I just don’t know what to say about this, except to steel myself against people who insist it’s delicious, and awesome, and completely captures the essence of minced flesh compressed into tubular form:
If this was Fark, there would be a 300 comment thread about the best potato chips, with pictures of regional favorites. I’m partial these days to Trader Joe’s Olive Oil variety. I discount anything that asserts that it has been cooked in small batches, because I am unsure of the correlation between batch size and salty-greasy pleasure. Around these parts at a summertime gathering someone brings a box of Old Dutch, which I believe are cooked in batches that involve as many potatoes as there are stairs in the heavens, and they’re delicious.
OMG Herr's is on FACEBOOK and you can CONNECT with them and LIKE THEM IN GENERAL and leave your own stories!!! And they write back too. Said one official response:
Thank you very much Robyn, it is great to get positive feedback about our newer flavor profiles!
Because that's how consumers think about these things. Flavor profiles. What's the SKU on that, by the way? Or the price point? Can I find it on an end cap or in the brand block?
An ant just ran across my desk and paused, his back to me. I tried an experiment: slowly moved a finger in his direction, on his right side.
His right antennae crooked back in the direction of the finger.
I withdrew the finger. Approached him from the left.
His left antennae crooked back in the direction of the finger.
What was it responding to? Changes in air pressure? Some chemical that didn’t process as FOOD or DANGER or KIN? As I said yesterday, they’re just fascinating creatures. Except when they’re the size of a dog or there are thousands of them in your house.
I saw a piece called “How to set off fireworks with your Content: 10 tips for writing explosive blog posts” made me think it was about writing things that will get everyone’s attention with headlines like “Sixty-seven pit bulls burst out of skyscraper window, jaws bedecked with entrails” or “Grapes poisonous, scientists learn; cumulative, irreversible effect responsible for 92 % of all fatalities.” That latter head would work on a British science story, since most of them are bollocks, the work of “dodgy boffins.” There’s another fireworky explosive blog post: DODGY BOFFINS BASSIST KILLED IN 460-CAR PILEUP. You’d read it because there was a 460-car pileup, but also to find out who the Dodgy Boffins were, and why you didn’t hear about them.
Wasn’t anything like that.
1. Write about things that matter
So often we get caught up in the mundane, that we miss chances to start online conversations about topics that really matter. Of course, what “really matters’ is subjective, but if you have a social media blog and missed writing about how social media had a part in the Egyptian uprisings because you were too busy writing yet another post about how to write awesome headlines, you’re missing out on the big picture
Never judge a blog by what it doesn’t write about.
The big picture is that no one cares about social media blogs except people who write for social media blogs. People care about social media, yes. Blogs about it, no. People may be navel-gazers, but they don’t care for a blog aimed at optometrists who blog about prescriptions for gastro-fixation. If the optomestrists blogged about fashionable frames, maybe.
Social-media blogs, as far as I can tell, concern themselves with telling other people what they should know about social media. The word “optimizing” is used frequently. Eventually the experts are hired by corporations who tell them how to get on Twitter, Facebook, and . . . well, that new thing where people upload animated gifs of their dog wagging its tail while everything else in the picture is stationary, those are so cool. How can we use those to maximize brand awareness? If you’re hiring someone to do this, how do you have any idea that the person you’ve hired knows what he’s talking about? If you can’t figure out Twitter on your own, do the world a favor and stay off Twitter. Better yet: just go down to the lowest job in the company, where 20somethings are doing rote grunt work on computers, and ask one of them - what he’d do, what seems bogus and contrived, what works. Throw him a bonus. There you go.
He will keep you from saying things like flavor profiles on social media.
Before anyone gets all grampa-grumpy about social media, and how it’s useless and just people yammerin’ away about nothin’, this afternoon on twitter I checked a link sent by someone I follow but don’t know, and it went to a site about the media run by a guy I met a few times but don’t know, and there was an interesting picture that had been tweeted by a guy I don’t follow, but used to know, and had completely forgotten about. He’d been edited out of my memories. When I think back to that time and place, he’s not there - but the minute I saw the name, and realized it was the same guy, hey presto he pops up in recollections of the office, complete with the brown jacket and the nickname we gave him, and he hated.
Never would have happened without this here soshul medier. But if you’re wondering, so what? Well, I hate to forget people. Even if they meant nothing or you hated every little bacteria in their stinking guys, you don’t want to forget people. It rounds out your recollections to remember. Every play had its cast.
