Blogging Pheromones

Some of you love this blog. Some of you like it. Some of you tolerate it. Some of you unsubscribe. This is how life goes in the blogosphere.

And I’m so curious to know why. Why do some of you ooh and ahh and hyperventilate with joy while reading and send me emails professing your love, while some of you just shrug your shoulders and move on? Why do I wait anxiously for some feeds to appear in my email and hit delete when I get others?

You all know that I have very serious thoughts and feelings and opinions about smell. The power of the nose? It’s astounding, not least because of its use of pheromones.

pheromone |?fer??m?n|
noun Zoology
A chemical substance produced and released into the environment by an animal, esp. a mammal or an insect, affecting the behavior or physiology of others of its species.

There are some people in this world that smell so good to us that we can’t keep our hands off them – literally. It’s carnal and biological. Their very scent lights something up inside of us. It makes us do crazy things – more hypnotic and tantalizing than a full moon. Much, I’d say.

And there are some people in this world that smell so bad to us that we can’t get far enough away from them. It’s also carnal and biological. Their very scent brings something up inside of us. And it’s usually revulsion. It makes us do crazy things – like run away, it can even make us cruel in our distaste.

So…

Can you smell me? I didn’t think so. Because I can’t smell you. Which leads me to believe that there’s some sort of blogging pheromone wafting about.

What makes us connect, fuse and fall in blogging love? And what make us delete, leave nasty comments and close the window? It must be the words, the sentiment, the emotion, the energy, the shared life experience, the joy (or disdain) of shared humanity.

Image credit: Brouhaha (I could NOT resist this picture)

We Have Lift off (and a Dragon Tattoo Exclusive)

This morning, I’m thrilled to announce, the Dragon Tattoo Blog Hunt launched into the blogosphere.

Here’s the official hooha on the social media campaign:

In anticipation of the March 19th U.S. theatrical release of Dragon Tattoo, Music Box Films will launch a clue-based Blog Hunt around the web on March 10th. Top bloggers will publish articles about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo with an embedded clue leading readers to the next site in the Hunt. Readers will follow these clues for prizes including film tickets, books and posters. The contest will focus on blog topics covered in the film including technology, writing, violence against women, and tattoos. The Blog Hunt will begin on the movie’s official website where the first clue will be published.

And because I love all of YOU so very much, I’m giving you an exclusive clue – or rather to the answer to one of the clues.

Yours truly wrote one of the blog posts for the Blog Hunt and it’s published on Copyblogger. So, if you’re playing along and you get to the clue that talks about ‘copy’ and ‘blogging’ you’ll know right where to go. And now on to the post:

Blogging Lessons from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

A 40 year-old unsolved murder mystery. Strange cryptic codes in a bible. Sweden, sandwiches and many, many cigarettes. The badass-est female protagonist since…forever. And an author who has, posthumously, caused quite a ruckus in the book world and in the minds of conspiracy theorists everywhere.

Yes, I’m talking about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. If you haven’t heard of it, the rest of us are inviting you to come out from under your rock. Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest) is topping bestseller lists as we speak and the theatrical release of Dragon Tattoo hits the U.S. next week.

I had the good fortune of screening an advanced copy and, of course, my mind went blog, blog, blog. Because that’s what blog obsessed people like us do. It’s almost like we’re wearing blog colored glasses as we look out onto our worlds. Here are the blogging lessons I learned from this tattooed ‘girl’…

Gasoline feeds a fire, but first there has to be a spark

At one point in the movie, a man lays under a car. Having just flown off the side of the road, both he and the car are demolished, gasoline is spilling out everywhere…and he waits, watching, trapped. Finally there’s a spark…and then fire, total combustion.

So often we have all of the ingredients, right? The design is just right, the writing is perfection, the research says that there’s a need for the content….but then, nothing. No traffic, no comments, no buzz. Why? What’s missing?

There has to be a spark. Maybe it comes in the form of a new partnership, a referral or an outside event (like a shortage of light bulbs) that makes your product (candles) suddenly burst into high demand. Or maybe you have a life changing event that triggers your passion, maybe you read a book that causes something to click in your brain or your heart.

And then, there’s no stopping the heat….

Read the rest of the lessons on Copyblogger’s slice of the sphere and get the next clue in the Blog Hunt!

