We’re all looking for ways to make sure our kids grow up to be responsible and well-behaved citizens of the world. Every parenting handbook tells you that positive reinforcement is the way to go: Reward charts work! But I’ve been through a few charts and systems and I haven’t had much success.

Reward System #1: The Sticker Chart

The sticker chart allows you to hand-create a weekly chart and issue stickers when tasks are completed or goals achieved.

Pros: stickers are cheap.

Cons:

Boy Wonder dutifully tried to earn stickers every day but began to negotiate for additional lame ass ways to earn more stickers. Wiping your butt does not entitle you to a sticker, nor does putting your shoes on when I ask you to.

Little CEO declared that she was placing an embargo on stickers. But only at home, where they were attached to chores. At school? Love stickers. Stickers are good.

Gigi forgot where she put the stickers. And the chart, once secured to the fridge via magnet, got doused in ketchup and melting ice left sitting in the water dispenser catch tray.

Reward System #2: Melissa and Doug Magnetic Chore Chart

The Melissa and Doug magnetic chart provides you precreated chore magnets to place on the chart. For each day of the week that the task is completed, happy face magnets can be placed to track the child’s progress.

Pros: kids love magnets. You don’t have to keep buying additional items. Chart is customizable.

Cons:

It’s like a $30 chart. Not cheap.
Boy Wonder and Little CEO used the magnets as checker pieces.
The dog ate several when they were left on the floor.
Gigi assigned fourteen chores to each child. Probably too many.
After the first week, Gigi forgot to award magnets when tasks were completed.

Reward System #3: Marble Jar

The marble jar concept involves giving marbles to kids when they do what you want them to do. When the jar is filled, they get a reward.

Pros: kids like marbles. Shiny!!!!!

Cons:

Boy Wonder and Little CEO fought over the Giant Marble and who deserved it more.
Boy Wonder and Little CEO stole marbles out of each other’s jars.
Boy Wonder and Little CEO decided to whip the marbles at each other. Note: marbles hurt.
Little CEO cried because there were no purple glittery marbles.
Marbles are very noisy when dropped into huge glass jars.
Gigi forgot to award marbles after the first week. The marble jars had more dust than marbles.

Reward System #4: Ticket Box

The ticket box system allows children to earn raffle-like tickets that are then put into a box, to be cashed in at various times for small prizes or larger rewards.

Pros: it’s kind of like having Chuck E. Cheese in your house, because kids love those damn tickets.

Cons:

Gigi never remembered to buy the small prizes so the kids could cash in their tickets.
Gigi never remembered to set up what tasks or behavior were worth what amount of tickets.
Gigi never got a cute box all decorated into which the tickets would go.
Anytime Gigi left the house and left husband in charge, husband would forget to award tickets. Cue children crying.

You see, all these methods of positive reinforcement require as much training and discipline for the parents as they do for the kids.

That’s why I’m now considering

Reward System #5: Hard Ass with a Side Of Negative Reinforcement

This system involves Gigi being a hard ass. Children must do their chores and behave well or risk hearing things like, “You must do it BECAUSE I SAID SO” or “If you do not make your bed I will take away all of your blankets and make you sleep on snot rags.” or “If you continue to fight with your sister, I am taking you down to the boxing studio and we are going to spar. How would you like that? Huh? Do you want to spar against Mommy? Because I will take you DOWN, little boy.” or “If you forget to brush your hair one more time, I am going to give you a mullet. Do you know what a mullet is?”

Pros: I like being a hard ass. And, I’m good at it.

I don’t have to make ticket boxes or marble jars. I don’t have to assign values to tasks or remember to hand out stickers. I only have to remember to be extremely mean.

Cons: my children may end up on Intervention in 15 years.

On Monday, I shared 5 ways to build community without commenting.

But today, I want to share a personal story with you that speaks to another important dimension of community building that shouldn’t be overlooked.

At the end of last year, I was bemoaning the lack of visitors I was getting to KludgyMom. People just weren’t coming by – and I could feel it. I couldn’t pinpoint why, though. I just knew that something was fundamentally changing about my blog. All of the things I talked about on Monday to keep my community going? I was still doing all of them. But yet, the community was leaving.

