Archives for April 2014
5 Amazing Jedi Mind Tricks That Make People Read Your Post
Congratulations you just got sucked in by a “great” headline and are now part of an informal study about blogging. Have no fear I won’t reveal your identity nor do I promise to provide real scientific data for this study.
Instead I shall follow in the grand tradition of so many others and write a post that supports my hypothesis that headlines are overrated. So now let’s move on and see how many come seeking information and who comes because I have used the force to suck them in. If you aren’t using the force to generate readers and bring in traffic I suggest that you rectify that immediately.
One of the best ways that you can do that is by purchasing the ebook I haven’t yet written but will provided that a minimum of 500 people pay the never to be so low again price of $37.50. There is alternative for those who are too foolish, ignorant, stupid and or skeptical to pay me up front. All you need to do is send me three low payments of $19.95 and I’ll do the rest.
Can you see the immense value in my proposition. Don’t bother answering that was a rhetorical question. I never doubted that you would recognize it. Fact is that by taking the time to read these words you not only gained IQ points but also proved that you have exceptional taste. Congratulations on that. It makes you part of an elite group of influencers who have the kind of clout that Klout wishes it had.
You Just Won A Prize
Because your smart, wise and witty you have won a part in the American Blogger movie, you know the one that is being made by the white guy whose white wife discovered this nifty thing called a blog and got into social media.
And since I am feeling saucy today I won’t insult anyone by suggesting that I know sock monkeys with more writing talent. Ok, I lied.
Sock monkeys have far more talent than several of you, especially people who get into silly pissing contests with me. Ya know if you are going to be a pretentious blogger and douse me in your sanctimonious snark you might not want to spend 15 minutes rifling through the pages here trying to  figure out who I really am.
If I wanted you to know my name is Kaizer Soze I would tell you I am Kaizer Soze and then attempt to sound extra cool by saying “Bitch” with authority.
Really, that is how I roll…just like Jesse Pinkman.
A Note To Women
Dear ladies some of you find it funny to write posts describing your husband in ways that make him appear to be a buffoon, clown and or moron.
Sometimes you include funny stories about how poorly he parents and then you wonder aloud how you manage to keep up with your big kid as well as the little ones.
When I read these posts I often wonder if you really think the man you married and or let impregnate you is a fool. Do you really think he is as stupid as you portray him because I wonder if you see how that reflects upon you.
Methinks it might be interesting to see how you’d respond to a post in which you were ridiculed in the name of humor. If we follow the model some of you have established we can call you names too and assuage any anger you might feel by saying our post was funny.
Really, it was a funny post and if you had a sense of humor you’d understand why you were described as a frigid, stone hearted woman who is incapable of taking care of herself or small people without help.
What The Hell Is This Post About?
If I told you this post was about how to become a better writer/blogger would you believe it? Would you click on Twenty-Five Links That Will Make You A Better Writer/Blogger?
Or would you be more likely to read something like The GermoPhobe or  A Father Describes Parenting?
Hell maybe it is more accurate to say this post is about nothing and everything with the hope that you’ll find something.
Have no fear. Stick around a bit longer and I promise to share a good story or twenty and maybe a trick or two you’ll find useful. All I know is that I have learned we rarely have Plenty of Time.
See you on this side or the next.
The World’s Greatest Content Marketer Hates Comments (Revisited)
We like to believe that we are ahead of the curve or pretty damn close to it. In January of 2013 you were given the gift known as The World’s Greatest Content Marketer Hates Comments. It predates the great comment war of 2014.
You know that one right?
It is the one that is discussed in Why We Won’t Shut Off Blog Comments Spin Sucks. Since we run a green blog and believe in recycling good posts we are going to share our initial post with you again.
And we’ll even give you another picture of a sock monkey. Hope to see you in the comments.
I am the world’s greatest content marketer and the world’s greatest dad blogger and I hate comments.
Do me a favor and try not to get caught up in the self-appointed titles of greatest content marketer and greatest dad blogger because those titles are meaningless. They have the same authority as the lists that some media organizations compile of the top 50 or 100 Sock Monkeys who blog.
Heck, it is an insult to hard working sock monkeys everywhere to compare their work to some of the bloggers on these lists, not to mention a bunch of other big names. Don’t ask me to name names either because it won’t happen.
Not interested in a flame war with people who can’t write better than Sock Monkeys.
