One of the bloggers I admire the most is Lorelle from Lorelle on WordPress. Knowing her I guess I should have been prepared for an unusual response and still hers blew me away. What you are about to embark on is a journey into the mind of Lorelle and what a journey it is.

I left it unedited and uncommented just as I forgot all about my tips and suggestions for writing about your favorite articles because it would have been a crying shame to do anything else. That it is entirely different from the other tributes is typical for Lorelle. You do not only get more than expected, but often also something slightly different. I find that both refreshing and mind opening and hope you do as well.

From here on out is Lorelles response to my request for her to name five favorites from her own blog. The following is thus practically a guest post from Lorelle on WordPress!

When you’ve been blogging as long as I have (over a decade) with thousands of posts to choose from, finding five to represent your “favorite blog posts” is quite a challenge. As is my style, I couldn’t begin to choose until I defined “favorite”.

Is a post a favorite because of how it was written? How the words came together in a magical way that is a delight to write and read?

Is it a post that was fun to research, digging deep into the subject to find out all I could and then translate that knowledge into something fun for my readers to read?

Is it a post that my readers love, bringing tons of traffic to my blog and, thus, building my reading audience?

Is my favorite one that is timeless, that withstands the test of time, a treasure for my readers?

Or is a post my favorite because of how hard it was to write? Because it took so long, so much thought, so much work, it damn well better be my favorite because I earned that post.

As I began to evaluate my favorites, what actually happened surprised me. Instead of hundreds and hundreds of posts attacking me from within my mind, overwhelming my decision, only a few bubbled up to the surface as my true favorites.

Why? Because of how they were written, the research involved, the attention they received, the timeless quality of the content, and because they were such damn hard work to write.

What Does The Web Look Like?
My mother is a highly intelligent woman, though sometimes she jumps to conclusions without following a natural progression. Most people start with A, B, C, etc., but my mother is a member of Mensa and her progression is A, B, G, M, Q, S…you get the picture. She often misses some steps along the way. Not critical to the final conclusion, but does create some interesting lapses in her ability to really see the whole picture.

She wanted to know what the Internet looked like. I tried to explain that it was a virtual world, but physically it was represented by telephone lines, cables, big computers, all connected together. That didn’t satisfy her. She wanted to see the Internet.

So I wrote Can You Visualize the Web? after searching for others who wanted to “see” what the web looked like, and the researchers who complied with mathematical algorithms, charts, graphs, and visual presentations to show you what the web looked like if you were to actually see it.

There is no one picture, but many different ways to show what the web looks like and that was fascinating. These are works of art.

For me, this was a big lesson in how to make the virtual real, but also how to really listen to what someone was asking, then research and present the answer. Do you know what the web looks like?

Recovering With a Month Long Blogging Series
If there is anything that will take your mind off your life, it’s work. Hard work. After my father died, and the family exploded into pieces, as I’ve learned tends to happen for little or no justification in an already dysfunctional family (any excuse is a good one), I knew I needed a major distraction that would keep me busy and focused while my unconscious continued with the healing process. They say blogging is good therapy, and I needed some desperately.

I’d been longing to do a huge series of blog posts featuring WordPress Plugins, so I plunged into A Month of WordPress Plugins, a thirty-day series featuring different categories of WordPress Plugin types, and tips for using them, one a day for a month. While not a single favorite post, I think of the whole series as one, long, thirty-day post.

Why is this a favorite? It fulfilled a long-held desire to dig into a favorite subject. I worship the ground Plugin authors walk over. Since the early days of WordPress, I’ve been honored to work with some of the best of the best of WordPress developers and Plugin artists to help create Plugins I and others so dearly love, but also to solve users’ problems and needs. I knew the month long project would allow me to give back to the community I love so much, and to party with some of my dearest online friends.