When old media and new media play together in the sandbox

‘This is a very simply game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Sometimes…it rains.” Bull Durham

As I see it, one of my roles on this blog is, for lack of better words, to play the fool. For you that is. In other words, I’m taking one for the team. I’ve said time and time again that I’ve wished, both when I was starting out and still as I find my way, that I had someone like me who I could ask for advice or learn from. But I didn’t when I was starting and I frequently forget to ask for help now…so here I am as a result, sometimes doing it right, sometimes doing it wrong, sometimes…just doing it.

And last week, I did something wrong. So I’m here to tell you about it so that you, hopefully, don’t do it wrong if the opportunity should present itself.

Swimming around the freelancers’ pool

Freelancing has placed me in wide variety of situations at this point, I’m assuming you could say the same. By definition, we get thrown into all matter of circumstances where we may or may not have any clue how to act or be or do. Over our heads, soaked to our ankles, blowing bubbles, treading water or swimming speedily through the course – sometimes within a span of 5 minutes. Right?

Currently, I’m working on a massive project with a sizable team, we’ve got a little bit of every role you could imagine. Specific to my ‘doing it wrong’, we have two publicists. They’re Big deals. (It was suggested that I add the capital ‘B’).  One of them is French – and I imagine her sitting at a huge mahogany desk with a toy poodle on her lap and a long, thin cigarette hanging off of a long porcelain cigarette holder between her long thin fingers. Her hair is piled on top of her head and she’s wearing Chanel. But I have no idea if that is even a little bit true.

Anyway, I pissed her off.

You see, on a regular basis, the publicists send out emails to the team alerting us to news breaks or product mentions. And I, in my blind ignorance and bloggy haze of ‘we’re all in this together’, figured they were just letting us know whenever we were featured in the media. Since I’m running the social media campaign, I’ve engaged many listening tools – effectively holding my trusty stethoscope up to the internet – so that I know every time we ‘appear’ online. Obviously, then, I thought I should contribute to these emails as well. You know – one for all and all for…

Oops.

I got told off…and how (and quickly) for this gaff. Those press breaks they were sending were gigs the publicists themselves had landed. The break is there metric for their work for the client. Had I secured the mention I just emailed? (she asked). Um…nooooo, not so much. I just thought we were all spreading the good news. It turns out, we weren’t. Not even a little bit.

All worked out fine, I apologized, I never did it again, I returned to my corner to do my job. And I learned some things, which makes it all worth it in the end:

1. Now that I know why what I did wasn’t okay, it seems blaringly, glaringly obvious.
2. This is true of most lessons learned, except maybe those gleaned from a calculus textbook.
3. When entering a new situation, take a good look around and identify things that might not be familiar.
4. Find someone, either within the fray or without, that is familiar with those things.
5. If you feel like doing a certain something that is out of your general knowledge area, ask this someone for guidance: Run it by them first.
6. Keep your wits about you – did you just break a cardinal rule? ruin a business? step over a cultural line? threaten someone’s place on the totem pole? Put your mistake in perspective.
7. Life is very interesting when the old media and the new media play together in the sandbox.
8. My skin is getting thicker. Once upon a time I might have been mortified or at least obsessed about my faux pas. This time I said ‘whoops!’, laughed and moved right along.
9. What’s next? (Thank you, President Bartlett). The only way out of an error is forward. Fix it, change your behavior, don’t do it again.
10. When you have the best readers in the world, it isn’t that hard to tell them about the times when you’re stupid.
11. I really do love to share. It’s how I got myself into this mess…and it’s how I’m getting myself out.

Image credit: Banalities

The Sex and the City Guide to Copyblogging – (Copyblogger post)

Originally posted on Copyblogger

I’ve always been of the opinion that if Carrie Bradshaw had popped onto our television screens in 2010 instead of 1998, she would have been a blogger. But alas, she didn’t, so she wrote a (gasp!) print column for the fictional New York Star newspaper.

Yes, before there were blogs, there were newspaper columns – where readers couldn’t talk back or share good content. ‘Carrie the blogger’ would have been huge.

Though the words of Carrie and her cohorts have not been etched in permalink stone, their messages linger on. And despite the fact that Carrie was allergic to the internet and only used her Apple Powerbook for word processing her articles, the lessons, ideas and, more pointedly, the actual quotes that came barreling out of Sex and the City still speak directly to us Copybloggers.

“You sleep with someone, all of a sudden you start rationalizing all of the red flags away.”

Now, hopefully, you aren’t sleeping with your clients, readers or other bloggers (on a regular basis). Typically, the copybloggers’ dangling carrot (no pun intended, I swear) isn’t sex, it’s money….

Hop on over to Copyblogger to finish reading this post, yo.

