3L rule and authenticity in blogging

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In this 10-part Beginner’s Guide to Blogging series, we’re going to explore what makes a blog great and give you some structures and frameworks to help make blogging easier. Take from it what works and leave behind what doesn’t work!

Reference: The Beginner’s Guide to Blogging, Part 1 of 10: Blog Core Values.

This looks to be a really instructive series on better blogging, and I like Christopher Penn's 3L rule for helping us bloggers determine how good our content is:

• Did it make us laugh?
• Did we learn something?
• Do we love it?

The idea is to hit a homer run with all three, but just one out of three - that is, a single - makes it likely that our content is good.  Of course, striking out - or worse, hitting into a double play - is part of the game.  But the important thing, I'd say, is to do your best every time.  

Whether it's blogging and posting, my overarching rule is authenticity:  Do I truly like an article, video or image, and am I genuinely interested in, taken by, or amused with a subject matter?  In other words, I don't blog or post, just for the sake of blogging or posting.  

Inevitably I do learn something.  Often I love it, but at least I like it.  Once in a good while, too, I laugh.

College stars, NFL busts in DISH ad

DISH had this commercial preceding several videos I watched on ESPN, and because I don't follow college sports I really didn't think twice about it.  Then I realized that "Take me with you" guy was Brian Bosworth, the much-heralded, self-hyped football player coming out of the University of Oklahoma.  He was a bust.  Matt Leinart and Heath Shuler, having lunch within earshot, were a Heisman Trophy winner and runner up, respectively, and they had lackluster NFL careers at best.  It's a bit of dark comedy as a promo ad, but I found it intriguing.

Gauge interest in your content honestly

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In Should I Buy Facebook Likes? Tom Bukacek makes a logical case for not doing so:

You have 200 organic fans of your page. Let’s say 25% of them engage with your content on a regular basis, that’s 50 fans. 

You buy 1000 fans (now a total of 1,200). If those 50 fans are still engaging with you, Facebook sees that only a meager 4.2% of your fanbase is engaging with your content. This tells the algorithm that you aren’t producing valuable content, and you will appear in your fans’ Newsfeeds even less often. 

So what happened to those 200 organic fans that loved your brand? They’re still there, but they aren’t seeing your posts, and one of your competitors may have caught their eye in the meantime.

As I launched a handful of project-related profiles on Twitter two years ago, I thought about doing this very thing.  I bookmarked a site that sold followers, and read it over a handful visits to the site.  My budget is tight, but the fees were affordable.  I was almost sold on the faux argument that having thousands of followers lent my profile, and thus my project, credibility.

Interestingly I get a fair amount of followers who advertise such a service right on their own profile description:

I don't follow them back, and I never bought into that credibility argument.  Logic notwithstanding, my decision not to buy followers was a matter of ethics.  What kind of credibility could I ever establish by misleading people and feigning followership?  The fact that I see such a service still filtering through my Timeline, however, suggests that many actually buy into it.  So when I see anyone with an unusually large numbers of whatever, I wonder if they've bought themselves into their numbers.

It's always a choice for you, of course, if you're thinking about it.  But I advise against it.  It's better to gauge interest in your content accurately and honestly, so you can then modify it and go forward accordingly.  It's better to engage genuinely, than to expose yourself inevitably as a fraud.

When will cars move like schools of fish?

What if car could move like schools of fish? Nissan will be ready with revolutionary commercially-viable Autonomous Drive in multiple vehicles by the year 2020. With more than 90 percent of all traffic accidents caused by human error, Nissan's Autonomous Drive has been developed to help realize an "accident-free society" by eliminating human error during driving. Autonomous Drive can be particularly effective on city streets, where the chances of being involved in an accident are 10 times higher than on highways. With Autonomous Drive, not only would the number of accidents decrease, it would also allow drivers who have trouble navigating through narrow lanes and intersections a safe and sure way to reach their destinations.

I love this commercial.  The Autonomous Drive echoes the self-driving car from Google, and while they strive for the same end - streets and highways, free of traffic accidents - they're looking at it and going at it differently.  I love the analogy Nissan utilizes.

Bloggers blog, bosses boss

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The title of the article says it all - Utah Education Blogger Says He Was Fired For 'Promoting A Gay Agenda' After Writing About Homophones.  The blogger in question is Tim Torkildson, and he wrote about the firing in another blog, of course - The Homophones Got Me! A Record of a Recent Firing.  In the manner of a journalist, he wrote in clear, plain language about the firing, especially the exchange between him and his boss.  Then he slipped into wonderful, novelistic language:

He rose, shook my hand, and left the conference room where we had been sitting. 

I was out the door, at the bus stop, by 11:05. 

After depositing my check at the bank I walked home along the Provo River Path. It was warm, but isolated thunderheads kept the sun in check. The river is low and smells of sewers. Trout are frantically leaping up the spillway by the Columbia Lane Bridge. Dozens of swallows have built their nests under the bridge; they describe wide, frantic circles and give high peeps when they land at their mud-daubed nests. It was pleasant to stop there – now that I have all the time in the world again. 

Further along the path is a wild cherry tree growing up from the bank of the river. Underneath the cherry tree is a green wire bench installed by the Parks and Recreation Department. I sat down to rest there. The cherries are dead ripe and falling onto the pathway, where they are mashed by pedestrians and bicyclists. Wasps stay busy feeding on the sweet pulp. A homeless man, shouldering a towering backpack, his white beard stained brown with tobacco juice, came striding by, stepping right into the pulp and riling the wasps. One of them stung him. He turned to me, holding up a tree branch he was using as a walking stick, and cried “You bit me!” 

I did not try to defend myself. Somehow, it seemed just about right – done in by a crazy old bum with a tree branch. But he lowered it slowly and turned back to his odyssey, mumbling obscenities. I continued to sit there another ten minutes, then slowly got up and went back to my room underneath the basement steps of a friend’s house, where I am writing this. I promised him I would be out of his house by the end of August. Maybe I should have followed the bum; he seemed to know where he was going. 

When one door closes, it’s usually right on your fingers.

If he hasn't yet, Torkildson ought to write a novel.  He has a talent for it.

Give Google+ a try, if you haven't yet

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If you wonder why there aren't any ads on Google+, it's because Google cares more about the data we generate.  It has a vast ecosystem, as you may know, and our information drives its formidable ad business model across that ecosystem.  That said, I love Google+.  It's easily the most active and engaging social media I know.

Grant Hill and Milana Vayntrub do AT&T

Grant Hill was a celebrated basketball player, coming out of Duke University 20 years ago and breaking into the NBA with the Detroit Pistons.  But a nagging ankle injury a few years into his career must've been more serious than even he expected, and spent the rest of his big league days in relative obscurity among three teams.  He retired just last year, but his appearance in this commercial is my favorite among an awesome set of AT&T commercials.  Oh, good for you obviously taps that relative obscurity.    

Milana Vayntrub is the actress who plays the AT&T sales lady Lily Adams.  She's articulate and attractive in very natural, unforced ways, and that's her appeal.  I found out that she's actually a comedic actress, and a good one at that, because she pulls off terrific timing and delivery on her lines.  Her humor is of course subtle and demure, because of her business role for AT&T.  But here she is in a more colorful sketch in Bitchy Resting Face.     

Grant Hill and Milana Vayntrub