Pavlov was definitely onto something. That guy knew exactly how to build excitement and keep his audience waiting at the edge of their seats—or the end of a leash, as the case may be—for his next performance. Granted, his performance was delivering dog treats, so not nearly as entertaining as a well-written blog post but the same rules apply: consistency of any action builds anticipation, for readers of your blog as well as man’s best friend. This is why it’s so important to establish a consistent posting schedule.

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This past Friday, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend the first TEDx event held at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. One of my favorite speakers at the event was Adam Braun, founder of Pencils of Promise, an award-winning organization that has built more than 150 schools across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

While Braun has many great things to say (“You change your words to change your worth” being one of them), my favorite part of his talk was about being purpose-driven. Instead of calling Pencils of Promise a nonprofit organization, he instead calls it a “for-purpose” organization. After explaining this term he’s coined (he doesn’t do charity work; he solves problems), he applied it to nonprofits and businesses alike.

“If you’re not building a business based on purpose … your business will erode,” he said.

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Every once in a while we get a few orders from agency clients. These agencies serve as intermediaries, taking a cut for finding clients and then sending them our way with prefilled forms that include instructions on what the client wants. It’s a great win-win, as we get to flex our brains by writing about myriad topics which we otherwise might not have encountered, the agency gets its share of the revenue, and the client gets top-notch content. But there’s one issue I keep bumping into that’s resulted in my being one the phone with the agency a few times: a demand to stick within a single narrative voice throughout an entire document that’s going to be used for marketing purposes.

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Ah, April Fools’ Day. The day those of us with trickster co-workers have to be on guard from the moment we grab our morning coffee until the time we clock out and go home. There’s one in every office: the trickster who gets a rise out of crossing office phone lines, changing your computer’s system language, or using the copier as a weapon of sweet workplace revenge (what, you didn’t think of those?). No one wants to look foolish, especially in the workplace.

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