(And I haven’t forgotten the non-hoopla post…it’s coming!)

Image credit: 22

Dang. Another Fork.

Remember in The Muppet Movie when Kermit and Fozzie are driving along and the map says there’s a fork in the road and they look up and there’s actually a huge fork sticking out of the ground? I frickin’ love that.

The frog and the bear were following directions, so they knew which way to go when they came upon this fork. But the rest of us aren’t always that lucky. Like me, today. I’m writing and everything’s going just fine and then I get to this place – it’s my fork in the writing road. And I have no map.

Suddenly, I have a choice. I’m writing about the importance of having community as a blogger – and I can focus on the virtues of the greater collective or I can highlight the benefits of having a few key people. There’s not room for both in my post, but the real issue for me is this: it’s hard to let go of either option. What if I pick the wrong one? How will I ever know what might have been? And, no, I do not have time to write it both ways and then pick. But, that’s a nice fantasy.

As I write this, I realize that the Zen take on this dilemma (Alisa – you’ve corrupted my conscience!) would be to embrace the fork not as a ’split’ or an ‘either or’, but as a bastion of opportunity and abundance! “Wow – look at that,” I would say. “I can choose option A and then write another post about option B. Lucky me!” But, I don’t want two posts. I want one. The right one.

My July birthday makes me a Cancer, ruled by water and the moon and my emotions and passion. Apparently this means that:

• I cling (you know, with my crab claws).
• I have needs that want to be filled deeply and immediately.
• I have an aversion to failure and opposition.
• (Oh, and I don’t like to be told what to do. This has absolutely nothing to do with this my point in this post. I just like knowing that this isn’t a character flaw, but an astrological fact that is beyond my control. Can someone call my all of my teachers, K – 12, and let them know? Thanks.)

Back to my point, something happens to me psychologically (or metaphysically? or astrologically?) when I have to make a choice between two ideas. I clutch them both tightly – and when I finally choose option A, I feel like I’ve failed option B. I don’t like the disparity that is inherent in making the choice.

So, quite often I find myself staring at my computer screen – contemplating the death of a thread in a post. Interestingly enough, the Muppets give me a nudge out of this pothole at the end of the movie with their final song. It goes a little something like this:

“Life’s like a movie, write your own ending, keep believing, keep pretending…”

I think Kermit just told me to fake it till I make it. And I think Kermit just told me that I literally can’t get it wrong. I just need to choose…and keep driving.

How do you handle forks?

Image credit: Dcosand

Surgically removed

On Tuesday, my baby girl, the fruit of my loins, is having surgery. I’ve been effectively not thinking about this for weeks. But now it’s right here, days away. It’s a supposedly easy, out-patient thing, but she has to go completely under – and, well, it’s surgery. And she’s so little.

She’s having surgery to have her adenoids removed because she can’t breathe and because we’ve tried everything else and because they’re causing her pain and discomfort and hearing loss and tooth decay and god knows what else.

So, I’m trying to find something good here in this situation – because to sit around and worry is, well, really stupid. And here’s what occurred to me. There are times when I have tried everything, when I’ve explored every option – but the pain and discomfort and god knows what else is still there.

How cool would it be if surgery were an option for me? There are some things I’d like to have surgically removed. Like my knack for procrastination and people that don’t use their turn signals and the scarcity of time and my intense need for Vanilla Coconut Bliss with carob powder smushed into it.

I’d love to have those things hacked off. Or sucked out. Like liposuction.

In one of my favorite movies, Someone Like You, Ashley Judd goes to the doctor and asks him to remove her amygdala  – the part of the brain that retains sense memory – because every time she smells laundry or vanilla it reminds her of her ex-boyfriend and she’s thrown into a tailspin of heartache. It’s a fantastic scene. Raise your hand if you can relate.

What about you? What would you have removed? You know, if you could do it painlessly, easily, with no recovery time required – oh, and, of course, if your health insurance would cover it.

Image credit: aesop

Who needs statistics when we’ve got reality.

While many of my friends spent our junior year abroad in exotic places like Florence, Tanzania, Nepal, Paris and Argentina, I opted for the wilds of St. Louis, MO.

My main gig was volunteering at a domestic violence agency where I researched and wrote the organization’s history, taught dating violence prevention in local schools and worked on the 24-hour crisis hotline. And in order to do this terrifying and terribly important hotline work, I went through an intense and long training program.

• I learned why women stay in abusive relationships when it seems so obvious to the rest of us that they should leave.
• I learned that violence is a vicious cycle.
• And, I learned a number of statistics.

