This is not a real post and I’m not even going to pretend it is, so let’s just get right on down to brass tacks, shall we?
Oh, that’s me. OK, so, I’m forking over my blog to YOU in August.
Let me explain.
I want you to put in the comments something you’d like me to write a post about. It could be a topic, a movie, a musician, or some other sort of prompt. I will choose 31 of your ideas, and those will be my posts next month. You’ll get mentioned, of course, when I get to your post.
Why am I doing this? Well, three reasons, really.
1. I am very very close to 100 subscribers here on ye ole blog, and I might even get there by August 1st. I want to thank you for that!
2. I believe my Engagement Series will also be done by August 1st, so my desire to think up topics will be used up for awhile
3. And as for 3, well, I’ll be honest. I am so overwhelmed with how good so many people in this space have been to me this month that I feel like few things could be more fun than working on a project with you all.
So start leaving your ideas here. I’ll leave entries open till Monday and then I’ll announce on Tuesday what August will look like here.
Sound good? I hope so! 🙂
When I first started blogging and tweeting, I thought the game was pretty simple. You write stuff, and then if people like it, you get retweeted. Of course the reality, as you learn over time, is that the whole process is an awful lot more complicated than that. There are a million (and one) details that you need to know, and unfortunately, these are the things that people often don’t tell you. People like to write blog posts about the big important (and fun) stuff like writing great headlines and also creating content that might be interesting.
Have you ever seen the movie Being John Malkovich? It’s definitely not your typical Hollywood fare, but I adore the film. There’s one particular exchange that I want to tell you about today. Craig (played by John Cusack) has come to the sad realization that his dream girl Maxine (Katherine Keener) loves someone else a lot more than she loves him, which is to say, she doesn’t care for him at all. He looks miserable while she floats on and on about how happy she is.
Mark Twain recounts an interesting little sidebar story about a friend of his. This friend was a preacher and was on his way to church when he was handed a note. The note said that General Sickles, who had been this man’s mentor and great friend, had passed away (this turned out to be false). The preacher was shaken, but of course he had to continue on. His sermon for the day was on the “begats.” Moses begat so and so who begat so and so. Given his state of mind, the preacher was not able to hold his voice steady and occasionally tears rolled down his cheeks. Of course, the congregation had no idea what the preacher had just learned. To them, it was an absolute mystery why this man, who could maintain a straight and even tone when giving much more emotional sermons, was so distraught over the darned “begats.”
A few days ago we talked about how you could use a blog site to help make the world a better place. Today we’re going to chat about how to use Twitter in the same way. A lot of people still think of Twitter as “that site where people talk about what they ate for dinner.” It’s true that not everyone uses Twitter in what we might call “meaningful” ways, but there is a huge opportunity for value. Here are 25 of my ideas on this topic.
Well, okay, it’s been open for awhile. Details details! But that was all soft launch 🙂