#ThursdayDoors – Do’s and Don’ts

Yesterday’s post was my 300th so I decided to take advantage of this milestone to do kind of a recap of the most popular feature on Norm 2.0: Thursday Doors.

Back in September 2014 when I first started posting Thursday Doors off a prompt by another blogger That Montreal Girl, I had no idea it would turn into the fun multi-contributor event that it has.

So to all those who join in and share wonderful doors with us each week, and to those who come to admire, like, comment, and share on social media: THANK YOU! I am having so much fun with this and I hope you are too.

Now that we’ve had almost 8 months of Thursday Doors as a link-up event, I’ve noticed some common tendencies that I thought I’d compile into a post.

Consider this a helpful, informative, and hopefully humorous attempt to poke fun at we who stare down the ridicule of friends, family, and strangers as we stop, sometimes at the most inopportune times, just to take photos of doors 😀

Some of this may already be common knowledge but for the benefit of some of our recent newcomers here is my list of top Thursday Doors Do’s and Don’ts:

1. Do – remember to tag your post Thursday Doors. This helps anyone who does a search find your post even if you forget to add it to the link-up list, and even if they’re not a follower of your blog.
2. Do – connect your blog to your twitter account if you have one. I like to share all Thursday Door posts on twitter and it makes it a lot easier to know when your post was shared so that you can retweet it to your own followers too. And for those who do share their posts on Twitter and Instagram – remember to add the #ThursdayDoors hashtag there as well.
3. Don’t – commit traffic violations! Hey if you’re out there door hunting and you manage to get a ticket for making an illegal U-Turn because you just had to swing back and take another look at that door you drove past, well your own your own. Thursday Doors has no budget to help with fines or bail fees 🙂
   

   Image courtesy of Serge Bertasius Photography at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

4. Don’t – trespass. The rules regarding photographing buildings in public vary from country to country so you should find out what’s allowed where you are. In North America for example it’s pretty simple; as long as it is not for commercial use, if you can see it while standing on public property it is not illegal to photograph it. Even so it’s always a good idea to ask permission whenever possible. And if you want to get a closer look you’ll find that many folks will be flattered and allow you on their property if you take a moment to let them know why you’d like to stand on their porch or walkway to take a few pics of their lovely door…that is, right after they realize you’re serious and not a complete nut-bar!
5. Do – remember to add your post to the link-up list. A primary source for traffic with link-up events is visits generated by the link-up tool. Just click on the blue button in that week’s post and then enter your blog name, the URL to your door post for that week, and your email (which stays private), to add your post to the list.  
6. Do – visit posts and interact with the other Thursday Doors participants. You’ll not only meet and make new friends, but you’ll surely pick up a few good ideas you can steal borrow for future door posts of your own 😉
7. Don’t – engage in what I call challenge stacking. For example if you post a photo of a river or a car, and then link it to Thursday Doors or another unrelated challenge, sorry but that is NOT okay. It does happen that one photo or post is actually applicable to several different challenges, and then sure it’s okay to link to more than one blog. But it goes without saying (or should) that your Thursday Doors post should be primarily about a door or doors (d’uh!) and not just a door photo mixed in among a series of unrelated pics to justify linking to a bunch of different challenges. Hey, we all want to promote our blogs and attract visitors, but there better ways to do it than treating other blogs as traffic generators by loading them with links.
8. Do – get your post in as early as possible to attract the most visitors. We start taking entries each week at 5:30 am on Thursday with a deadline of noon on Saturday – North American eastern time. If you miss the deadline don’t fret, just schedule the post for the following Thursday and be early for next week!
9. Don’t – put pressure on yourself to contribute each week unless you really want to. And don’t worry about the quality of your camera or your photos. Thursday Doors is supposed to be fun and inclusive. If you have a nice door pic but don’t think it’s the best quality shot, chances are we’d still love to see it – so share it anyway. And if you just don’t have a post to share that week – that’s totally fine too, so don’t stress over it. But if you can please do drop in to take a peek at what others have posted.
10. Do – continue to be creative. There have been some very original posts so far, from wonderful verbal descriptions of doors (instead of a photo), to doors on cars and boats, storage spaces, barns, and fairy doors, not to mention dozens of different types of buildings, and even a door on a tent. All I can say is, I love it!

So please let your imaginations run wild and keep having fun, and if you have any questions or suggestions please feel free to contact me.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net