Most of theses numbers have stuck in my brain like gnarly, nasty pieces of chewed gum stuck under the lunch table – ugly to look at, hard to touch, easy to pretend they aren’t there. One of the stats goes like this: The day with the highest rate of domestic violence in the U.S. is Super Bowl Sunday.

Colts vs. Saints

Two days ago, as I sat at my computer working and occasionally watching the Facebook and Twitter streams of Super Bowl brouhaha pass me by, I found it hard to ignore this stuck-in-my-head statistic. I felt rising panic at what was likely going on as the Colts looked good…and then really bad, as the alcohol was consumed, as the chips ran out, as the bets were lost.

So, I put up a tweet and a FB status update telling people about the stat and offering up the number for the National Domestic Violence Hotline. 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY)

What happened next utterly, totally and completely floored me.

Some women, women, came after me. They said the stat was bogus. One said, and I quote: “That is an unfounded myth propogated by the media and womens activist groups. Set the record straight.” (spelling/grammar errors are listed verbatim)

Can you imagine? Women-centric activist groups having the nerve to tell the world that on a day when alcohol, tension and the chance for losing large sums of money are high, there is a greater incidence of domestic violence? The horror. Don’t get me started on the idea that these groups have been lumped in with ‘the media’.

I’ve since learned there are many sides to the validity of the actual stat.

This comment also included the following quote, “On January 31, 1993, when Ken Ringle of The Washington Post questioned the information mentioned in the press release, other news media quickly retracted their articles covering the domestic violence story. The damage was done. The myth continues and Super Bowl Sunday is still sometimes referred to as Bloody Sunday, Abuse Bowl, a Day of Dread, and the Most Dangerous Day in America.”

The damage was done. Yes. Citizens of this country were once again made to look at the fact that women and children are beaten in their own homes every single day by the people who are supposed to love and cherish them. And how dare we disrupt Super Bowl Sunday with this blasphemy! Oh holy, holy day!

My question is, who cares about the validity of this stat? IS THIS WHAT WE SHOULD BE WASTING OUR BREATH ARGUING ABOUT? Domestic Violence is true, real, happening  - right now. And what made these women flare up against me and my status update about this? It confounds me!!! For heaven’s sake, use your breath to help someone, not squabble over what Snopes says!

And how can we believe that information from Ken Ringle up above. Hello? How many lies are we fed every day by industries with ulterior motives!?! I mean, do you really think Cheerios will save you from getting heart disease? PLEASE!!! The fight against the Super Bowl stat is based in the fact that it is a huge day for advertisers and TV: ‘Don’t fuck it up for us with your downer information, thank you’ is, I believe, their message.

My mom

My mother, bless her, has spent roughly 20 years of her life tirelessly working to bring awareness to and raise money for the ugly reality of domestic violence – and she isn’t done yet. Having retired from her role as Development Director, she’s now taking the training again so that she’s up to date and ready to again volunteer on the crisis hotline at Safe Connections in St. Louis.

In her training session this past Saturday (the day before the Big Game), someone (coincidentally) asked about the Super Bowl statistic. And the Director of the hotline said there’s a lot of discrepancy about the statistic. But that the organization personally tracks all of their calls, and every year, every year calls and DV reports spike on Super Bowl Sunday and the entire week that follows.

Statistic are hard to get. Especially when they surround an issue that people keep quiet, viciously undercover – so they don’t get arrested (the abuser) or so that they don’t get killed by their abuser (the abusee). Another stat: the chance an abused woman will be killed by her abuser if she tries to leave the situation increases roughly 75%.

What we do know is that an agency in downtown St. Louis, Missouri (middle America, right in the heartland) has their own stats. And they aren’t good.

If you or someone you know is being hurt, please reach out. Everyone deserves to be safe.

1-800-799-SAFE (7233), or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY)

Image credit: sinosplice

Having the last word

There’s something that’s always intrigued me about Carrie Bradshaw. I mean, there are many, many things, but there’s this one in particular. (In case you’ve been living under a rock, Carrie’s the main character on a little show called Sex and the City where she writes a column for a New York City paper.)

She writes about sex and being single and dating in Manhattan (and occasionally some other boroughs). She writes specifically about her experiences with sex, being single and dating in Manhattan. Her experiences. Which means that her column is a tidy, often hilarious and always poignant take on what’s happened to her and around her. (Um, yes, I’m writing in the present tense, they are making the 2nd movie as we speak and talking about a 3rd, so she’s alive and well as far as I’m concerned.)

