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The ProBlogger 7 Link Challenge

Darren Rowse from ProBlogger challenged his readers to a 7 Link Challenge. I was in the middle of writing another post but that can wait. This is a fun exercise and I don’t often take time to participate in the many blogging activities crossing my desk.

Darren asked bloggers to write a post containing links to our own posts in seven pre-defined categories. Here’s mine:

1. Your first post
I wasn’t sure I would ever have anything relevant to say and worried about it in my first blog post published on 4 May 2009, Entering the Land of Blog. Regular readers will know it didn’t take me long to get over it.

2. A post you enjoyed writing the most
After I attended the Media140 conference in Perth, I knew I wanted to write about it. I guessed (correctly) there would be a lot of blogging chatter about the social media event, which is on a worldwide road show. My post Media140: The Troggs, Westpac and Kanye West was a lot of fun for me because I had to really stretch my noodle to add an original thought. I also used lines from the song “Wild Thing” as headlines to carry the thread. Fun.

3. A post which had a great discussion
Hands down, 6 Reasons for Refusing LinkedIn Invitations garnered the most comments, positive and negative. The result was a lively discussion both on the blog and in one of the LinkedIn discussion groups where it was also posted. It hit a nerve, for sure. I’d never been called a “purveyor of negative ideas” before!

4. A post on someone else’s blog that you wish you’d written
I smiled at this category because it was a line I used in BRIEF: FAQs Fact. I read a post by Michele Linn at the Savvy B2B Marketing blog titled, 5 Reasons to Include FAQs in Your Content Marketing Strategy and wanted to cry. FAQs are a topic I discuss often with my clients but it never occurred to me to write a post about it. Michele said it all – and probably better than I could have – so my post was in the Global Copywriting BRIEF format.

5. Your most helpful post
Judging from the comments, 9 Tips That Improved My Blog was a useful post for a lot of people. I felt like I achieved the goal of my blog with this post, sharing practical advice often learned through my own experiences.

6. A post with a title that you are proud of
Titles are often a mystery to me. It’s one of the parts of blogging I struggle with. I liked Customer Lip Service: Scripted Responses, Broken Promises and Other Bad Ideas along with Please Change My Sheets: Dirty Laundry in Marketing Communications. They’re both probably too long but they manage to escape the ubiquitous “list” format.

7. A post that you wish more people had read
7 Surefire Way to Increase Your Copywriting Fees fizzled because it was loaded with a lot of beneficial insider information on pricing. Shortly after, I read How to Avoid Being a Difficult Client (and Get More Bang for Your Buck) at the WebCopyPlus! website. It had a better title, better images and way better writing than my effort. Go read it and see what I was trying to accomplish.
What are some of your favourite blog posts? Have you taken the ProBlogger challenge?