In  January, I decided to do a 2011 “Year in Review” post, that would allow me to share some of my favorite posts from the prior year with readers.

In order to do that, I had to spend a large chunk of time going back through my archives and reading through a whole year of posts.

It all started off well enough. I clicked through January and February’s posts, and thought, “Wow, I was really on a roll back then! Great content, some really well-written humor posts, helpful blog tips, right on!”

March through June were pretty good, too. I continued to mentally pat myself on the back.

But as I started to look through July through September, I spotted fewer and fewer posts that made me go, “Oh yeah! I remember that post! That was really good!”

October through December was a veritable blog wasteland.

In a few short months, my blog had gone from excellent to meh to OMG lousy.

My blog was dying – and I didn’t know it before it was almost too late.

Think of your blog as a delectable treat you give your readers – an ice cream sundae with a bunch of amazing toppings.

All of those toppings – the whipped cream, the sprinkles, the hot fudge sauce – are awesome. They make the sundae better. But without the ice cream, there is no sundae.

And you know all those ideas on how to attract and keep readers? They are awesome, too. But they are only the toppings of your blog.

The ice cream of your blog is your content. Without the ice cream, there is no delectable sundae . Without awesome content, there is no delectable blog.

And when your blog is no longer a tasty treat for readers, your community will go away. No amount of paying it forward, retweeting, answering questions or bestowing of blog awards can fix it.

The only thing that can fix it is to add the ice cream back in.

So if you’re feeling like your blog has stagnated, or that you are losing visitors, consider taking a long, hard look at your content and determining whether you’ve stopped giving your readers the ice cream sundae they came for.

I’ve tried to refocus on my content this year. The best compliment I recently received was from my friend Tracy of Sellabit Mum. who tweeted me: “Good to see you blogging like you used to.”

Give ‘em the whole sundae: ice cream, toppings and all.

Fun fact: I originally started blogging about food. At no time did I ever intend to be writing posts about The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills or the time that my kid’s room smelled like butt. I really just wanted to share recipes with my family.

I thought that was a pretty good idea until I discovered the food blogging community, at which point I realized that I was a poser in the food blogging space.  Yes, I still blog recipes I try out from time to time, because I enjoy it. But one of my biggest limitations is, and always has been, my food photography.

Those damn food bloggers offer up numerous drool-worthy shots in every post. Tender bits of flaky bread dangling above a plate. Succulent fruit parfaits in pretty glasses. They can make a bowl of OATMEAL look good. When has your oatmeal ever looked good?

I find it much easier to make excuses for my craptastic food photography than to just own my lack of mad photog skillz.

So here are:

1. My house is devoid of natural light. I’m blaming this on the fact that our house is oriented north-south, and we only one measly window that faces east-west. The interior of the house is a gloomy, gray, hazy place. Kind of like Chicago 11 months and 15 days out of the year (the other 15 days of the year, people fry their white skin in the sun until it’s as red as a fire hydrant).

2. I don’t have cool plates. Or napkins. Or pretty table linens. It’s true. My plates suck. I have solid green plates, that look gray when I photograph them in my murky light. I have red Fiestaware plates that are super reflective and shiny. I have white plates that look okay, but when I make a beige-ish food it has a camouflage effect. I don’t have those perfectly patterned dishes that look right out of Pinterest. I don’t have cool rustic bowls and soup crocks that have a vintage patina. Table linens? Why? And…we don’t have napkins. We have our sleeves.

3. I haven’t read the instruction manual on my camera. I just take 100 photos and hope one turns out. Most of the time, I am 0 for 100, due to #1 and #2 above.

4. I don’t have a macro lens. My baked goods, which are delightful in person, look like corned beef hash without the right closeup lens.

5. Instagram needs more filters. When are they going to add an In Focus filter, a Filter To Fit The Entire Shot In The Screen, and a No, Your Food Does Not Look Like Alpo filter?

