The Oracle at Delphi, Your Blog Subtitle, and Three Examples

You’ve settled on a succinct but rousing blog title with decent “click pull”—at least to attract your tribe. Now that your visitor has arrived, your next opportunity to woo lies in your subtitle which should appear in the head-mast of your blog’s home page. Here’s a quick decent industry specific post on subtitles, written by Meucci Cameron on the Yahoo! Contributor Network, How to Write Blog Titles and Subtitles…Or, please, if you wish…stay with me for a poetry-tinged take on the importance of subtitles.

When crafting yours, think big, think Oracle at Delphi, “know thyself,” because the first person you must welcome and enamor is yourself…pick a phrase that will consume you with the desire to pass under that metaphorical doorway day after day, or Thursday after Thursday. Pick your potential deadline–and then deviate from it if need be; think “nothing in excess” (the second phrase appearing on the temple archway). Unless you are a celebrity blogger, hoping for the “obligation stress” of maintaining a gaggle of followers, which might lead to the need to hire a ghost blogger, write at the pace you can breathe into and wait for a post worthy of posting. Because the post lives on…and on…and so must you).

Let’s return to a few of the bloggers we looked at in the last post, starting with Married with Luggage. At the site, the subtitle reads: Life is short. Live your dream. Juxtaposed with the main title, one can’t help but consider the pun: Married, but with luggage, as in suitcases? Or with baggage, as in emotional baggage? Either way, I’m pulled to the “Our Story” tab…

..with its nicely bolded large headlines: Who are we and why should  you listen to us? We were in love with each other but not our lives. This great bit of writing appears next: “We did all the typical things people do in their 20s and 30s: climb the corporate ladder, get married, buy a house, get divorced, climb the ladder some more, get married again, accumulate more crap, and keep repeating the process like hamsters on a wheel.”  With that hilarious list of dead-on assumptions (washed up? No problem…) we’re hooked to find out how that kind of a list could result in a happy ending (Life is short. Live your dream). These two did, and so can we…is the promise…if we read on…

Over at Butterfly Confidential: the subtitle, in faux handwriting font, reads “…he would see her flash her wings.” The font tells me the setting could be informal, conversational. The subtitle inspires me to keep reading as a poet. Yes, for the obvious: metaphors of metamorphosis (butterfly). Yes for the likely inside view into the blogger’s private world (confidential). And yes for the mysterious subtitle introducing a male observer (he would see her flash her wings) because it hauls up a string of images and evokes a series of predicaments associated with butterfly wings from inevitable fragility to attractant power.

And for our third example, take a look again at Lofty Ambitions. When I first saw Anna’s blog title without subtitle, I assumed, because of her discussion thread at She Writes (Submission Mission) that she’d focus on goals. I was delighted to arrive at her site and read the subtitle: Space, Science, Aviation, and Writing as a Couple, which promises a unique blend of the exploration of outer space, associated knowledge, and the unexpected tangent of co-writing within a marriage. The team writes, “…two world events captivated our attention in the first year of our blog: the end of the space shuttle program and various things nuclear;” they feature an extensive list of video interviews with members of the U.S. Space Program and a rich link library to related museums, periodicals and websites.

I must close by admitting I’ve been blogging since 2007 without a subtitle for Feral Mom, Feral Writer. Crafting a post with nursing infant nestled just below the keyboard used to be the challenge (see It is possible to nurse a 2-year old and heft a log into the wood-burning stove, or a note on revision under some conditions). But I’m pretty sure everyone weaned some years back unless you count the feral kitten, now hefty house cat, taken prematurely from his mother who daily attempts to nurse on the ears of any member of the family except for the Husky. No longer cute. Or tolerable. Think wet earlobes, wet earrings. I’m off to work on a subtitle for my blog. I’ll let you know how it goes.

How did you arrive at your subtitle? And if you’ve drafted up a subtitle or amended yours, I would love your comment below.