Note: This is a blog post for my IST 600 Blogging for Information Professionals class; Keeley crackers do not exist, but the chicken wing dip recipe is real (and delicious); substitute Ritz crackers for “Keeley” crackers and you’ll still have an excellent experience.
Although there are several versions of the story of the origin of Buffalo Chicken Wings, the most common one told in Central New York goes like this: One night in 1964, Teressa Bellisimo’s son brought some friends over. When hunger pains struck the crowd, Teressa quickly improvised by using what ingredients she had on hand. She broiled some chicken wings and sprinkled them with hot sauce. As a side, she served celery sticks with blue cheese dressing as a dip. This, of course, occurred in Buffalo, New York; hence, the name “Buffalo” Chicken Wings was born. In preparation for your next Superbowl party or other celebration, try this new spin on an old favorite:
Buffalo Chicken Wing Dip Recipe
Ingredients:
3 Chicken Breast Halves
2 Packages of Cream Cheese (at room temperature)
1 Cup of Cheddar Cheese
1 Cup of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce
Instructions:
Boil chicken then chop chicken in food processor. Pour chopped chicken into a bowl. Mix in cream cheese, cheddar cheese, and Red Hot Sauce. After all ingredients are mixed well, pour mixture into a 9″ x 9″ baking dish. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes.
Spread dip on Keeley Krackerz and eat. It’s even better than the original! Try them for your next Superbowl party or family get together.
Note: This is a post for my summer class, IST600 Blogging for Information Professionals. There is no such company as Salt City Ice Cream, and there is no Syracreamsicle product. This is merely a class blogging exercise. The company and product are fictitious.
We are sorry to inform you that we have learned of the possible presence of salmonella in some of our orange flavor Syracreamsicles. Upon discovering this, we immediately halted production of this product and recalled all orange flavored Syracreamsicles from our retailers.
Although we are not aware of any customers who have contracted salmonella from our orange flavored Syracreamsicles, we are asking that everyone who purchased this product to return it to our retailers for an immediate refund as soon as possible.
Again, we are sorry for the inconvenience to our customers. We take great pride in delivering only the highest quality products to our customers and apologize for letting you down in this situation. We are continuing to work with the New York State Department of Health to ensure that this problem does not happen again.
The product affected by this recall is the orange flavor Syarcreamsicle. None of our other products are impacted.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us by email at info@SaltCityIceCream.com or by phone at 1-888-SYR-ICRM.
My blog is called a “runners devotional”. It is meant to be about running, but not strictly in an athletic sense. As a Christian, I am strongly influenced by the imagery of Biblical writers who compared life to a long distance race. Running not only provides me with the physical exercise that I need, but also allows my mind to wander and think more deeply about the essence of life. The primary goal of my blog is to draw parallels between my experiences as a runner and my everyday life challenges as a middle-aged father, husband, son, employee, and global nomad while remaining optimistic and encouraging in tone and outlook.
Here are some things I plan to do to engage and grow the community of this blog:
I plan to establish a “runners devotional” presence on Twitter and Facebook as a way to reach out to people and develop a “human” connection in the social media sphere. This will also allow me to distribute links to my blog and help to get the message out in a search for like-minded community members.
I currently run in approximately 10 races each year. I plan to print up t-shirts to wear when I race which will highlight my blog and twitter addresses. This will give me an opportunity to publicize my blog as well as connect with others from the local running community.
I plan to post on a regular basis, approximately three to five times a week. This will require me to get up early, go on my run, and then sit down to record my thoughts for the day. This will take a lot of discipline to fit into my busy life. Unfortunately, I’m somewhat of a perfectionist, so I will need to set strict time limits for myself; otherwise, I’ll spend all day proofreading and searching for better visuals without getting a single post published. It may make it easier for me if I find and schedule guest bloggers (see #4. Guest Bloggers below) in order to take some of the pressure off me, while facilitating fresh posts and new insights on a regular basis.
While I have gained a good number of helpful tips from my kids and their coaches since I started running, I will need to continue researching running topics on the internet and discussing running with others better than myself in order to increase my expertise and lend credibility to my posts. This will allow me to write “pillar” articles and incorporate more advanced tips into my other articles so that I can grow along with my readers.
I will seek out other bloggers to help keep the content fresh and coming at a regular pace. I will ask my kids to write posts in order to provide a younger person’s perspective and keep my blog from deteriorating into an opportunity for middle-aged whining. As more people join the community, there will be opportunities to meet new people who could potentially become guest bloggers as well as community members.
5. Submitting posts to the Blog Carnival
I will review the Blog Carnival regularly for categories that could fit my postings. I can see opportunities for my posts fitting well with the “sports”, “medicine, health, and fitness”, and “religion and philosophy” categories in the Blog Carnival.
6. Use a variety of different communication methods
I will use a variety of different mediums and communication methods in order to keep my content fresh. I will incorporate photos and videos in my posts, and will utilize vlogs and podcasts to add a personal touch to my blog.
Choosing the name for a blog involves a series of tradeoffs. An existing business may want a blog name to match their business name; however, the domain name or blog name may already be taken by another business. Choosing a new, more creative name for a blog may make it difficult for customers to remember or associate with the business; consequently, it’s important to spend some time considering the tradeoffs. Let’s look at three examples:
1. A small bakery named “Bill’s”, located in Syracuse, NY, which features cupcakes.
Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
A first obvious choice that pops into one’s mind is “BillsBakery”; however, the primary domain name (BillsBakery.com) is already taken even though no active website exists for it. In spite of the many domain suffixes now available, as a business, the .com suffix would still be first preference for most businesses because that is the first place netizens would tend to look. Since the business specializes in cupcakes, it may be to our benefit to “advertise” this via our blog name. A blog named “BillsCupcakes” with a domain name of BillsCupcakes.com would be an obvious choice that would not only advertise their specialty, but also be easy for people to remember and associate with the existing business. A slightly more creative choice which also might work well would be “CupcakesByBill” (CupcakesByBill.com is also available as a domain name); however, this name sounds somewhat affected and may not be the image that the business wants to project. Since Bills is in Syracuse, I’m going to assume that the customer base is more working to middle class range and recommend going with BillsCupcakes.com because the name is relatively short, easy to associate with the business, and the .com domain name is available.