6. I don’t know how to plate well. Part of great food photography is not just what the food is, but how it’s presented. I don’t know how to arrange crap on a plate all fancy-schmancy like. Listen, I’m feeding a 6’5 carnivore and two rugrats. Your food gets slopped on a plate so I can sit my ass down and eat before my food is cold. And you’re lucky if it’s not on styrofoam. Fun fact #2: I don’t know how to dress well, either.

7. My silverware has spots all over it. I may be the only person who has stainless steel flatware with – you guessed it- stains. So if I want to add a fork or spoon to my picture – you know, because that’s what the awesome food bloggers do – it looks like a piece of rusted metal in the photo. Appetizing!

8. I don’t cook in the daylight. Maybe I should start the Vampire Food Blog. All food cooked after it gets dark and all photos of said food taken under the harsh glare of artificial lighting.

9. No matter where I stand, I get a shadow.  I don’t care where I am in my house, there is always a shadow on my food photos. Because of said nighttime cooking. This is called the Goth genre of cooking.

10.  I have no good outdoor backdrops. If I left my murky house during daylight hours to take photos, the choice of backdrops would be a) dying desert plants, b) garbage cans and recycling bins, c) concrete patio, d) grass with dog poo, e) hot tub that needs servicing or f) old wooden fence that is washed out and broken. Yum!

So that’s my list of excuses. And I’m sticking to it!  How’s YOUR food photography?

This week’s SITS31DBBB challenge topic is Building Community. It’s fair to say that a strong and vibrant community is at the top of nearly every blogger’s wish list.

Most people – myself included – build community by commenting on other people’s blogs. It’s a great way to reciprocate support and get your name in a lot of different places.

However, I encountered a challenge when I began working full-time: there just aren’t enough hours in the day for me to read more than a handful of other bloggers’ posts. I’d like to read 100 a day; but something’s gotta give. I know I’m not the only one in this predicament.

And that’s when I realized that if I were to continue to maintain this blog, I’d need to keep a sense of community with my friends and readers in other ways.

Last year, I wrote about how in the past, commenting was the currency of blogging – and that I feel with our busy lives, perhaps we need new currencies - a new way to establish and maintain our communities.

Here are 5 ways you can build a blog community that don’t involve commenting.

Meet A Need

What is it that your readers NEED? I can tell from my statistics that my readers most enjoy my posts on blogging tips. They are thirsty for more information on how to blog better. So I’ve expanded beyond just writing about blog tips. I host a StumbleUpon group in my BlogFrog forum so people can learn about StumbleUpon. I created an Idea Bank for bloggers seeking topics to write about. I participate in Facebook groups where I share my learnings with others.

Figure out what your readers respond to best. Then, brainstorm ways to take those topics beyond just blog posts and turn them into valuable services that your readers will appreciate. Not only does this help you build community, but it also differentiates you from the crowd.

Work Behind The Scenes

A lot of the work I do to establish community is stuff you’ll never see, because most of it happens outside the four corners of my blog. If I see a blog opportunity that is perfect for somebody I know, I pass it on to them. I come up with different ways to feature readers on my blog. Recently, a few blog friends lost their giveaways sponsors and needed help – my partner over at Have Wine, Will Drink, Natalie, and I stepped in to provide a prize. And most importantly, if a reader emails me with a question (usually it’s blogging related), I try to do my utmost to respond as quickly and thoroughly as I can. I’ve established some of my best reader connections via email.

You can do the same with your readers. Think about ways that you can work behind the scenes to establish real connections with people.

Pay It Forward

Let me repeat: pay it forward. There are a million random acts of bloggy kindness that you can do each day to forge connections. These acts can be so much more meaningful than leaving a brief comment somewhere. When you see one of your readers tweeting out a post, retweet it. Tag their Facebook fan page. Give them a shout out for Follow Friday. Pin one of their delicious recipes. Recommend a blogger to a PR rep for an opportunity. Surprise someone who least expects it by asking them to guest post.

