A. NO, no, and no: none of the above, silly people. 

If you will all join me back here in the real world, please:

Bloggers want more readers (and more comments,) of course.

One of the best ways to increase reader participation (=comments) is to give readers something juicy in return. 

DISQUS (pronounced “discuss”) is a blog plug-in that encourages readers to leave comments by awarding them with much more exposure of their own.  Readers who comment on DISQUS-enabled blogs can track and archive their own comments all in one place, where they can also edit or even republish them.  Moreover, a reader’s DISQUS profile “follows” him or her from blog to blog, allowing other readers to click through to see his or her other DISQUS blog comments, as well as to his or her own blog or blogs.

CommentLuv is another comment plug-in that has attracted a lot of bloggy attention.  This utility automatically visits each commentor’s feed and embeds a link to the commentor’s latest blog post whenever s/he comments.  This, in turn, attracts readers to a commentor’s own blog while also building upon the latter’s own Technorati blog “authority” and Google-ability.

I’ve not yet had time to adopt either of these plug-ins, but would love to hear from any readers who have.  Have they made a difference on your blog?

Possibly-helpful links:

• A list of 100 blogs using CommentLuv (go get yourself some LinkyLuv right now!)
• Interesting discussion on DISQUS: who should own the rights to your comments: you or the blog where you’ve left them?  ( Copyright protocols and blogging continue to evolve!)

Image: Goods 4 Girls

This is a picture of girls learning how to use menstrual pads.  Maybe this topic embarrasses you, but imagine how embarrassed you would be if you were a young woman who had no access to any kind of menstrual protection at all. 

Imagine trying to go to school or work without such protection. For girls and young women in many parts of the world, their lives virtually come to a halt for up to a week every month.  In some places, the lack of proper sanitation for girls means that school ends for them completely once they enter puberty. 

Proctor and Gamble has a program to provide girls with disposable products, and you may have seen some of their ads.  Proceeds from selected purchases help fund this program.

There is an even better solution than Proctor and Gamble’s, however.  Disposable sanitary products don’t last, and they also cause significant environmental problems where disposal facilities are inadequate.  Goods 4 Girls is a non-profit organization that has stepped in to fill the gap.  Since most of these girls are using rags now, having a reusable, washable pad that is more sophisticated (with a waterproof barrier) may be enough to allow them to participate in school and other activities.   Goods 4 Girls accepts cash donations  or or donations of reusable pads, which donors can either purchase or sew themselves — patterns are provided. 

For more information, please visit http://www.goods4girls.org/

———–
Related Post:
Wednesday for (almost) women: Locks of Love

HEMA is a Dutch department store. With 150 stores in the Netherlands, HEMA also has stores in Belgium, Luxemburg, and Germany. In June of this year, HEMA was sold to British investment company Lion Capital.

Take a look at HEMA’s awesome product page .

Okay, so you can’t order anything, and it’s in Dutch, but just wait a couple of seconds and watch what happens. This company has an amazing web master.  Even better, though, is its sense of humor. 

We live in a seriously humor-deprived world.  I wonder if that’s one reason we have so many wars?

Now here’s something different: Meatloaf cupcakes with mashed potato frosting. Michele over on Fine Furious Life whipped them up for us, and we have at least one independent confirmation that they are not only edible, but delicious.

Okay, I’ll happily bite, but without the half-bottle of red food coloring, please.

(Translation: YUM.)

I had a tiny bite, and admit it was better than the other place, at least.  But I’m just never going to be a cupcake fan.  In fact, I think we all just need to face the fact that

Says Ms. Manifesto, who has been reading my blog again.  And on a final note:

Indeed.  Now give me back my camera, kid.

man·i·fes·to [man-uh-fes-toh] –noun, plural -toes. a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, as one issued by a government, sovereign, or organization

My daughter is a master of the form.  Her bedroom door has, for years, been a constantly- changing canvas of proclamations, notices, lists, edicts and declarations:

Ten Utterly Useless Things to Do (including) Making Pyjamas Out of Duct Tape.