2. Fang Films, a movie studio that focuses on horror films, most of which are released directly to DVD.
Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
In this case the obvious first choice would be to use the company name as the Blog and Domain Name; however, again the .com domain name is already taken (FangFilms.com) although currently unused. Being in the creative business, a more creative name might work well. As a blog site, I’m guessing that the intent would be to discuss horror films in general, not necessarily only the ones developed by Fang Films or ones released on DVD. Consequently, I’m going to recommend a relatively generic name, FilmsWithFangs. The name is similar to the company’s name and retains the connotation of horror films. I feel that the preposition “with” helps drive home the concept of the horror film genre and works well as a creative expression; consequently, I’m willing to risk the extra characters it requires. Fortunately, the name is also available as a domain name (FilmsWithFangs.com) which seals the deal for me.
3. Happy Pup Doggy Day Care, a new dog daycase business in Syracuse
Image: WikiMedia Commons Author: Bobjgalindo
My first reaction is to suggest changing the name of the business, but assuming the owner is set on this name, I will search for something less wordy for the blog name. A good general theme of the blog would taking care of your dog/puppy. Using the first two and the last words of the business name creates a shortened blog name which still retains the flavor of the business name (i.e. HappyPupCare) and gives the general flavor of what the blog topics will be. Fortunately, the .com domain name is available (HappyPupCare.com).
For each of these choices, we see the tradeoffs required between trying to establish a unique and catchy blog name versus retaining a close association with the business name. We also face a tradeoff between keeping the name short and making it meaningful enough to associate with the business and/or indicate what topics will be discussed in the blog. Finally we are restricted to what domain names are available and how flexible we want to be with the domain name suffix.
There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all blogging platform. Different scenarios call for different solutions; consequently, it is important for the aspiring blogger to carefully consider his or her options. To illustrate, let’s look at three different potential bloggers and which solution(s) would be a good fit for them:
1. A giant coffee retailer looking to connect with customers.
Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
A large corporation values and is willing to pay for a more customized and professional looking blogging platform as well as enhanced technical support. If there are money, resource, and/or time contraints, I would recommend that they choose a commercial blogging hosting site such as Expression Engine or Compendium Blogware. Both platforms offer standard and custom blogging features beyond what WordPress, Blogger, or Tumblr offer.
Alternatively, as a large corporation with presumably vast resources and fewer money, resource, or time constraints than an individual blogger, they could purchase their own blogging software (most likely as part of a larger “Social Software” package) and host it themselves. This would give them complete control over the hosting platform as well as the blogging site.
Here are some highlighted features which might lead you to chose one platform/package over another:
IBM, Microsoft, Jive, and others offer blogging software as part of their “Social Software” packages which contain document sharing, discussion forums, and wiki capabilities, among others.
Source: Gartner, Inc.
2. A photographer interested in making their work go viral.
Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
A photographer should look first to Tumblr to see if it meets their needs. Tumblr caters to “creative types”, and is easy to use. It also uses its homepage to broadcast the latest works created by its members and offers some categorization of content by category type.
If the photographer specializes in video, he/she would probably want to post the video to YouTube and link to it from his/her blog in order to increase its visibility and maximize the chance that it will go viral.
3. A Syracuse Crunch hockey blogger looking to write daily updates.
Image: Wikimedia Commons Author: Jshecket
A minor league hockey player wishing to write daily updates would probably be best served by selecting WorkPress or Blogger as their blogging platform. The cost and technical skills required to create and post to the blog are minimal. Search engine optimization is done automatically by the hosting platforms and mobile applications are available to make it easy to post while “on the road”. WordPress would be my first choice due to its greater popularity in the blog world. However, if integration with other Google services (e.g. Google docs) was an important concern, Blogger would be the better choice.
WordPress and Tumblr both seem to offer beginning bloggers an easy entrypoint into the blogsphere; however, upon deeper reflection, one can see that there are more differences than similarities.
WordPress seems to attract people who like the written word. Photos and videos are supported and used by WordPress bloggers, but one gets the impression that these are supplements to the written blog. Some blogs even seem to eschew pictures and video, offering word only posts. Tumblr on the other hand, seems to attract people who want to communicate primarily through photos and videos. Often, the images posted are followed by only short, twitter-like explanations of the posting.
Tumblr focuses on attracting visual creative types. With it’s tagline, “follow the world’s creators”, its target audience is narrower and more clearly delinated than WordPress. Just showing up at its homepage plunges the visitor into a plethora of overwhelming visual stimulation which one does not find on the “plain Jane” WordPress homepage.
WordPress allows for more customization. Tumblr’s simplicity, while good for beginning bloggers, does not necessarily lend itself well to the complex editing and features that more advanced users may desire. By paying for the stand alone version of WordPress you can upgrade, create your own URL, and even add eCommerce functionality if you want avoid “starving artist” status.
In summary, Tumblr is a better platform for visual, creative types who are just beginning to blog or who favor a simple, easy-to-use interface to exhibit their creative works. WordPress is a better platform for those focused on written expression or for those who want to exert more technical control over their blog. Upgrading to the stand alone version of WorkPress, allows additional control and provides a growth path for those who have outgrown the free versions of WordPress and Tumblr.
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