What I didn’t realized is that it would be so damn hard to write. It was easy to feature the most popular WordPress Plugins and categories. They are known commodities with many reviews and well-written documentation and support. As the month wore on, it got harder and harder to find good Plugins to write about – wait, that’s not true. I found good Plugins to write about. What I didn’t find were good write-ups on those Plugins. The struggle to plow through horribly misspelled, poorly written, and pitiful explanations of WordPress Plugins led me to write A Love Letter to WordPress Plugin Authors and Tips For Writing Good WordPress Tips, hopefully helping WordPress Plugin and Theme authors, and anyone who writes WordPress tips, to get it right so they help everyone know more about what they offer – no mind reading required.

So the month-long series was fun to research, fun to write as well as hard to research and hard to write, but I made it through. My mind had time off to heal and get stronger, and I created an amazing body of work to help WordPress Plugin authors get the attention and respect they deserve.

The thing I’ve most proud of from this series is that on the last day, I wrote an article about the WordPress Plugins that I wanted that hadn’t yet been developed. Many believe that every Plugin idea has been done. Well, they haven’t. That list generated a huge response. Now, many of the Plugins I wanted have been or are in the process of being developed. That series and final post encouraged others to give back to the same community that I was giving to. What a great honor to be a part of such an altruistic process.

Peek Inside Lorelle’s Head
I write technical articles. I tell you how to do things. I break things, I tell you how I broke them, and how you can prevent such breaks. That’s what I’m good at.

Fiction and creative writing skills are not my forte, though the one published piece of fiction I’ve done has gotten great reviews. Therefore, when I published Too Much To Write About, I was exceptionally nervous. I was inviting the reader to use their imagination and look into my head through my words:

Imagine the inside of my head looking like an office. In this corner of the desk I have a meter high pile of articles and research I want to write about on my family’s history after an amazing last few months digging into the past and coming up with full hands and head. Sitting in front of me is a half meter high stack of notes and ideas on articles about WordPress and blogging that have been backlogged with all the traveling I’ve been doing for the past 3 months. On the floor next to my chair are the stacked half finished manuscripts of three books I have to finish writing very soon, and under my feet is another pile of paper representative of another book still in the negotiation phase.

On the other side of the chair on the floor are piles and piles of PHP, HTML, and CSS coded print outs, covered with red pen marks as I analyze, troubleshoot, and break my head on them. There’s good material there for technical articles, but more problems to solve than publish. I spot an apple turning brown among the papers and ignore the ripening smell in my head. Maybe it will turn into one of those neat dried apple heads in a few months, preserved for all time. What do you think?

On the shelf above my desk, right above my mental laptop screen, is a huge row of articles on photography and travel rustling at me to publish on my Taking Your Camera on the Road website. On the shelf also sits a photograph of my husband, smiling at me with love in his eyes and camera in his hands. A smile and eyes I haven’t seen in four months as I’ve been constantly on the road. My heart aches. It reminds me that tucked in a small alcove underneath are months of dusty papers making dry cracking sounds from their thin pages on the airline manufacturing and maintenance industry for my husband’s aircraft engineering blog, much ignored lately.

In between and around the stacks of paper, notebooks, scratch pads, and books are the dried up remains of half eaten lunches and dank tea cups with the loose tea leaves starting to grow plants. A roll of stamps twists around the yellowing pages of another manuscript on the business of networking for nature photographers, a reminder of days gone by when such topics were in demand and real letters were once written. I don’t even pay my bills with stamps and envelopes anymore. In fact, I think the stamps have 29 cents imprinted upon them. Yikes.

Airline tickets and car rental receipts fill in the left over spaces, as does huge lumps of gas receipts and mileage records, keeping track of the more than 15,000 miles I’ve traveled by vehicle in the past six months, across 24 states, repeating some of them more than once (which total to 30 states, I think, but whose counting?).

I hear a sniffing and scuffling sound, and from in between the white stacks pops my black cat, Kohav, evil in her golden eyes. I grab the piles and hang on because right behind her is Holiday, my tiger kitty, chasing her across my mental desktop. It takes all my energy to hold everything in place. This time, the stacks survive. Next time, even in my mental office, I might not be so lucky.

