Blogging and Social Media

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

April 8, 2009 by kathi

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!

Growing a place on the ‘net (5 of 30/71 of 274)

April 5, 2009 by kathi

During the last few months, I’ve thought about refocusing this blog completely on pet-related matters. So the title of a recent post on the Dolittler veterinary blog, How to start and grow a top pet health site…with love, intrigued me. My original blog was devoted almost entirely to pet health. As I am not a veterinarian or a journalist, it was a personal blog discussing only the pets owned by me and my husband, and occasionally those of family members or friends. At the time, our pets numbered four dogs, three cats and two birds, so there was ample material for me to write about. After the two oldest dogs passed on, I didn’t have it in me to keep writing regularly. Effective tools for fighting comment spam were not quite ready for prime time then, and trying to keep up with it sapped any enthuasiasm still remaining.

Comment spam isn’t the problem it once was. I would probably need to expand the focus of a new version to include dog training, dog showing, dog sports competition and pet-related legislative issues, because most of my pets are thankfully young and healthy, and I won’t have many health issues to write about, hopefully for a while yet. I’ll need to give this a bit more thought before I make any changes. My pets are my favorite subject, but I do enjoy writing on other topics now and then, too.

Back to the Dolittler post, though. One of the pet health sites profiled was Tripawds, a site inspired by and supporting all three-legged dogs, primarily cancer patient amputees. My own three-legged dog Jake passed away in 2002, so I had no idea this site existed until this week. Back in 1998, there was not much information on the ‘net to help owners of amputee dogs. I think I found just one site, Cassie’s Three-Legged Dog Club, which still exists and has expanded quite a bit since then. Back then, I wrote to Cassie’s Club founder Cynthia Davis, got some good information, and had Jake join the club (he is the bottom Jake on this page). I updated my then-website to add a page about Jake’s accident and amputation, which I have never taken down.

I still get email from that page occasionally, and as I have done since the beginning, I always try to respond to those emails as quickly as possible. I never thought of the possibility of an entire site to support tripod dogs, but I am very glad that Jim and Rene were inspired by their Jerry’s illness and amputation to create the Tripawds site to provide an awesome resource for those facing the same issues.

Times are tough for all of us, but if by chance you have a bit to spare, please consider visiting the Tripawds site and donating towards their server upgrade. Back in 1998, I would have loved to have a site like that, with not only information available, but a forum and chat to actually talk to others in the same situation. I was glad to be able to make a small donation today in Jake’s memory.