article on creating footnotes, write an article with one or more places where you would typically use a link and make it a footnote instead.

This exercise hearkens back to the days of typewriters and word processors. It is still good practice and a technique to keep in mind if the occasion to use it every comes up.

Remember to include a hat tip link back to this post to create a trackback, or leave a properly formed link in the comments so participants can check out your blog exercise task.

You can find more Blog Exercises on Lorelle on WordPress. This is a year-long challenge to help you flex your blogging muscles.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen.

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 required to be on your site are copyright, disclosure, comments, privacy, and liability. I’ll cover each as we go forward with these Blog Exercises, helping you to understand each one and offer examples of these policies from other blogs and websites.

If your site is considered a commercial, business, non-profit, or “open to the public” site such as a government agency, you are required in some countries to have one or more of these policies on your site. Know the laws for your region, and cover all your bases with these basic policies.

Policies may be featured separately on individual web pages (called Pages in WordPress, not posts) or all on the same web page on your site, typically titled “Legal” or “Policies.” It depends upon how many policies you need, policy points, and how verbose you are with your policies.

I’d like to begin this process of setting or updating your site policies by considering your code of ethics and practices as a blogger. By understanding where you stand when it comes to your own moral and ethical values regarding your blogging efforts will help you choose which legal policies you need on your site, and how to frame them.

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 very special people who use the royal ‘we’.

- George Carlin

Do you “we” yourself or “I?”

The royal “we” on a person or single author site can be annoying, yet we all do it. It can be used judiciously, bringing your audience along for the ride as we explore a topic together. Or it might be presumptuous if you constantly refer to yourself in the plural, a community of one on your site.

Do you use the personal or royal pronoun consistently or inconsistently. Go through your site and pay close attention to which pronoun you use to refer to yourself – or if you refer to yourself in any way. Do you? Or are you invisible on your site?

There are no right or wrong ways, just consistency.

People take personal pronoun usage seriously. Speaking about your experience, using “I” is important so we understand that this is your journey, your perspective, your life lesson.

Using the royal “we,” you bring the reader in on the adventure, but you may also push them away.

Which do you use and why? If you are using it improperly, consider editing your past posts.

Your blog exercise today is to check the status of your royal we.

Be aware as you review past posts and write your next post of your use of third person and inclusive references. Are you being truly inclusive or annoying and presumptuous?

If you wish to blog this topic, remember to include a hat tip link back to this post to create a trackback, or leave a properly formed link in the comments so participants can check out your blog exercise task.

You can find more Blog Exercises on Lorelle on WordPress. This is a year-long challenge to help you flex your blogging muscles.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen.

WordPress Introduction Course in Vancouver, Washington

I will be teaching the WordPress I Introduction course at Clark College Corporate and Continuing Education starting Saturdays, April 27 – July 13, 2013, 9am – noon, in Vancouver, Washington, just across the river from the Airport at the Columbia Tech Center. What a great way to get to learn about how WordPress works without suffering rush hour evening traffic!

Help me spread the word. If you know of someone in the Washington/Oregon area in need of WordPress help, advice, and training, please let them know. This is a unique class taught by a long-time WordPress expert – me – and you know me already, so the class has to be good, right? Thank you.

How Does the WordPress Class Work

Similar to my college courses on WordPress, this course is a basic introduction to WordPress focused on content creation, management, development, and organization. It includes the basics of social media interactivity, web writing, WordPress Themes, and WordPress Plugins, all the core things you need to know to create your own site or update it to make it a more enjoyable and beneficial experience for your readers and customers. Unlike the college credit courses, this course proceeds at a slower pace, focused on the needs of the students rather than the goals of a degree.

The course is presented in several phases. The first few weeks, the focus is concentrated on your own class site, an experimental site on WordPress.com, to introduce you to WordPress core structure and content organization with the main focus on content, how to present it, organize it, and how to build your site around your message.

We literally go back to the A, B, Cs of WordPress so you learn the terminology as well as how to teach a client how to use the site you design and develop if you are a web designer or developer. Content developers and strategists love this part as we focus on what to put on your site as well as where to put it.

The middle part of the course introduces you to WordPress Theme concepts, designing, customizing, and styling your site around the content. We discuss usability, navigation, functionality, and features of WordPress design and development.

The last part of the course involves students working together on a team final project: building a commercial site for a hypothetical company. The last section puts together everything learned during the course and has you working with your team on content strategies, structures, design, layout, and production. Students will present their team sites as if they are web designers and developers, learning more about how the entire process, from concept to release, works, helping them also understand better how to make their own decisions for their own sites and how to work with web designers and developers.

By the end of the course, the participant will have an experimental class site from which they can build or transfer over to their own site, the experience of building a professional site, and a full understanding of how WordPress works, how to build a WordPress site, and be on the right track for developing WordPress sites.

Slow-Paced, Non-Credit: As this is a non-credit college course with a certificate available, and designed for the community, it is a slower paced class with much time spent answering questions about the participants personal and professional needs on their own current WordPress sites or transferring to WordPress. Each class is unique, paced and structured to meet the needs of the students.

The class is designed for those new to blogging, web publishing, and WordPress. The pace of the course is slow and focused on the individual needs of the participants. It is ideal for the personal blogger, family history/genealogy blogger, and small business owner or employee wishing to have an active site.

No Commute! I chose to have this particular class offered on Saturday mornings rather than weekday evenings. I’ve heard from many people that they cannot make the long drive through rush hour traffic after work to get to the evening classes at Clark College, Clark Continuing Ed, and PCC. Many wanting this course live more than an hour away from Portland, making the trip during the week challenging. By holding it Saturday mornings, hopefully these barriers will be removed and you will have the time to take this course without the stress of the commute.