With all of this mental clutter, you think that my brain would contain a gold mine of material worth digging up and translating into text for you to read and editors to buy. With all this mental clutter, it’s hard for me to focus and concentrate. That’s the truth and the dilemma.

It’s a scary place, inside of Lorelle’s head.

It’s About the Links
As Jan has shown you here repeatedly, it is all about the links, the circular connection of the links, that makes the web what it is today.

Where else on this planet could you work at a job where your primary function is to send people away and expect them to come back happy? You tell your customers to go away, tell them where to go, and they so love where you sent them, they come back and usually bring their friends with them. Amazing!

In 2005, I wrote The Power of the Link and it got little attention. Many took links for granted. Yeah, yeah, a link is a link and it connects the web, which is why it’s called The Web. With the public release of the patent for Google’s PageRank algorithm, putting even more pressure on the link, everyone now is learning about the real power of the link.

In the article, I made some very important points I continue to emphasize in all the blogs and magazines I write, as well as in my workshops and presentations:

This value is a one way street. Do not expect that just because you link to a site or blog that they have any responsibility to link back to you. They don’t. You are only saying that they have said or shown you something of value you want to share with others. However, if the blog or site owner pays attention to their site statistics and referrals, especially if they are getting a lot of visitors from one particular link, they will often come visiting to see what you wrote about them to encourage your readers to leave your site to visit them. If they find value, the odds are likely that they may link back to you when they write something pertaining to your site’s topics. If they find a lot of great content, they might add you to their blogroll or permanent link list.

…How to you get people to link to your site or blog? There is only one way. Provide content worth linking to. Write sincerely about what you know, or write an eloquent opinion. Provide references and examples of what you are talking about. Help people learn more about whatever you are writing about, and give them something to chew on. Make it something not only worth reading, but worth pointing to. This will encourage them to link to your post.

Incoming links or referrers to your blog does not hold you responsible for linking back. While it is nice to do, only link to sites worthy of such links. Remember, your outgoing link holds as much power for others as their incoming link. Use your linking power wisely.

….you have a lot of power over the blogroll links on your blog. These are not one time links. They are a permanent resident on your site. They tell people that the blog you are linking is sincerely good, giving them page ranking benefits.

The Art of How NOT to Comment
How NOT to Comment on Comments continues to be one of the most popular posts on Lorelle on WordPress. It was dug by Digg and picked up and spread around the globe several times since it was published.

I’ve written other articles on comments, but this one clicked. I took a negative and satirical look at the whole aspect of how “not” to comment on blogs, and people got it. Amazing.

While it was fun to write, the reason that this article is one of my favorites is because of one line I said in the post that people keep picking out and quoting around the web. In the year since I published this, I can’t tell you how many variations I’ve seen on this same point published. It gives me great pleasure that my writing had such an impact on the blogosphere, and hopefully, changed a little about how we blog and comment on blogs, and maybe how we interact in general.

Your Comment is a Mini Resume
Your comments on this blog, and many others, are published with your name and blog URL on them, if you include them. When people click your name, they visit your blog. Your comments are little representatives of you and your blog.

Make every comment you make to be a mini resume or sales pitch to encourage people to click and visit. Make sure there is something on your blog that makes their visit worthwhile and makes them want to hang around and read more. And since your URL will take people away from my blog, make sure your comment and blog reflects well on me. By leaving your comment on my blog, in a very round-about way, I’m speaking well of you. Consider it a mini-letter of recommendation.

So What Is Your Favorite?
While Jan has asked me to name my favorite five posts, I wonder what you think your favorite posts are. I wonder how you define “favorite” and what criteria you would use to select your five favorite posts.

Would your criteria be the same as mine? What makes you value one post over another?

As I do one last review of my favorite five, I find a new value in these. In my mind and heart, each of these posts made a different in the lives of others. They weren’t about “me” so much as they were about “me helping others”. That’s the most important part of blogging that keeps me blogging: helping others.