Forget About The Sock Monkeys
This post was going to be called Is Triberr Divisive but I stumbled across a post at Mark Schaeferâs place called Social media “engagement†is not a strategyand decided to go in a different direction.
It is a very smart piece and it deserves to be read. If you are not able to get over there then read this:
Let’s not forget that all that engagement comes at a cost! We have to be careful that we’re ready to staff-up to effectively meet those demands. And for some companies, that may not be a good business decision.
Let me give you a micro-example. Last week I wrote a blog post that had more than 100 comments. As a small business owner, if I had this level of engagement every day, I would not have time to work on the consulting and teaching activities that feed my family.
Now if I really wanted to, I could pump up this level of engagement all the time¦ but it would be foolhardy for me to do so. I need to strike the proper balance of commercial activities across my customer base that optimize my business results. In fact, I purposely plan my blog postings to DEPRESS engagement on days when I don’t have the time to properly handle it.
In other words, if you’re not careful, you can talk yourself broke.â€
Smart businesses work hard to build relationships with their prospective and existing customers. One of the ways they do it is through creating channels that funnel conversation towards places where they have an active presence.
But once you open that door you have to prepare to answer the comments, calls, emails and visitors that come by to visit.
No one wants to be ignored and if you don’t respond in a timely basis you will alienate people and make them feel like you are ignoring them.
The beauty of our instant gratification society is that our collective attention spans are shrinking so our willingness to wait isn’t what it used to be.
I Have A Love/Hate Relationship With Comments
Remember me, the self-proclaimed World’s Greatest Content Marketer? I have a love/hate relationship with comments. Blog comments are not currency but many people use them as such. It is how they measure their success but it is a funny sort of metric to use.
That questions and others that are related to it are responsible for posts likeWhat is the value of a comment? and Can You Build Community Without Comments?
Hell, sometimes I think the comments are the reason why some bloggers have gone off of the deep end. Blogging is a two-way street and when you start to view your readers as groupies and sycophants you are headed to that place Yoda referred to as The Dark Side.
Forgive the tangent, but it irks me to no end that my kids view Darth Vader as being some sort of sympathetic figure.
He used to be scary. He used to be the icon of evil and now since Lucas messed with my childhood he is not the same.
It makes me wonder if Lucas spent too much time reading all of the positive comments and not enough time paying attention to the criticism.
What I really want to see in a comment section is a conversation that we can learn from. I don’t mind banter because that can help build community, but if all we ever see is praise I begin to wonder.
Blogging Questions, Concerns and Ideas
I have to get some shut eye so that I can try to stay a step ahead of the sock monkeys but before I go I want to state again that Writing Is Not The Hardest Part Of Blogging and that blogging/social media isn’ free.
Our time is worth something and that is part of why I like mixing up the posts here. It is not just to maintain interest or because I love to write but because posts like this one stimulate conversation that builds community and educates.
I like learning and I think many of you do too.
The floor is open. Would love to hear your thoughts.
Where Can I Buy A Fortress Of Mostly Quiet?
People tell me I need to pay more attention to writing headlines that command attention and to injecting my content with the terms I want my blog to rank most highly for because these things will help me.
Well I keep telling people that having super speed, super strength and the winning lotto numbers can do the same thing for me too with a whole lot less effort.
Now you might wonder why I want a Fortress of Mostly Quiet as opposed to Solitude and the answer is because I am a curmudgeon and not a misanthrope. Sure a career in misanthropy can sound like it offers multiple benefits but I have yet to find an example of one that didn’t lead to incarceration.
People sometimes irritate me but not to the point where I am going to write a manifesto and blow things up.
Locks and Boundaries
Locks and boundaries make for good neighbors and lox and bagels make for a good brunch. Hey Shmata Queen, make a note of that for our next Sunday brunch.
Go back in time to a post called When Is Failure An Option-2011 Edition and you’ll find some of my favorite writing. There is some stuff in there that just makes me smile and not because I can look back and think how far I have come in three years because man o’ man have I walked down a path.
I always said I would dance in the fire if need be but I can’t say I am happy to have proven that you can pour gasoline over my head and send me on the elevator to the great fire pits below. Yeah me and my pleasant disposition spent some time hanging out with Hades, battling Lucifer and punching old Beelzebub in the nose for no reason other than fight or lie down.
But that was then and this is now.
And now is when I look at some of the posts here and wonder aloud about how much to share. Or maybe it is more accurate to say I have read some Facebook status updates that make me wonder what the hell happened to common sense.