Join the Fun and Magic! On a personal note, rarely have I had more joy in my life than working with my college students to learn about WordPress. I think I have learned more about how WordPress works from my students than my previous ten years working with WordPress. These are people truly dedicated to having their say on the way, to sharing their passions and helping others to do the same. We have too much fun in the course, but we learn from each other, and our sites show the benefits of those lessons. Come join the magic.

REGISTER: You may register online through their site, Clark College Corporate and Continuing Education, or by phone, 360-992-2939, or in person at the new Continuing Education offices in the West Coast Bank Building.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen.

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 Seasons
• Blog Exercises: Current Events January
• Blog Exercises: Honor the Past with Anniversaries and Birthdays
• Blog Exercises: Current Events for February
• Blog Exercises: Weekly Link Roundups
• Blog Exercises: Weather Reports
• Blog Exercises: Schedule Blogging Time
• Blog Exercises: How Many Posts Can Your Audience Handle?
• Blog Exercises: Blasts from the Past
• Blog Exercises: March Current Events
• Blog Exercises: Post-Op Care Content
• Blog Exercises: Add Industry Events to Your Editorial Calendar
• Blog Exercises: What Are Your Reference Articles
• Blog Exercises: April Current Events

So far, you should have the following as appropriate and applicable to your site on your calendar.

• Holiday-related posts
• Industry Events, Conferences, and Conventions
• Seasonal Activities
• Industry and personal anniversaries and birthdays
• Various current events and news stories
• Regularly scheduled link round-ups
• Weather articles
• Posts publicizing past articles
• Follow-up articles
• Article series
• Reference and resource articles to do

Your blog exercise is to review these and look for updated information on these events or additions. Many industries start releasing their schedules for fall, winter, and the following year about now. Get them on your list. Start making plans to attend, review, or cover the event in some way.

As you review your editorial calendar and task list, look for gaps in the material and subject matter. The editorial calendar and your project lists give you a big picture view of content on your site. Stand back and look for the holes that need filling and add these to your project and task lists, even to scheduling them on your editorial calendar.

If you blog about this, remember to include a hat tip link back to this post to create a trackback, or leave a properly formed link in the comments so participants can check out your blog exercise task.

You can find more Blog Exercises on Lorelle on WordPress. This is a year-long challenge to help you flex your blogging muscles.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen.

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 have to struggle to find any connection with the world around us on our blogs.

Some bloggers do nothing but blog the news, each in their own way. Citizen journalists are spreading across the globe, reporting on the daily life of their communities as well as attention-getting news. Some report as witnesses. Others report from an observer perspective, commenting on the world and events around them.

Your Blog Exercises today is to blog about a current event that directly or indirectly impacts your blog and your business.

Remember to include a hat tip link back to this post to create a trackback, or leave a properly formed link in the comments so participants can check out your blog exercise task.

You can find more Blog Exercises on Lorelle on WordPress. This is a year-long challenge to help you flex your blogging muscles.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen.

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 just said?

“I’m old so I don’t know any better…” Really? You are old enough and learned enough to get here – you turned on your computer, started the browser and made your way through search engines and referrals here – why waste my time with this excuse?

“It’s not my full-time job. I’m just playing.” If you don’t want to be serious about this, go play somewhere else and don’t waste my time as this is my full-time job. Respect that it took many years and even more mistakes to get to this point.

“I haven’t learned that yet.” You are learning now. That’s the way of learning. You don’t know, you want to know, you learn, then you learned and consider yourself educated. Be patient with yourself.

“I’m new at this.” Good. I like that. Now, shut up and learn.

The proper response to advice and instructions is always “thank you.”

Ask questions to help you learn more but never offer excuses which get in the way of you learning. Excuses tell the person you really don’t want to learn, and you don’t respect them or their time.

This may be one of the more challenging Blog Exercises this year. I want you to check your excuses at the door, on your blog and in your social web interactions.

In other words, learn to say thank you more.

Thank you is the most powerful phrase in the world in any language. It shows grace, kindness, respect, and acknowledgment. It tells the person they’ve been heard, which is what we all want, right?

I didn’t learn this naturally. Liz Strauss, a fantastic mentor, taught me this concept with a whip and chain on my virtual back. I was an expert at excuses.

As you go forward blogging and interacting on the social web, directly or virtually, increase your ratio of thank yous to excuses.

Start at at work and home. If you are going to be late for an appointment, instead of spending the whole time racing there thinking up excuses for your tardiness, concentrate on getting there safely and tell them “Thank you for your patience,” and move on to the reason that brought you together. If your children offer excuses, teach them to stop and stay thank you instead. Live by example and say thank you to them when they come to you with comments or information that makes your excuses rise to your lips.

If someone says something odd, nasty, or useless on your site, say thank you no matter what you think of their comment. They put a lot of thought and effort into hitting the reply button. Just because their words may not speak well of them, they tried. Thank them.

Thank those who blog about you on their blogs, sending their readers in your direction. They worked hard to collect links and the information in this article so give them the appreciation they deserve for their efforts to connect with you. You may never know where such a connection might lead if you don’t acknowledge their efforts with a thank you first.

Someone retweets a tweet or shares a Facebook post, or your own article across the web, take a moment to say thank you when you spot it. They are doing you a favor. Thank them.

Consider thanking your readers once in a while. They are the energy force that helps drives your site forward, giving you the feedback you want and need. Say thanks by recognizing them once in a while, in the comments and in the posts. You don’t blog in a vacuum. Thank them.

Find as many ways as you can to stop the excuses and start the thank yous. Trust me, it will change your life.

Remember to include a hat tip link back to this post to create a trackback, or leave a properly formed link in the comments so participants can check out your blog exercise task.

You can find more Blog Exercises on Lorelle on WordPress. This is a year-long challenge to help you flex your blogging muscles.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen.