Blog re-boot: Tweed in the City

[teddieriley]

Originally Posted by voxsartoria

Will you continue to host messages attacking your character, taste, mental health, ethnic background, political beliefs, and motivations on the new Wordpress site, like on the old blog, or will you keep that material here, on AAAC, and on FNB.edu?

Hard choice, I know.


- B

You forgot height.

 

[braised]

Originally Posted by Roikins

Tweedtastic.

Huzzah!

 

[Roikins]

Originally Posted by braised

Huzzah!

Just because...

 

[TC (Houston)]

Nice new blog, I was wondering what you were up to. BTW, I don't know why but Ivory makes me squeamish.

 

[TheFoo]

Holy f*ck. I just looked at the blog for the first time today. What's with all the impassioned anti-ivory comments?

Can't I just have a normal blog like everyone else?

 

[Mr. Moo]

Poachers suck, Matt. Killing defenseless animals is a crime and you know it.

 

[RSS]

Originally Posted by mafoofan

Can't I just have a normal blog like everyone else?
If you were normal ... perhaps. But ... who the hell wants to be ... normal?

 

[Dewey]

Free blog advice here. I know you were missing my free advice. Here it is.

Title -- this one is lame. Too contrived. It could have staying power, but I doubt it. Naming a thing is a very tough job. I don't know how to fix it. The old business advice of location + product is not square one for this sort of project. It's not a newspaper headline either, so the snarky puns of an underpaid copy editor don't make much sense either. It should memorable, distinctive, and what's the word, a part for the whole. A condensation of foo. You also want to get outside the clichÃ

s of the genre. I may be naïve but I thought Wolf vs. Goat was a great name for that product line -- never seen a clothing brand name like it. It's sure to spawn imitators and some of the initial charm will get lost. Lands' vs. End coming our way in '12.

Tone -- (a) this is too Will. Will is great but Will is Will. I see this mostly in the attempt to wrap up your post with a conclusion. "Everyone’s poorer these days, but if you’re going to indulge in a luxury, do yourself a favor and make it personal." The conclusion sounds forced. The advice is somewhat trite. When Will pulls this off it's because it is some half-baked expression of Will. "Wear silk at the neck." Yeah OK Will. (b) the prescriptive stuff is not a long-term winner. What works for the one-book-a-decade genre is not going to work for the 100-new-blogs-a-year genre.

Audience -- This prescriptive thing spills over into your audience. Your likely audience reads SF and other blogs and forums. They do not need much advice, in the grand scheme of things; rather they are pretty informed and as such seek out more information. Unless you are gunning for Ask Andy's market share you might be more reluctant to make prescriptions. Will pulls this off because (sorry Will) he's charmingly preposterous. You can be too but c'mon, that angle is worked already.

Conclusion -- More originality. You are not true to yourself if you dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source of interest. You need to offer novelty as well as vividness.

My advice is junk the unoriginal compulsion to wrap things in sartorial rules and just document stuff. Tell us why you think it is cool, but know that this can be the car wreck part for the reader. I enjoy reading love letters to the L.L. Bean Norwegian sweater even though I'm old enough to remember the first version, and even if I still think all these young people must be smoking crack before they sit down to worship this ugly sweater. It's not the argument that does it for me but the facts (wtf that sweater again?) plus the perspective (wtf this is really cool now?)

Just tell us what you love. Share really good pictures and really accurate facts. Odds are we'll not love it too. But that's cool, most of us do not need any help figuring out what it is we love. So there's no great failure there if you fail to win us over. I didn't know I could barely buy ivory accessories in Paris and that fact and the pictures make the post most interesting to me.

 

[Mr. Moo]

What Dewey is trying to say, foo, is that you should interview me.

 

[TheFoo]

Originally Posted by Dewey

Free blog advice here. I know you were missing my free advice. Here it is.

Title -- this one is lame. Too contrived. It could have staying power, but I doubt it. Naming a thing is a very tough job. I don't know how to fix it. The old business advice of location + product is not square one for this sort of project. It's not a newspaper headline either, so the snarky puns of an underpaid copy editor don't make much sense either. It should memorable, distinctive, and what's the word, a part for the whole. A condensation of foo. You also want to get outside the clichÃ

s of the genre. I may be naïve but I thought Wolf vs. Goat was a great name for that product line -- never seen a clothing brand name like it. It's sure to spawn imitators and some of the initial charm will get lost. Lands' vs. End coming our way in '12.

Tone -- (a) this is too Will. Will is great but Will is Will. I see this mostly in the attempt to wrap up your post with a conclusion. "Everyone's poorer these days, but if you're going to indulge in a luxury, do yourself a favor and make it personal." The conclusion sounds forced. The advice is somewhat trite. When Will pulls this off it's because it is some half-baked expression of Will. "Wear silk at the neck." Yeah OK Will. (b) the prescriptive stuff is not a long-term winner. What works for the one-book-a-decade genre is not going to work for the 100-new-blogs-a-year genre.

Audience -- This prescriptive thing spills over into your audience. Your likely audience reads SF and other blogs and forums. They do not need much advice, in the grand scheme of things; rather they are pretty informed and as such seek out more information. Unless you are gunning for Ask Andy's market share you might be more reluctant to make prescriptions. Will pulls this off because (sorry Will) he's charmingly preposterous. You can be too but c'mon, that angle is worked already.

Conclusion -- More originality. You are not true to yourself if you dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source of interest. You need to offer novelty as well as vividness.

My advice is junk the unoriginal compulsion to wrap things in sartorial rules and just document stuff. Tell us why you think it is cool, but know that this can be the car wreck part for the reader. I enjoy reading love letters to the L.L. Bean Norwegian sweater even though I'm old enough to remember the first version, and even if I still think all these young people must be smoking crack before they sit down to worship this ugly sweater. It's not the argument that does it for me but the facts (wtf that sweater again?) plus the perspective (wtf this is really cool now?)

Just tell us what you love. Share really good pictures and really accurate facts. Odds are we'll not love it too. But that's cool, most of us do not need any help figuring out what it is we love. So there's no great failure there if you fail to win us over. I didn't know I could barely buy ivory accessories in Paris and that fact and the pictures make the post most interesting to me.

This is excellent advice. I really appreciate the effort and accuity. You are very right about sounding too prescriptive. Upon re-reading my first post, I agree that it is not the tenor I want to strike.

Thanks.

 

[teddieriley]

Why don't you just call the blog TWEED.

 

[voxsartoria]

Originally Posted by teddieriley

Why don't you just call the damn blog TWEED.

Ask Matt About Tweed

The Tweed Lounge

TweedForvm

Guess His Tweed


- B

 

[Mr. Moo]

Originally Posted by voxsartoria

Ask Matt About Tweed

The Tweed Lounge

TweedForvm

Guess His Tweed


- B

You forget Show Me Your Tweed

 

[Mildly Consumptive]

Originally Posted by voxsartoria

Ask Matt About Tweed

The Tweed Lounge

TweedForvm

Guess His Tweed


- B


Is He Tweedy?

 

[Xiaogou]

Originally Posted by Mr. Moo

You forget Show Me Your Tweed

Saving Private Tweed.