Share Your Expertise

Don’t be afraid to share your expertise. When I first started blogging, I wanted to keep everything I was learning to myself. I mistakenly thought I was hurting my own chances at advancement by sharing my knowledge with others. But the blogosphere is not corporate America. Blogging is founded upon sharing. And the more you share, the more you get back.

Attend A Blog Conference

Skype, Twitter, email, Facebook and blog comments are all terrific ways to connect with people. But there’s something about meeting a person face-to-face that can turn a casual follower into a loyal one, or a stranger into a new friend. For example, Brittany from Mommywords and I met for the first time at Mom 2.0 last year. We had been connected well before that, but being able to interact live, and chat over a glass of wine, deepened that relationship. Same with Amy from Eat.Live.Laugh.Shop. I met her at Bloggy Boot Camp Austin and have read her blog ever since.

Don’t Measure Your Worth By Counting Comments

Don’t despair if you don’t get a ton of comments on your blog. That doesn’t necessarily mean that people aren’t reading! Last year I went up to my kids’ elementary school and to my surprise, I was greeted with “Loved your blog post today!” by several neighbors. They never comment, but clearly, they are there…reading, and {sometimes} enjoying! Not everyone has time to comment, so give yourself a break!

So that’s it – I hope some of these ways help alleviate the burden you might feel of “OMG I must comment on 1000 blogs today to get followers.” Commenting is an important piece, but the beauty of social media is that there is more than one way to skin the cat.  Good luck!

As some of you know, we moved back to Southern California about 6 months ago. The last time we lived here, we didn’t have children.

Upon coming back, I realized that there were some things that hadn’t changed about this place.  But now, we have a different lens through which we see things here. A bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived lens that is the hallmark of a parent.

And it is through this lens that I ask,

WHERE IS THE PARENTAL SUPERVISION UP IN HERE????

One thing I stand pretty firm on is not letting my kids play outside in the front of the house without a parent being there. Let’s review the facts:

My kids are 8 1/2 and 6 1/2.

We do not live on a cul-de-sac.

Our street is often used as cut-through for harried moms flying down the road at high speed because they’re late dropping their kids off at the school, which is a block away.

We have TONS of cars on the street (this is California, where no one would waste a perfectly good garage on a car, when it can be a man cave, home gym, storage area, crash pad or sex dungeon).

We haven’t met many of the neighbors outside of our immediate ones, none of whom have children. (read: we have no friends on the block)

So unless my husband or I can play Vigilante Traffic Cop, my kids have to play in the backyard.

Which I’m cool with.

But what I’ve noticed is that my parenting practices don’t seem to be in keeping with the rest of the neighborhood.

Every day on the street, kids that are between the ages of 5 and 9 are playing on the sidewalks and streets, completely unsupervised. There isn’t even a whiff of a parent around. One child is turned loose in the early morning on Saturdays – he’s definitely no older than 7 – and he is out alone all day. Often, I see HIM supervising his younger siblings, one of whom is about 3 and can often be found toddling into the street until he pays enough attention to her to grab her and pull her back on the sidewalk.

Yes, yes, I know what the free rangers would say. So let’s assume that the rate of children being seriously injured in an accident or kidnapped has not gone up in the -ahem- 35 years since I was my son’s age. Let’s further assume that my children are responsible rule-followers (which they mostly are). We’ve been here 6 months and no kid’s been killed or kidnapped on the street yet, so what the heck am I worried about?

I’m still not going to let my kids play outside unsupervised. Why?

Because several things HAVE changed.

There are many, many more cars on the road than there were in the 70s. There are more lost souls running around – homeless, mentally ill – than there were back then. And most importantly, there are many more distractions now: cell phones, stereos, text messages, GPS units, all chattering at us while we’re trying to drive a car.

If we knew and trusted our neighbors, or we lived on a cul de sac, or other factors were different, I might not have the same steadfastness that I do.

Do I worry that I’m raising a couple of helpless children? A bit.  Will I regret not letting them run more freely? Maybe.

I know the time is coming where I need to loosen the reins a bit, but my gut tells me not right now, not under these circumstances.

