Every day for the next month, we'll learn a little bit of blogging theory and be challenged to create something for our blogs.
If nothing else, it may inspire me to fill in the rather pregnant pauses between usual posts, and with any luck Misery should emerge the other side a better blog. That is assuming the extra pressure doesn't cause me to crumple into a whimpering ball and get dragged away by psychiatrists. (One post every day!?) But then I'd get free drugs and time off work; it's all win.
Challenge one is to write an elevator pitch. If, like me, you're left cold at the sound of business slang, I refer you to the wikipedia entry. You can skip over the first two sections... venture capitalist blah blah... wait, what's that? It's like that scene in Working Girl? Why didn't you say so in the first place!
I may not speak business strategy but I am fluent in 80s rom com.
It's like you've got fifteen seconds to convince the high school quarterback to read your blog thereby securing his invitation to the prom. (Yes, that's how it works in American high schools.) What do you tell him?
Misery is a blog about football that will help you get laid.
I think I've just coined the definitive elevator pitch for teenage boys, but I'm not sure it quite fits the bill for Misery.
How about:
Reading Misery will make you rich and cause people to fall in love with you.
Closer? No?
Well that's all my 80s plotlines exhausted. I'll just have to resort to the honest but dull truth. Now that I think about it, being true to yourself (and thereby getting rich and laid) is a very 80s message:
Misery delivers news and comment about World of Warcraft for shadow priests and their admirers.
And I'm not even sure it does that, all of the time. There should really be an "attempts" or "aims to" in there somewhere, but I think confidence sells. My gym says it will make me look ten years' younger, not attempt to... No quips about false advertising thank you very much.
Challenge one accomplished! What do you think? It's a good job I have another 30 days to get good...
I fully expect tomorrow's challenge to be devising suggestive headlines that entice readers in while having nothing to do with the subject matter. I've got the jump on that one...
2 comments:
When your elevator companion walks away... what do you want them to remember about you/your blog?
The URL?
It's a tricky question. This isn't a commercial website, I'm not trying to sell anything, I don't need visitors to survive. My ambition is to be a blog that some people can enjoy, while recognising that I am a niche blog even within the already narrow field of WoW content. In that hypothetical elevator conversation, which has taken place many times in real life with friends and colleagues, I usually enter the conversation knowing that the person I am speaking with is not my target audience — they don't play World of Warcraft, they don't know what a shadow priest is. If I was in business, I might want to entice them into investigating these things, but I'm not.
So I guess, what it all boils down to is this: I want that person to walk away knowing whether Misery is relevant or irrelevant to them.
Should I be more ambitious? Should I be doing more? I'm open to advice and suggestions. But this is day one, remember; baby steps :P
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