I did some Facebook what-ifs the other day to see if some people from the distant past are on Facebook, and of course they are, and it made me almost happy to know we’ll probably never meet again. Facebook is good for that. BE REASSURED THEY DON’T LEAVE NEAR. THEY’RE, LIKE, SIX STATES OVER.
2. Write about things you actually care about
Good advice, but this does not necessarily translate into an EXPLOSIVE post, particularly if you care about, oh, dueling reputations in 1970s prog rock. Last night I wrote:
Assertion: "Crime of the Century" was the thinking person's "Dark Side of the Moon." Well, they both had saxophones.
Point is, Pink Floyd’s work is remote, gloomy, and saturated with Roger Waters’ adolescent misanthropy; Supertramp’s album has a crystalline sheen that makes the cynicism seem like you’re being tattooed with an icicle. There are few melodies on “Moon” as accomplished as the stuff on “Crime,” but there’s nothing on “Crime” to match "The Great Gig in the Sky," with Claire Terry's wordless vocals; it's one of the most amazing and frightening pieces of music they ever did.
Got a tweet from a chap who said that “Crime” was full of high-school whining, and since I first heard the album in high school, I had to agree - but Roger Waters masks his whining as a sneer, which made him seem more grown up. Anyway, the "Crime" album, as far as these things go, has anger and spark, and "Dark Side" is one long justification for stoner withdrawl, passivity, and exhaltation of sadness. They're two different works, and it's facile to compare them, except to note that both bands started out as hiippie ensembles, and flourished when they discovered technology. A message there, somewhere.
3. Give yourself Blogging Freedom
Having consistent features on your blog makes sense. For example, here on the BlogWorld blog, I post the New Media News Break every Wednesday and Brilliant Bloggers every other Friday. However, some bloggers fall so deeply into a routine, that they don’t have any room for flexibility. Unchain yourself!
Have to check “brilliant bloggers” to see if I’m one, which would make this entire exercise rather ungracious . . . nope. Again, it’s good advice, but rather self-evident. A zesty mixture of routine and unpredictability is the best. I program this thing so every day ends with the hand-off to the site update, which follow a schedule. Matchbooks and Comics are always Monday - Tuesday, and have been for years. The rest of the week depends on whatever I’m working on, but they go on for a month, at least.
4. Choose Words Artistically
Language is a beautiful thing. Unfortunately, with today’s mindset that “anyone can blog,” language has been falling to the wayside. Sometimes, posts are total snooze-fests not because they have boring information but because the writing itself is boring. Think about the words you are typing. You don’t have to be Shakespeare, but take a little pride in your word and play with language in your blog posts. Remember, editing is key.
I’ll just let that one sit there.
5. Tell Interesting Stories
This is the example given. Go have a look. Moral: if you’re a spoon, don’t fork it up.
7. Stop Worrying About Length
Example: this. It’s a blog about making money on the internet, and while I’m sure it’s popular and effective and informative, I cannot think of a reason why I would go there. Which would be a problem if it’s shared by many. Whenever I read any blog about making money from blogging, it’s like reading an Amway distributor newsletter.
8. Close the show well
The end of a fireworks show is typically marked with a bunch of blasts in quick succession. It’s a kick, a punch, a POW to the already great show you just saw. Your blog posts show have that same fire at the end.
We’ll put that one in the pocket to see how the post ends.
9. Know your weaknesses and work on them.
Again, good advice, but not a guarantee of pyrotechnics. Also, not necessarily good advice. My weaknesses include writing about sports from the perspective of someone who cares, and there’s no way to improve that.
10. Blog often
Writing explosive blog posts – yes, every single time you hit the publish button – is possible, and hopefully the above tips will help you, but it doesn’t just happy. You have to be willing to work for it.
It just doesn’t happy is something I feel about many posts; I look at them, and the happy isn’t happening. But still we push through every day, because this has been here since the oceans formed and the earth cooled, and will be until the desire to write completely ebbs out of my body. Which will be preceded by “breath,” I hope. And by then I will figure out how the oceans could form before the earth cooled; it would seem to be the other way around, or all you’d get is steam. But you know what happens when steam builds up in a locomotive engine on the 4th of July, and cannot be released, and the situation reaches a critical mass just as the train chugs past the grandstand where the fireworks are taking place? EXPLOSIONS AND PYROTECHNICS.
I don't know why I decided to pick this apart, because the advice is good for novices - BlogWorld is great for people who want to connect with others who see blogging as a marketing tool. It's lots of fun. But as for the blogs themselves, it comes down to the advice you'd give any writer:
Write about things that interest you, and don't be dull.
You know, like hot dog potato chips.