Why I Should Not Have To Change the Cat Litter.

Lost: Deadly Bull Spider including How to Catch Him.

Warning: Contents Under Pressure.

I Should be Able To Go to Dollywood I Am Not A Slave.

She makes me immensely proud.

A couple of months ago, I found a website that contains nothing but manifestos: ChangeThis.com, an online newsletter whose aim is “to disrupt the media pattern with powerful, rational arguments from leading thinkers.” ChangeThis uploads several new manifestos a month, written by very well-known authors and business gurus as well as more obscure ones. Recent top-pick-topics appearing on ChangeThis include:

• The Invisible Badge: Moving Past Conspicuous Consumption
• PR 2.0: A Communicator’s Manifesto
• Escaping Corporate America: Changing Your Career Can Change Your Life
• Seinfeld on Marketing: 7 Marketing Lessons from the Cast of the Show About Nothing
• The Upside of a Downturn Business Improvisation: The Diving Catch of the Corporate World

Some have called it “Resume 2.0.”   For others, it works as a universally accessible business card.  Whether you are looking for a job or running your own business, or simply want to control what people will see when they “Google” your name on the internet, you need LinkedIn.com. 

The whole premise works a little like the “Six degrees of Kevin Bacon” game — LinkedIn helps you build a growing group of “connections” — people you know and can personally vouch for — who form the “first degree” of an enormous “network” of people consisting of the friends and colleagues of your friends and colleagues. 

Sort of like the way networking works in real life, hey?

If you don’t have a LinkedIn.com profile yet, you need to build one, and here’s why: 

1. All of LinkedIn.com’s basic features are free, and LinkedIn will even search your email address books for you to find those first contacts.  You don’t need to build your profile all at once, either, but can gradually add and learn as you go.  There are plenty of online resources about LinkedIn.com to inspire you, too.
2. The more data you have online about yourself, the more easily search engines will find you.  It is more important than ever for anyone and everyone in the working world to have an online presence, and LinkedIn is a great way to help manage yours.
3. In addition to your employment history and links to your other business or personal websites, you can add ”recommendations” to your LinkedIn profile, which you solicit from your own contacts.  This is a fantastic opportunity to create a public list of quick, mini-reference letters, and one that is entirely controlled by you: nothing goes “live” on your profile until you’ve approved it.  
4. Sharing your LinkedIn.com profile is easy, and much less obtrusive than handing out resumes or business brochures.  You can even put your LinkedIn URL on a business card… a tactful way to assure that all the professional information you may want to share is easily accessible by anyone who wants it.  LinkedIn also provides a cute little badge you can add to your other business websites, linking folk back to your profile.
5. Managing your contacts is easy, too.   Once people are on your contact list, you will receive regular updates or “pings” whenever they make their own LinkedIn updates, which is helpful information and often fun, too.
6. LinkedIn is a great way to find former classmates and long-lost friends. People will inevitably find you, too: one quickly learns to gracefully ignore “link beggers.”  The strength of your network, after all, is based on the understanding that everyone’s ”1st degree” contacts are people she can honestly recommend.  It is perfectly appropriate, and tactful, to simply ignore any invitations from the high school boyfriend you never want to see again. Yes, really! 

Whaddya waiting for?  It won’t take long before you’ll be a true Insider, and then you’ll be ready for the latest in LinkedIn humor, too…

——————
Related Posts:

We Are *Always* Networking
Career or Blog in a Rut?  Find a Traveller

A terrific book inspired it all.  Not Quite What I Was Planning… Compilation from submissions to a contest.  My dad sent me a copy.  I have not thanked him yet.  You can buy one from here.   Good review in the New Yorker.   Entirely written in six word sentences.  Cleverly, they didn’t point this out. I’m not so clever, just slow.  

I liked their idea, so borrowed. 

The book is clever, funny, poignant.   Here’s a few of my favorites:

I’m my mother, and I’m fine.  
I was born. Some assembly required.
It was embarrassing, so don’t ask.
I think, therefore I am bald.