Helicopters hover. But so do hummingbirds. One is brash and noisy and creates dizzying chaos and confusion as it nears the earth. One is delicate and quiet and instinctively knows when to hover, and when to flitter away. Maybe there is such a thing as a helicopter parent. But I’m not one of them. I”m a hummingbird parent.  And I’m ok with that connotation.

I am SUPER interested, for those of you that have kids over the age of 5, what level of supervision you place on your kids when they’re outside? It will give me a great bar by which to measure my own level of protectiveness.

Thank you to who?Comics for sponsoring this post and encouraging my child to read biographies in comic book form! Please click here to learn more about the app. And follow who? Comics on Twitter for updates!

It always makes me sound {and feel} old, but I’m just shocked at how interactive learning has become since I was a kid. Sure, my 3rd grader still has to memorize his multiplication tables and write out spelling words – there’s still a place for rote learning in the educational system – but it’s awesome how a lot of what he learns is based on a game format, displayed on a computer, or incorporates other interactive features.

One subject that doesn’t seem to have caught on to the age of digital learning as quickly as the others is history. Over the Christmas break, Boy Wonder became smitten with learning about famous baseball players in history. Other than reading a historical narrative on the web, his only real alternative was to head to the bookstore and pick up a hard copy biography. After blazing through those books, he moved to learning about Pearl Harbor and the Civil War.

My kid is a pretty good student, but because he’s a video gamer and a visual learner, the more interactive we can get with him, the better.

And now, there’s a really neat iPad app on the market that makes learning history and reading biographies a bit more fun for kids: comics on iPad meet history.

The who?Comics app is virtual comic book – only the characters aren’t Betty, Veronica or Spiderman – they’re important figures in history. Kids can learn about such folks as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Marie Curie, Vincent Van Gogh, Henry Thoreau, Abraham Lincoln, and many more.

My son checked out the Bill Gates and Abraham Lincoln comics.

The graphics on the comics are really high quality and they look and feel like a real comic book. We also liked that you could tap the bottom of the screen and easily look ahead to see where you were in each chapter of the book. My son said:

I really like the comics because they’re fun and not as boring as reading regular stuff. It makes it a lot more interesting.

One other fun element to the app is the badge system. You know how you earn badges on Foursquare for checking into places? Well with who?Comics, kids can earn badges for various achievements through their reading.

I do have a couple of cautions about the app.

First, the comics were extremely long. It took my son over an hour to read just one, spread over two nights. He did start to get a little frustrated with the length. That being said, a normal biography would take longer than that to read.

Second, the vocabulary was a bit advanced. Boy Wonder is almost 9 and reads above grade level, but there were some terms that I felt were a little complicated. There are definitions provided for some words and persons at the bottom of the comic page, yet I did still think that it was just a bit more advanced than I expected it to be.

Overall, a great and fun learning tool for kids who have an interest in learning about historical figures! I’d love to see them add some fun pop quizzes at the end of each chapter!

Thank you again to who? Comics for sponsoring my post. Please click here to learn more about the app. Visit who? Comics for updates. I was selected for this opportunity by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions expressed here are my own. #CleverWhoComics #spon

It’s the start of a New Year and I’m trying to stay balanced and inspired in 2012.

Of course, Pinterest is always great for creating inspiration boards.  But there are other ways that you can organize your goals, plans, even household to-dos - just by using Windows 7. So here are some of my Windows 7 tips (and a OneNote trick, too!)

Change Your Wallpaper To Something Inspiring!

I am bound and determined to get to Italy before I die. I am already pretty upset that I’m 43 and still haven’t reached this life goal. I decided that this year, maybe if I visualize it more, it will happen. But I don’t spend a lot of time laying on the couch daydreaming. I do spend a lot of time on my laptop – so I’ve made my wallpaper my visualization tool for an Italy trip by using some of the fab Windows 7 travel wallpapers!

Windows 7 has tons of free downloadable wallpapers. I chose a series of rotating scenes of Italian landscapes. So whenever I’m feeling a bit low, I look at this:

or this:

Windows 7′s personalization gallery has tons of options. You can pick from landscapes, nature, animations, and a whole bunch more.

