I was invited through a friend to be a “blogging expert” at a corporate brainstorming session yesterday for a company I’m not allowed to name.
The session was in a loft in Tribeca with white walls and white ceilings and white floors and orchids in vases and an organic juice and snack bar where ten percent of the proceeds benefitted Doctors Without Borders. My expertise, however, benefitted No One.
I was terrified, on the spot in front of a bunch of attractive, crisply-khakied finance people, rambling on. I’m pretty sure there was one person of every race there. Someone had a British accent, another a German. It was like a Benneton ad, the Brangelina clan grown up, a “We Are the World” clip instead named ”We Run the World.”
The woman moderating my session did her level best to extract core values from my blog’s story and reappropriate them for the very corporate task at hand, but there was pretty much nothing she could do with this moment:
INTERVIEWER: So what tricks do you have for expanding your audience?
ISAAC: Pictures of hot celebrities.
INTERVIEWER: What?
ISAAC: I’ll put up a picture of Zac Efron, and if someone’s Googling him and finds my blog as a result, the hope is that they’ll scroll down and continue to read. I mean, I also enjoy the pictures, so the reward is two-fold for me.
INTERVIEWER: I see.
No one laughed. I went home and ate cheese.
It worked! Well… I have no idea how I actually found your site, but it was the ‘afternoon swoons’ that caught my attention (and kept it, I appreciate a handsome man). I showed them to my girlfriend who appreciated them as well, you too have similar taste in men.
Aha, so it’s a strategy. It works, but I stayed thanks to a post with an anthropomorphized Starbucks. I love when you write that sort of entry.
That is SO painfully sad & funny!
It was finance people. This is not a good time for finance people. Finance people have not laughed since 2007. *I* think your response was brilliant and hilarious. Not your fault they can’t extract basic lessons from your expert use of the bait and switch.
I can totally visualize the disgusted disapproval on that “I see” . Priceless.
This moderator is obviously an idiot. Lesson = expand your audience by blogging about popular, relevant, timely things. Relate said popular, relevant, timely things to your organization’s mission/core values/dealings somehow. If your audience isn’t people googling naked Zac Efron photos, maybe it’s people googling about the war leaks, or Haitian earthquake, or whatever. Ugh. Some people.
Hey…your strategy worked on me. I don’t frequent blogs, but I always come back to yours because of not only the afternoon swoons, but also because I find you incredibly funny.
I laughed. And you can still go home and eat some cheese.
Well, actually that IS how I got to know your site… googling pictures of Luke McFarlane
So, don’t worry. It is working. I read on and I really do enjoy everything you write. Just a shame I live in germany and couldn’t come to see you live.
This is my first comment, btw. Normally I just enjoy silently but now I just had to let to know you that your plan works out pretty fine, all over the globe