Consider what criteria defines your favorite five posts, and see what discoveries you make about your own blog writing.

After becoming addicted to the Internet (his words) has he focused on making the most it. For himself and for thousand others. Writing about blogging, branding, communication, marketing and more is his blog a great resource for bloggers, web surfers and companies alike. You can simply read it and enjoy getting practical and thoughtful advice. However you can also get conversing with Chris and his knowledgeable readers in the comments and thus add to the experience. Or you can be bold enough to contact him directly with your questions or insights. If you do it right, keeping it short, to the point and on target are you sure to get a response. If he can find the time. After all he is running a company, writing for more blogs and have a family and a personal life to look after as well. Having helped me on more occasions can I testify to the quality of his advice, his openness, kindness and not least his sense of humor. What I still haven’t been able to figure out is what exactly is happening in the header image on Chris’ blog, but I suspect that leaving something to the readers imagination is done on purpose.

Chris’ Top Five Own Articles

Killer Flagship Content – Free Ebook To Download : “When I started my chrisg.com blog I decided to launch with my eBook. This eBook outlines a large part of my approach to blogging. Creating useful, unique, remarkable resources that help you get known. It is both about, and an example of, that strategy.”

Got Personality? : “It’s not just about providing valuable content, although that is critical, you have to do it in your own unique way. Finding your voice is very important.”

Better Blog Branding: Your Blogs Hidden Messages : “The experience of dealing with you is a vital part of your brand. Brands are partly about memory, are the memories good or bad? This is down to classic branding issues such as design…”

Tips for Dealing with Blogging Disagreements : “… through to how you deal with dissent and disagreements.”

Sales Lead Blogs – The Art of Selling with Your Blog : “Ultimately, by careful cultivation of your brand and create a good customer experience, you build loyalty, trust and credibility, and you can effectively sell products and services.”

Chris’ Top Five Best Reads

The Cluetrain Manifesto (Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger) : “If you want to understand the blogosphere, start here.”

The Hughtrain (Hugh MacLeod): “This is also interesting, though I wouldn’t necessarily agree with all of it.”

The Idea Virus (Seth Godin) [PDF] : “Want to know the power of “viral” and word of mouth? Get the scoop from the best.”

The Art of Linkbaiting (Nick Wilson) : “I mentioned Flagship Content earlier. If you find the idea seems to you like too much work, try link bait.”

How to Go Multi-platform and Build a Profitable Borg (Andy Hagans) : “I’ve long advised people to not put all their eggs into one basket, Andy explains the idea in a fun way.”

An essential part of Circular Communication is to reach out, establish connections and build bridges. I have already posted a number of extensive link posts on specific topics that have been very well received. In an attempt to expand the communication even more I decided to make a link post guest series where bloggers I read and appreciate list and comment on what they consider to be their five best articles together with their five favorite reads from other blogs. You can thus see it as an interview in link form celebrating what those participating like and would like to share. Since it is all about paying tribute will all contributions be filed under Tributes. Because of the nature of this blog is it a requirement that the recommended articles are about communication in some way, shape or form.

Even if you have never visited her blog or read one of her articles elsewhere (she also blogs at Fast Company) you could you have had the pleasure of connecting with her as she is also a avid commentator on other blogs. Unfortunately this is something which many bloggers forget as being part of the blogging experience. Not Valeria, who seems to thrive on making connections and starting or adding to conversations. On Conversation Agent she writes about various subjects, but always passionately and with conversation in mind. By connecting with Valeria or her blog and engaging in the conversation some of the basic ideas that you will walk away with are: owning your brand, whether that be personal or business, is important; making an impact on communities and businesses starts with cultivating our own curiosity and skill; and talking about business and bridging two and more cultures can be done from the heart.

Valeria’s Top Five Own Articles

1. Conversation As Connection : “One of my best early posts. This explains what conversation means in the way I use this word.”

2. Getting your Message Through : “We often worry about the message itself and give little consideration to the web of relationships we need to navigate so our intended audiences receive it.”