Organize Your Recipes With OneNote!

Is your recipe collection like mine? You know, a scattered mess of stuff on Pinterest, ripped out pages from magazines, old-school recipe cards, and binders full of printed-out recipes? It’s crazy! But if you’ve got OneNote installed on your system, Microsoft offers a great OneNote recipe cookbook template.

Using OneNote makes it easy to combine recipes you have saved in Word with stuff you find online – all in an easy-to-read, easy-to-categorize format.

Here’s a sample of the cookbook I’ve started. The template comes with pre-set categories of recipes to get you started, like Chicken, Beef, Soups and Salads. You create separate pages within each category on which you place your recipes. You can copy recipes right from the web, and it imports into OneNote just as you see it on the web page. Or, you can import a scanned image of a handwritten recipe. So easy!

You can also use OneNote to plan vacation, organize projects, and more. It’s super flexible and super customizable! You can see all of the premade OneNote downloadable templates (they’re free!).

Make a 2011 Photo Slideshow with Windows MovieMaker

Once I’ve taken my last photo of the year, I like to collect all of the photos for the year together and pop them into a quick photo slideshow. I like to use Windows MovieMaker because it’s so easy to import all of my photos, arrange them, set up transition effects, add titles and captions, and put it all to a soundtrack. Once the movie is exactly how I want it, I burn it to DVD and give it to the grandparents as a gift (and keep one copy for us!).

Windows makes it easy with step by step instructions on their site, too.

That’s it! Hope you found a great way to get inspired or organized today!

Disclosure: I am a member of the Microsoft Windows Champions program. I was provided use of a laptop this year and often receive product samples and information for my participation. I was not compensated for this post and all opinions are my own.

If you read my blog regularly, you know that from time to time I do sponsored posts. This sort of blog advertising is a great way to earn a little extra income and pay for my blog expenses. But sometimes, these sorts of requests are shady.

Most PR requests are safe (although many are not lucrative to be worth your time). But others can be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Friends, I don’t care what someone offers to pay you. Some things are not worth your reputation, and the level of trust that you’ve built up with your readership.

Here are the type of paid blogging opportunities you should consider avoiding:

They ask you to not disclose that your post is sponsored.  

Big no-no. Don’t call your own ethics into question by dealing with people who clearly have none. A blatant disregard for the FTC guidelines is truly dangerous to the blogging community, and to consumers. Disclosures help consumers make informed decisions. Disclosures help the blog community to be a standard-bearer of honesty and trust.

I received this email from a company just two days ago:

Hi, I have clients that I like to get blog posts written for and published on various blogs. The article itself doesn’t have to be too long…maybe 200-300 words. It also doesn’t have to be about my client (unless I otherwise specify)…just be able to use the anchor text of the link in the article (I only want 1 link in the post). The only other condition is that I CAN NOT have it say “sponsored post” or “paid post” anywhere. If you really want to meet the FTC guidelines then you could use an image to say it’s a paid post…just not text. I don’t want Google to be able to read that it’s paid for. Examples of an image being used can be found here or here. If you do agree with the conditions above then please email me back answering the following 2 questions:

1. How much will you charge me per post?
2. Will you be sharing these posts on your social accounts? (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

What’s wrong with this email? Everything.

This person asked me to BLATANTLY IGNORE FTC guidelines around disclosing paid relationships.

For those of you who aren’t aware of the FTC guidelines, you need to be aware of them. Read a great FAQ on them on the FTC website. They apply to you if you do any sort of work with PR: if you have a relationship with a brand or advertiser that includes payment or product, that relationship must be clearly disclosed in your post. A “blanket” disclosure covering your entire blog is not sufficient.

They ask you to skirt the FTC guidelines in any other way.

Let’s revisit the email above. Anticipating that I might be concerned with FTC guidelines, the guy provided me with a suggested back-door solution if “I really want to meet FTC guidelines” by hiding the disclosure in an image.

