Weekly Challenge 3--What's Your Tag Line?

[Michele Martin]

You've probably heard of the elevator speech--the 30 second speech that you should be ready to give to anyone to describe who you are and what you do.

This week's challenge is to come up with the blog equivalent of a 30-second elevator speech--a tag line. Your tag line should help us know instantly what your blog is about. It should also be something that tells us why your blog is unique--it should grab us. I'm also going to say that it can't be any longer than a sentence, and not a long sentence either. Your goal is to be able to capture the essence of both your blog and you as a blogger in that tag line.

When you have your tag line, come back here and share it with the rest of us. If you have one already, put it in comments here and let us tell you what we think of it.

As always, have fun!

[Michele Martin]

RE: the rotating tag line--I've actually seen a blog that does this, but I CANNOT remember which one it is. It was actually a cool way of doing it for that blog as I recall.

[Joel McDonald]

Mine is simple: The Official Blog of Joel McDonald Jr.

Any suggestions for change?

[Susan Sheehan]

link? because so far I have no idea what your blog is about.

[Joel McDonald]

www.joel-junior.com

Nobody does...

[Susan Sheehan]

Ah, there is your problem. What do you want your blog to be? It appears rather random to me. I get the impression you have a blog because you think you should. But how about if you have a blog because you have something you want to share? What would it be? I'll bet it would be a whole lot easier to write entries if you had a focus. What do you think?

[Joel McDonald]

Wow, I certainly don't want readers to think I blog because I have to. I blog because I want to, but my posts are not centered on a specific topic.

[Susan Sheehan]

Sorry, that wasn't really what I meant. I meant you are random. That seems to be what you want. You say something in one of your posts that made me think of a tag line for you.

Life, my box of chocolates

You are a postive person and seem to reflect on the things that happen to you. You view experiences as new flavors and just as worthy in that box as the rest of the chocolates.

That also leaves the door wide open for you to write about anything you want and anyone finding you for the first time knows your blog could be about whatever strikes your fancy.

[Joel McDonald]

A tag line around that concept would be pretty "sweet". I'll think about it a bit and see if I can't conjure up something that won't have readers thinking of Bubba Gump Shrimp.

[Joel McDonald]

Thanks Danielle! My About Page is still a work in progress, and I had been thinking about changing the tag line for a while now. I think you're on to something with what jumped out at you. Maybe I'll think about joining that concept with Susan's suggestion about the "box of chocolates".

[Harriet]

My blog title is : Technology Twitter, currently tagline is "Web 2.0 for life long living and life long learning" - I don't really like it, but I'm finding it really hard to come up with anything innovative, exciting or creative. I think I'm trying to get across the holistic nature of Web 2.0 to me - in that it really is part of life, learning, home, work, everything - but I know this doestn' really do it - I've never been very good at titling things....

[Liz at SmokeFree Wisconsin]

Blog Title: SmokeFree Wisconsin
Blog Tag: Preserving the right to live and breathe tobacco free

This is our organization's tag line, so I can't really say I put much thought into creating a blog tagline. Does it fit Michele's criteria? I'm not sure the tagline reveals why our blog is unique. Does it? Does it need to (for an organizational blog)? Does that fact that our blog title is the name of our organization and that our blog is a blog accomplish our goal of enticing potential readers to read the SFW blog? I guess I"m asking those questions because I'm not sure what else I could impart through a tagline. Ideas there?

I think there might be a difference between personal and organizational blogs in terms of convincing potential readers to stay on and read. Here's another thing I've been thinking of in the context of this challenge. It seems like people who know what blogs are and how they work would look to taglines to help them quickly choose whether or not to read on - hence the importance of this week's challenge question. I think one thing we struggle with at SFW is convincing one of our intended audiences - public health people who are very non-techie - that reading our blog is a useful way to be kept up-to-date. This takes me back to one of our still uncompleted BB31 Challenges - the About Page. Christine Martell's "What is a Blog?, How should I use your Blog?, and How do I navigate your Blog?" sections on her About Page seem like worthy things to include on ours too. So I guess I should stop saying I'm going to make one of those pages and just do it!!!

[Christine Martell]

Liz,
I do think our org blogs are different than more personal pursuits. Especially with multiple authors. Alignment and reflection of the org missions does seem appropriate to me, and is what I have done with the ones I have been involved in.

I struggle with the non-techie issue also. When I get people on the blogs, they do say they like the content and find it helpful. Getting them to engage or integrate it into an ongoing audience (getting them to subscribe or even know what that is).is really tough.

It is a workflow shift. For instance, I used to spend a certain amount of time, usually over tea in the morning reading a wide range of professional magazines. That has been totally taken over by reading blogs. Mainly because I get a wider range of voices, it blends relationships with peers, and the information is more timely. But I still have that big pile of magazines coming into my snail mail. So there is this transition time where I have an information overload, and a physical pile that feels like I am falling behind, or getting buried by. I suspect that part of what we need to do is to help people make the transition from more traditional forms of communication to new...without getting totally overwhelmed. Part of our new role as educators is guiding people in filtering information?