But the best part (and the intriguing part) is that she gets the last word via her column. Every time. Every single time. (To quote her in Season 4 – if you actually name the episode in the comments below, you will be rewarded somehow.)

Worrying about Tom, Dick, Harry or Jane

When I was writing about finding voice and speaking with authenticity the other day, it occurred to me that when you talk candidly, you might rub someone the wrong way – you could even hurt them. For instance, I offended people with small dogs. But Carrie never seems to let this cross her mind. You never once hear her say (over the course of 6 seasons and 1 movie), ‘maybe I shouldn’t write that because Tom, Dick, Harry or Jane might read this’. She’s unapologetic in her forthcomingness. And, I might add, she also happens to be an exceedingly nice person.

Yes. I (kind of) know it’s fiction. But I’m a writer and a dreamer, so I can’t help but think about those poor characters opening the paper and reading about their relationship failures or their small (well, you know) or how they tried to suck Charlotte’s face off or about how they broke up with Carrie on a post-it note.

Tying it up

This heroine seamlessly wraps it up, sticks a bow on the end and closes her laptop. How glorious is that?

It doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s no longer happy or pissed off or sad or mulling it over. Though I can only guess that having the last word helps with some of that. We, writers, know that writing it down – last word or not – is therapeutic and critical. But, as writers, as bloggers, as journalists…do we always get the last word? Or is that just the ’stuff’ of really good cable TV?

Image credit: Kill Pop

Need to improve your blog rank and traffic?

This is a familiar client/Writing Roads scenario:

Me: If you want to be part of the world online, you must have a blog (for all of these reasons and more)

Client: Okay great…how often will I have to post? Like once a month?

Me: Uh, no. A little more than that.

Client: Twice a month? Just tell me how often should I publish to get the most ROI?

Me: Honestly, as much as possible. But at least 2-3 times per week.

And then they pass out.

The thing is, I’m not just talking out of my arse.

Take this blog, for instance:

• I used to blog Monday – Friday. As a result, after about 9 months of steadily rising stats, I had an Alexa rank of 123,000. (Which is really, really good – Google is #1)
• Last spring, I got insanely busy and I decided it wouldn’t hurt to drop down on my posting. So I went to Monday, Wednesday and Friday posts, 3x/week. My Alexa rank steadily fell to the 300,000 mark. (Not anywhere near as good)
• About 3 weeks ago, I started posting every day, Monday – Friday, again. No less busy – possibly more, but I just wanted to (because I love writing this blog), so I did. And I’ve watched my Alexa rank rise 100,000 spots and my spider (and visitor) stats increase. That’s 100K in about 13 posts. As of this writing, my rank is 199,000 (and rising)

The proof really is, as they say, in the pudding. If you want your blog to do better, (one of the methods that works is to) write, produce and publish more good content that tells the world all that you know about your chosen topic.

The good news, for both of us, is that if you don’t have the time or ability to do all of this blogging, you can hire someone to do it for you. I know, it’s a brilliant solution. You can do what you do best (cut hair, build houses, train chickens, whatever) and I, or some other writer, can do what we do best – produce engaging content. It’s a win/win sitch. No heavy lifting required.

Image credit: The Truth About…

Posing Nude, part 1

In my life, I’ve woken up to many things: dogs wanting to go outside, babies crying, dorm fire alarms going off, delightful lovers, the announcement that the plane was about to land. But this morning was a first. I woke up to a text, from my painter friend – Traeger, that said, “Would you consider modeling nude for my drawing class?”

You’ll be thrilled to know that my very first thought was, I can write about this!

The reality is that I’m totally game. I mean, what do I spend my time here writing about anyway? Life really, as a writer. Exploring the experiences of life through words. And this, my friends, will certainly be an experience.

It took me a couple of hours to acknowledge the ‘nude’ part of the equation. Wait…nope…yeah, no…I haven’t quite let that sink in yet. I’m too caught up in the rest of it.

Like the fact that they think it’s a great idea if I bring my laptop and pose with it – so that I can write while I pose, so that I can live tweet this experience. Like the fact that one of the artists is kind of a big deal. Like the fact that I will be doing something I’ve never done before, something that requires cajones. Like the fact that I’ll get paid (that doesn’t make me a hooker, right?).

Just one last question, do you think I’m really going to have to take my clothes off?

Stay tuned…’cause obviously there’s going to be a part deux.

Image credit: apc33