If you were reading a product review on this blog, would you go and click an image to determine if I had placed there a disclosure that I had been paid? No, you wouldn’t. You expect that disclosure to be at the beginning or end of a blog post. Representatives who ask you to fudge the system have no moral compass. This sort of loophole-seeking doesn’t do anybody good BUT the business for whom you’re compromising your reputation.

They require follow links.

This one can probably be the subject of debate, but I don’t work with companies who require follow links in sponsored posts. Why? Because again, the only party that benefits from these type of links are the companies that insist on them, and in fact, I can be penalized by Google for doing it.

When high-quality sites link to another site with a “follow link,” that site is given a “boost” with Google.   However, Google does not love paid posts or sponsored content because, well, it’s advertising. So paid posts that include follow links are often penalized by Google – big time. You can read all about no follow links in this About.com article on no follow tags. No reputable blog network I’ve worked with has ever required me to place a follow link.

It sounds too good to be true.

It probably is. Disreputable folks will spend email paragraphs flattering you and making it seem like it’s easy-peasy to make money. But there’s usually a catch with these people. Trust your gut. If it doesn’t feel right, don’t even go down the path. I have a group of friends who routinely circulate PR requests among each other as a sanity check: “Does this seem weird?” “Is this something you would accept?” There’s no better place to utilize your blog buddies.

The request is clearly a mass email.

Not all mass PR or paid blogging requests are shady, but some are. Take a look at the email. Are you addressed by your real name? Does the copy reference anything specific about your blog?  Are there tons of misspellings? Professional and reputable PR people take the time to read a person’s blog and do their diligence before approaching a blogger with an opportunity.  Same goes for blog networks that offer their members opportunities – they’ve already qualified you and it’s okay if they send you an opportunity via newsletter. Unprofessional people treat you like a number because guess what? They don’t care about establishing relationships, they care about their search engine rankings – and nothing else.

It’s pretty easy to be a trustworthy and well-respected blogger. Tell the truth. Don’t be afraid to disclose. Be selective on the opportunities you take. Don’t associate yourself with companies who want to evade the system.

Most importantly, focus on the positive: there are scads of fabulous PR opportunities with plenty of reputable agencies and companies. If we all just say no to the shady ones, the cream will keep rising to the top.

The theme for #SITS31DBBB this week is A Look Under The Hood. It’s a time to dig in and check out the nuts and bolts of your blog and make sure stuff is working optimally. It’s a key exercise in learning how to blog better.

This can be a scary and intimidating process, even for a seasoned blogger. There is so much to think about and stay on top of – it’s truly mind-boggling, and it explains why so many people drop out of blogging after a time.

So..don’t get mired in it all. It feels like a giant mountain to climb, and it distracts you from what you do best – write!

There are FREE tools out there – tools that will take the wrenches right out of your hand and do the looking for you, package up what they find in a nice pretty report in {mostly} plain English, and let you focus on how to actually fix what may be broken or needs improvement.

Today, I’m going to walk you through one of those free tools. It’s called Website Grader, and it’s marketed by Hubspot. They use it as a lead generation funnel for their paid services, so you have to endure a couple of “sign up for this!” links, but if you can get past that, this is a superdillyawesome tool for you to see what’s up with your blog.

All you do to get started is enter your blog URL and your email address. {You can enter other URLs of “competing” businesses, but, er, I don’t recommend that. You’ll go down a real rabbit hole and get very depressed that your blog’s grade is way lower than your BFFs.} Hit enter, Website Grader churns away for a bit, and then spits back out a browser version of your report as well as an emailed copy. Let’s take a look at mine and see what you get.

My blog scores 99 out of 100. Remember that this is a big picture look at your site’s nuts and bolts and on other grader tools, my site scores much lower. After it gives you your general score, you can scroll down and get into the finer details.

