The elevator pitch (8 of 30/74 of 274)

In conjunction with the April NaBloPoMo theme of growing, one of my personal goals is to grow as a writer and communicator. In a happy coincidence, Darren Rowse at Problogger is also running “31 Days to Build a Better Blog” in April.

I’m finally getting a chance to start on the first task of writing an elevator pitch for this blog. An elevator pitch is a short statement that cleverly and succinctly summarizes the purpose and benefits of your blog (or business, or invention, or yourself for that matter).

First exercise, and I’m stuck already, as this blog did not start out with much of a purpose except as a convenient container for NaBloPoMo posts. It still continues to fill that need quite well, by the way. Not only is my purpose somewhat weak, the blog’s name (Look Twice) and tagline (Is that me, baby, or just a brilliant disguise) have nothing to do with that purpose. They are song lyrics that tie in to the domain name (brilliant-disguise.net) and to my not-terribly-original thought that I, and many of us, are intentionally or unintentionally hiding behind the “brilliant disguise” of our online persona. Some of the other lyrics of the song would be suited to creating a tagline for a blog about relationships, but that’s not something I blog about often, if at all.

If you’ve been following me this month, you might have seen that I’m already considering reviving and reworking an old pet health blog. If I split off all of the pet-related posts to that blog, that blog’s mission would be to share my personal experiences and explorations into pet health and training topics and issues. I’d keep the original name “dog:blog :: cat:chat” and add the tagline “a personal chronicle of pet health and training topics.” The long version for the “about me”: Everyone loves to talk about their pets, and I am no exception. I am here in the hopes that sharing my personal experiences with health issues and training issues faced by my current and past pets can help others ask good questions and make good choices for their pets.

I could also keep going with this blog’s present eclectic (ok, fine then, mixed-up) content, including having the pets stay here, and change the title and tagline. I am fond of my current title and tagline, but when it comes down it, they are not my own words. This blog doesn’t have much of a following yet, so it would not hurt anything much to change the name and even the domain right now.

My most frequent topics here are the dogs and technology. Possible new name “Rottweilers Ate My iBook” and possible new tagline “Rottweilers. Computers. World Domination. Not necessarily in that order.” My favorite “on the Internet, no one knows you are the cutest Rottweiler puppy ever” picture could be worked into a header graphic.

The long version for the “about me”: This is my highly personal take on my favorite topics: the care and training of Rottweilers, and the care and taming of technology. Remember: don’t let either of them know that you’re scared!

Heh, at least I’ve gotten started! I’ll come back to this in a day or two and hopefully by then I will have decided whether to have one blog or two. Thanks again to Darren for an extremely thought-provoking start to 31DBBB!