My, this is a daunting task. Tried to sum things up: failed.  Advisors say don’t think too much.  I wrote a few, can’t choose.

• How did all of this happen?
• More I live, less I know.
• Clearly I am not an earthling.
• Figured a few things out, eventually.

I choose to tag these blogs:

• Karen at Working Girl
• Paul at Original Faith
• TrueVyne at The True Vyne 
• Emily at The Rocky Road of Love and Other Great Recipes
• Ursula at Working Mother Blog

Come on now – YOU try one!

Because she’s invisible. Get it?

I do not like to post things without an artist’s permission, much less without attribution. That’s called “plagiarism,” and is a form of theft.

Nevertheless, the hundreds of postings by hundreds of women all happily conspiring with the invisible author to keep her that way is wonderfully ironic, quite aside from the funny loveliness of the piece itself.

“Invisible Mother” definitely resonates, and I love — and agree with — the idea that mothers, parents, and TEACHERS are building “cathedrals!”

I’m less convinced, however, that God’s loving plan involves making anyone invisible (to “cure” us of our pride?), or indeed that there is a particularly sinful sort of pride we need curing of, that is particularly unique to mothers — or authors, for that matter.

What do you think?

It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I’m on the phone and ask to be taken to the store. Inside I’m thinking, ‘Can’t you see I’m on the phone?’ Obviously not; no one can see if I’m on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all. I’m invisible. The invisible Mom. Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more: Can you fix this ? Can you tie this? Can you open this??

Some days I’m not a pair of hands ; I’m not even a human being. I’m a clock to ask, ‘What time is it?’ I’m a satellite guide to answer, ‘What number is the Disney Channel?’ I’m a car to order, ‘Right around 5:30, please.’

I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history and the mind that graduated summa cum laude – but now they had disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again. She’s going, she’s going, she’s gone!?

One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England. Janice had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well. It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself. I was feeling pretty pathetic, when Janice turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package, and said, ‘I brought you this.’ It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe. I wasn’t exactly sure why she’d given it to me until I read her inscription: ‘To Charlotte , with admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees.’

In the days ahead I would read – no, devour – the book. And I would discover what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I could pattern my work: No one can say who built the great cathedrals – we have no record of their names. These builders gave
their whole lives for a work they would never see finished. They made great sacrifices and expected no credit. The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.

A legendary story in the book told of a rich man who came to visit the cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked the man, ‘Why are you spending so much time carving that bird into a beam that will be covered by the roof, No one will ever see it. And the workman replied, ‘Because God sees.’

I closed the book, feeling the missing piece fall into place. It was almost as if I heard God whispering to me, ‘I see you, Charlotte. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one around you does. No act of kindness you’ve done, no sequin you’ve sewn on, nocupcake you’ve baked, is too small for me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can’t see right now what it will become.

At times, my invisibility feels like an affliction. But it is not a disease that is erasing my life. It is the cure for the disease of my own self-centeredness. It is the antidote to my strong, stubborn pride.

I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder. As one of the people who show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on. The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever be built in our lifetime because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree.

When I really think about it, I don’t want my son to tell the friend he’s bringing home from college for Thanksgiving, ‘My Mom gets up at 4 in the morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for three hours and presses all the linens for the table.’ That would mean I’d built a shrine or a monument to myself. I just want him to want to come home. And then, if there is anything more to say to his friend, to add, ‘You’re gonna love it there.’

As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we’re doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible women.

Great Job, MOM!

(note 3/27): By Nicole Johnson (authorship confirmed by Nicole’s publicist!)

I am particularly glad to see Career Encouragement’s post, “Would you rather stay home with your children?” — this is such a tender and complicated point for me personally that I couldn’t even come up with a comment of my own when she first posted it. I appreciate her voice very much, however!

Deb over at 8 hours and a lunch is also a favorite of mine in this bunch… I appreciate her irreverence and willingness to stare things in the face without blinking.

There’s lots of good stuff here, whether you are an employer, employee, or (oh dear to my heart!) still seeking a job. Don’t miss!