Shameless Promotion from Someone Else of the Day

I just wanted to give a shout-out to a post from The Blog Herald, which talks about various blogs and the impact they can have on various aspects of our lives. The reason the post came to my attention is that the author, Lorelle VanFossen, chose to include my humble ramblings:

I was interested to find “I’m from the Government. I’m here to help.” by Jesse White is on WordPress.com. He is a laywer and state representative from Pennsylvania and blogs about his campaign, policies, politics, and more in a very personable fashion. While I don’t read many political blogs, he touched me with his commentary on an ad campaign recently on the subject of “spin” – using words in a way that makes them sound more important than they really are.

There was something about this ad that made me think for a little while, and not just about how wildly inaccurate it is, although that was certainly a major concern. There was something about the tag line- “More Government spending means less dollars in your pocket!”

Was it the fact that he unnecessarily capitalized the word “government”? The fact that “less dollars” doesn’t really sound like proper grammar? The exclamation point inserted at the end for no apparent reason? No, there’s something else here.

I have a feeling that this is the beginning of an onslaught of “ten word” attack ads, which basically give a slogan that sounds swell but lacks any real substance to back up the sentiment. This is similar to the phenomenon of the “ten word answer”.

He cites and showcases a clip from the television show, The West Wing, that featured a debate during the re-election campaign where the president realizes that his opponent has given the “ten word answer” to a solution and calls him on it, asking his opposition what the next ten words are. Ten word answers always sound wonderful, but unless you have the next ten words to back up the first, nothing from nothing is still nothing.

This made me think about how we use our blog post titles to lure in visitors, as we should, but how many use them to make false promises. Get rich quick schemes, blog to success, instant traffic, and all kinds of snake oil salesmen promises that the blog content doesn’t follow through on.

You never know where a valuable lesson can be learned, even from a politician’s blog.

Thanks for noticing.