A Look At Your Content

First, Website Grader looks at your content. Don’t worry, it doesn’t look for misspellings or grammatical errors! It looks at the reading level your writing is at, how many pages are indexed by search engines, and it looks at some of your recent posts and how often they’ve been retweeted. It shows green check marks where you’re doing well. I’ve had a particularly good week with the posts I’ve written, so my content scored well.  And apparently, I”m writing at an elementary school level. Other grader sites say I write at a teenager level, so as with anything, take this with a grain of salt.

Optimizing For SEO

Next, Website Grader sees how you’re doing in making your site and your content optimized for SEO. As you know, SEO is a beast unto itself, so try to take the high points of this and use it as a way to understand what you need to work on. It looks at your metadata, whether you use header tags, and how you treat your images. It gives you a list of the top domains that link in to your blog, too (very helpful!).

I got red-flagged for having too many images on my home page, which slows the site down. Because I often forget to put alt-text in my images, I got flagged for that too. This is a great reminder for me to clean a few things up.

It also looks at your domain – how long it’s been active and whether it’s coming up for renewal. Google doesn’t like when a site’s domain registration is close to expiring, so after seeing my red flag that my domain’s up for renewal in 4 months, I just went ahead and renewed now.

One of the most important things right now for bloggers to get up to speed on is optimizing one’s blog for mobile reading. More and more of us are reading blogs on the go. I had a couple of missing items on the mobile optimization front. It took me 5 minutes to find two WordPress plugins called WP Touch and iPhone Control Panel that solved my mobile issues in a snap.

Promoting Your Blog

Next, Website Grader takes a look at how you’re doing at promoting your blog in other social media outlets. It tells you how many times your home page link has been tweeted, gives you a Twitter grade (which you can dig into in more detail at their Twitter Grader tool) and takes a look at what you’re doing on Facebook.

Converting Users

Finally, Website Grader looks at how well you do at converting visitors into subscribers. It examines if you have a signup form on your site and counts how many posts link to that form. I don’t do this, unfortunately, so this is on my list to dig into as well.

And that’s it! You can run the report, figure out what to fix, then re-run to see how your score improves. I recommend running the tool every 3 months or so, just to keep your finger on the pulse of how things are going.

Wasn’t that easy? Now go run yours and see what you find!

Dear High School or College Student,

As you are aware, Wikipedia was down on Wednesday. I know that you thought it was gone forever.

Let me clear something up for you. Wikipedia was not down because of a sofa.

Also, Wikipedia was not shut down because of soap.

Wikipedia was down in an effort to raise awareness over how damaging a bill called SOPA could be to the internet.

Apparently, Wikipedia is important to you. And I am sorry that Congress get in the way of you looking information up.

In fact, I’m a bit worried that you and your friends have a codependent relationship with Wikipedia.

By the way, you should not wait until the last minute to do your course assignments.

Wikipedia, and SOPA, and Congress, were not trying to hurt you or eff up your day on purpose. There was no nefarious plot to come between you and your essay that was due.

And I understand that you feel like if Wikipedia were to go away forever, that it would mean certain disaster for your educational career. Wikipedia is your trusted friend.

But I have something to share with you. There is another way for you to finish your project, pass your midterm, complete your homework and get your diploma.

I know this is going to sound absolutely barbaric, but once upon a time, there was no such thing as Wikipedia.

I know, I know. It’s okay. Don’t cry.

It’s going to be pretty rough. Those of us who lived in the the period we now call B.W. (Before Wikipedia) had a tough road.  We struggled. We struggled mightily. But we managed. And we finished our homework. It took a long time. We had to leave the HOUSE, even, to do it. Can you IMAGINE?

You can still roll this way, you know. It’s not pretty. You’ve probably not heard of it. So I want to share it with you. You know, in case an emergency like this EVER happens again.

It’s called:

The library.

Don’t be scared of it. It’s okay! I know it’ll be hard for you to leave the house. I know you’ll have to figure out how to use this totally bizarro thing called a card catalog. There’s this other language called the Dewey Decimal system that you’ll need a translator for in order to find what you need. I know that you’ll have to open up an actual book. With like, paper in it. Which might give you a paper cut, also, so beware.

I have to go take care of the sofa now. And the soap.

Love,

An Old Person