3. The Sound of Silence : “In thinking about communication, we often forget that so much is said in the pauses.”

4. Media as Connectors of Ideas and People : “This seems to be the million dollar question — what about the role of media in today’s conversations?”

5. The Narrative Fallacy : “Stories form the foundation of communications — from the myths to modern messages. Learn how our preference for narrative may mislead us.”

Valeria’s Top Five Best Reads

1. Why Blogging Matters (David Armano) : “You will find a lot of ideas here from difference perspectives with an aggregated list of blogs to explore.”

2. What’s Your Mantra? (Roger von Oech) : “If you had to distill down one thing that makes you unique, what would that be?”

3. Thin-Slice Your Brand (Mike Wagner) : “What are the patterns that people detect the first time they visit/come into contact with your business?”

4. Twitter for Marketers (Matt Dickman) : “Matt is a rising star of the blogosphere. His technology product reviews are getting a lot of attention, and for good reason.”

5. Genesis (Gavin Heaton) : “Gavin also writes for MarketingProfs:Daily Fix. His vision of storytelling and branding is spot on in many ways and in this case, poetic.”

An essential part of Circular Communication is to reach out, establish connections and build bridges. I have already posted a number of extensive link posts on specific topics that have been very well received. In an attempt to expand the communication even more I decided to make a link post guest series where bloggers I read and appreciate list and comment on what they consider to be their five best articles together with their five favorite reads from other blogs. You can thus see it as an interview in link form celebrating what those participating like and would like to share. Since it is all about paying tribute will all contributions be filed under Tributes. Because of the nature of this blog is it a requirement that the recommended articles are about communication in some way, shape or form.

Recently he has taken other writers on board, but without compromising the style and usefulness of his site. It is thus still “a place where you will find simple yet effective tips to improve your blog” just as he imagined it would be when starting it in November of 2006. I read Daily Blog Tips even before I decided to blog and decided to make a welcome post as my first post after having read Daniel’s. Since then have I implemented a number of things he recommended so I can vouch for the usefulness of his advice. As usual is his advice short and to the point.

Daniel’s Top Five Own Articles

101 Blog Tips I learned in 2006 : “It’s my first “popular” article. It literally made my blog snowball, and the interesting point is that the post was not structured, it was just 101 simple and straight forward tips that I grouped together. I wrote it in 30 minutes or so.”

43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid :“Design is very important, and too many bloggers forget to pay attention to that.”

Copyright Law: 12 Do’s and Dont’s : “It can be quite easy to infringe copyright law these days, this checklist will help you not to.”

7 Reasons to Quit your Job : “Are you looking to quit your job? I think you should!”

Top 10 Underrated Wordpress Plugins : “Those Wordpress plugins were life-savers for me.”

Daniel’s Top Five Best Reads

How To Market Your Blog in 2007 (Tony Hung) : “Very detailed article with some of the best practices of online marketing. Must read if you are trying to promote your blog”

10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work (Brian Clark) : “The title of your posts is arguably the most important part of your content. Copyblogger is a master of this art.”

21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic (Rand Fiskin): “I just can’t get enough of tips to increase traffic.”

Hundreds of Resources for Finding Content for Your Blog (Lorelle) : “Keep the content coming on a consistent basis is the hardest part. This will certainly help you.”

My 50 favorite blogging resources (Neil Patel) : “Covers most of the basic stuff you will ever need as a blogger.”

An essential part of Circular Communication is to reach out, establish connections and build bridges. I have already posted a number of extensive link posts on specific topics that have been very well received. In an attempt to expand the communication even more I decided to make a link post guest series where bloggers I read and appreciate list and comment on what they consider to be their five best articles together with their five favorite reads from other blogs. You can thus see it as an interview in link form celebrating what those participating like and would like to share. Since it is all about paying tribute will all contributions be filed under Tributes. Because of the nature of this blog is it a requirement that the recommended articles are about communication in some way, shape or form.