Why would you announce you ran over a homeless person, are getting divorced or that you got laid at Coachella.
This is part of why I have had long discussions with the kids about whether they can have Facebook accounts and what they can do online.
I believe part of being a good parent lies in teaching our children how to fail but failing common sense with these sorts of status updates makes me crazy because some of these things can follow you around.
Virtual Locks and boundaries can be just as real as anything you buy at the local hardware store.
Bloggers Are Narcissists
Somewhere in the pile of posts is one about whether bloggers are narcissists. Is that worth ranking for? Should I care? I dunno.
What I am certain of is I like the ‘excerpt below. Yeah, I wrote it and yeah you can call it obnoxious if you want but part of becoming a better writer is looking at our work, both the good and the bad.
“Life is filled with wonder and magic but it also comes with haunted forests and scary flying monkeys. And the problem with being a semi invulnerable superhero is that I can’t always be there to fight off the monsters of the night.”
I am a big fan of Game of Thrones. I have read all of the books and am anxiously waiting for the next one to come out. Most of the time when a book (series) is turned into a television show or movie I end up being disappointed by it but not this time.
The television show has been outstanding. Game of Thrones is full of narcissists and sociopaths who all operate alongside some normal people.
One of the reasons I like it is because the people feel real to me. Real life isn’t populated with people who are just good or just bad and neither is Game of Thrones.
Where Should Your Focus As A Writer Be?
My focus as a writer is upon building relationships with my readers. That is what Game of Thrones did, it built a relationship.
There are characters I love and characters I hate as well as some I am just ambivalent about. But the ones that matter most to me are those who have layers, who are complex and have shown some evolution because they remind me of people.
And my ultimate focus as a writer is to connect with people.
So Buffer can provide me with The Ideal Length of Everything Online, Backed by Research but that doesn’t mean I’ll use it as anything but a guide.
That is because people are complicated and they don’t always operate based upon logic and rational thought. Sometimes we make decisions based upon gut feelings or because the Magic 8 Ball said we should.
This probably explains why my neighbor is mowing his lawn in nothing more than a Speedo. I want a Fortress of Mostly Quiet and I want it now.
Oh and some bleach for my eyes. 😉
Are You The Master Of Your Destiny?
Fourteen months later I am listening to Empire State Of Mind (Feat. Alicia Keys) again and thinking about how different my life is from what I thought it would be like as a kid.
Fourteen months ago I spent a Saturday night at my nephew’s Bar Mitzvah reception and watched him, his siblings and friends partied.  Thought about how different things were for them from the life my children were living but not because I think theirs is better, it is just different.
That Saturday night in New Jersey the DJ played this song and the kids sang along with it but it was different to them because the city is real to them, a place they all visit on a regular basis. These kids know Ground Zero in a different way from mine because it happened to a city they know. They have a different sort of connection, nephew tells me he knows a bunch of kids who lost family on 911.
Fourteen months ago instead of flying in from the West Coast as I always had done I flew out of Dallas because Texas was home. The flight was short and the time change was nothing but the feeling about being a visitor was the same. Fourteen months later I look back and realize that Texas always felt like home, maybe not quite the same way as Los Angeles but home nonetheless.
Misty colored memories floating past my eyes make it clear to me that I knew that night everything had changed for me and that if I was going to become the man I want to be I had to do more to step into my future and be the master of my destiny.
The Master Of My Destiny
“Be not the slave of your own past – plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.â€â€• Ralph Waldo Emerson
I used to be a creature of habit who had become so comfortable in my routine I saw little reason to deviate from it. That doesn’t mean I didn’t see things I wanted to change, that I had no goals because I did.
There were things about myself I wanted to improve and parts of my life I wanted to change but I saw little reason to consider going elsewhere to do any of those things because it was all available to me in Los Angeles.
It wasn’t until I moved out of state that I realized I could do it all elsewhere too and that it might be a smarter way to do things. If the goal was to become a better storyteller and the kind of writer I have always wanted to be it makes sense to open the door to more experiences and to do so in a place that lends itself to living an easier life, at least from an economic standpoint.
But it also makes sense to follow Emerson’s advice and not remain clothed in the finery I had become accustomed to. I don’t need to be a royal or live that way unless it serves the purpose of being the master of my destiny.
What Does That Mean?
