How to get a lot of blog post titles in 24 hours
Posted on Thursday, Jul 12, 2012
As you may recall, I am embarking on an experiment to crowd-source blog titles. I asked Twitter to suggest titles for blog posts using the hashtag #mattblog, and committed to writing a post for every title.
Today’s post title comes to us from @gRegorLove, and it seemed like a great one to start with. I did have a tough time determing which one would be first, which is why I solicited the assistance of my good pal @FeliciaCago, who came up with a spreadsheet of all the topics along with her “invaluable feedback”.
Initially, she was confused about the purpose of the project, which just goes to show she ignores all of my tweets:
feliciacago: ugh, I misunderstood. Blogposts, not blogs.
feliciacago: i have to rethink my whole list now.
me: you thought i was starting 50 different blogs?
feliciacago: i thought you were choosing the best one
me: i think most of your feedback still applies but i am expecting you to surpass just on principle
feliciacago: i added mine.
feliciacago: You should clearly start with that one.
me: don’t abuse your power
me: or if you are going to, be sneaky about it at least
feliciacago: i added my feedback as a response to your feedback.
feliciacago: We’re creating a universe of odd.
Shortly after clarification, Felicia decided that we couldn’t evaluate this on our own. We needed the assistance of the smartest person we know, that is, @ourmaninchicago. His entire feedback on every title was “I don’t know”, with the exception of @KarynCarlton‘s suggestion of “Hall and Oates: American Heroes”. To that, he simply said, in all caps and giant font: “DO THIS ONE“.
What have I learned so far? I’ve learned that @purekatherine has a lot of ideas. I mean a LOT. 20% of the suggestions came from her. Which I can only surmise means either a) she cares about my success as a blogger or b) she was supposed to be glittering some shoes and needed to procrastinate.
I do suggest participating in this project with me. Give it a try – you’ll get some interesting suggestions, and I know that coming up with content for some of these titles is going to be a challenge. Think about it as a writing prompt, if the writing prompt hit you over the head with a dead squirrel and made you wear a lycra tanktop to work.