What that means is doing what it takes to continue to live a life that fills my heart, soothes my soul and makes me feel like I am alive and not just passing the days.
It means not letting fear and uncertainty about what could happen shackle me to the past.
These are not easy for most people and not easy for me either. Circumstances forced me to take a hard look at my life and make some changes.
Maybe it was the universe pushing me to follow a path or maybe it was just me stumbling onto it. Either way it doesn’t matter because you can give a drowning man a raft and it is up to him to grab it and swim to shore.
Being the master of my destiny means I accept the responsibility of making the changes that I have to make to live the life I want. It is that simple.
No risk, no reward. You either take a chance and see what happens or live with the consequences of never knowing what you might have done/been if you had tried.
The Most Brazen Approach To Blogging…Ever
Sometimes the best posts I write are rooted in the most painful experiences of my life. The darkest moments where I felt the dumbest, most helpless and most foolish provide ridiculous amounts of blog fodder and generally the most feedback.
Maybe it is because people relate to whatever I am writing about or maybe the cynical side of me is right that people like reading about other people’s pain. Look at the stories that sell the most papers and garner the most views and you see there is a connection between the two.
Sometimes I wonder if I should focus more on those pieces, plumb the darker depths more thoroughly and engage in far more self promotion because it is a proven recipe for success. When you don’t ask, you don’t receive.
The Most Brazen Approach To Blogging…Ever
The 17 long time readers know headlines trouble me and it is not because I have trouble coming up with them. I am consistently surprised by my irritation with being asked to play the headline game and write ones that have an active call-to-action that generates activity.
That is because I tell my children that sometimes the most effective way to make good things happen is to find a way to work within the structure and systems we operate in.
But if there is one place where you can consistently call me a hypocrite/rebel say I am not good at following my own advice it is working within structure and systems. That is not to say I won’t or can’t but I tend to blaze my own trail far more than I follow the path that has already been created.
In the quieter moments I like to say it is because I’m a creative type and we like doing things our own way or by saying I am an engineer who likes to understand how things work by taking them apart and putting them back together again.
But is entirely possible I am just hard headed and prone to doing things my way and in my time. Ask the Shmata Queen and she’ll verify that and if you catch her when she is feeling talkative she might even tell you that it is not an exaggeration to say I will try to move the mountain instead of going around it.
It is the joy of being a Taurus, still I get wherever I intend to go.
Confessions and Tales
I wore glasses and or contact lenses for almost 20 years. When my son was 3 months old I had Lasik done on both eyes and then proceeded to make my wife crazy by trying to figure out how good my vision really was.
Sure the doc had said I had perfect vision but I no longer remembered what that was so I needed to confirm it on my own. It was glorious being able to see unaided again and I never stopped appreciating what modern medicine had provided.
Yet I always knew a day would come when I might require reading glasses. The doc had told me that it would come but that it wouldn’t be until I was in my forties and suggested I might have surgery then to fix that too.
Since I was 31 I didn’t care all much, forty was nine years away and being in my forties even farther.
A few years ago I started having some trouble with dry eyes and was told I probably had blepharitis which was a lovely thing to hear. I began tearing through preservative free eye drops but that didn’t fix every thing, especially since work requires me to be at a computer for countless hours.
So I looked into additional help and came up Gunnar Optiks and picked up a pair of their computer glasses. That is a non affiliate link, this is not a sponsored post but I digress.
It made an immediate improvement and life at the computer improved dramatically but I have a sneaking suspicion that age might be catching up with me.
Reading Glasses and Middle Age
A short while ago we took my son in to get his eyes checked and when I mentioned in passing my eyes the doc suggested I get a pair of reading glasses and see what happens.
So I picked up a two dollar pair at the lowest strength and discovered they are working. Call that code for it is easier to read the screen with them on.
Gah, bleah and ugh.
I can still read without them. Give me a dime or penny and I can see it in anything but the darkest corners of the room but something tells me this is one time I shouldn’t try to fight.
Does this mean I am officially middle age? Do I need to run get a cool sports car for myself now. Should I be concerned that I have three gray hairs too.
I am not even 45 yet, ok I will be in a few weeks but that is still young. I am young and I’ll be damned if I let these glasses impact my view of myself.
This Is Not The Most Brazen Approach To Blogging…Ever
Ok, this is not the most brazen approach to blogging ever but this is the end of this particular post. I included one more photo you can use when you share this most magnificent piece of hyperbole.
