I’d Like to Use a Lifeline

It should come as no surprise: I enjoy trivia shows.

As Calvin once said,

I have a command of thoroughly useless information.

As of today – June 15, 2015 – my favorite trivia shows include

Jeopardy!

Every year I take the online test.

Every year I’m disappointed.

They always ask about pop culture and sports.

Two categories I care/know little to nothing about.

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500 Questions

Like Jeopardy!, I do really well on this at home.

However, I believe I’m smarter than most of their contestants.

Then again, that’s what most people probably think.

It’s always different when you play for real.

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Celebrity Name Game

Craig Ferguson is hilarious.

K watches it without getting mad at me.

It helps me with those pesky pop culture Jeopardy! questions.

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 Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

When Regis Philbin hosted, Millionaire challenged Jeopardy! for my top spot.

Namely, I liked the idea of being tested on my own knowledge.

Those Jeopardy! buzzers can be brutal.

Well, they were in Scholastic Bowl.

I assume it’s the same on national TV.

One hallmark of the original Millionaire was the lifeline.

Contestants were given three:

Phone a Friend – call someone who may or may not know the answer.

Ask the Audience – ask the audience what they think (so long as you don’t live in Russia).

50/50 – remove two incorrect answers.

I always hated when contestants used a lifeline. I viewed it as weakness. However, they were actually on the show. I haven’t. Maybe they know something I don’t. Since we’re talking about trivia shows, it obvious they do.

Now, I’d like to use a lifeline of my own.

Actually, two of them:

Phone a Friend & Ask the Audience.

Phone a Friend

I’m calling you, my readers, because the blog is struggling. At least, I think it’s struggling.

Don’t let the total number of followers fool you. I was cursed with being Freshly Pressed two months after my first blog post. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I lost followers.

I also received an extraordinarily large numbers of spam followers. I’ve spent the last year and a half trying to build it back up by taking the Blogging U courses, and I’ve gained a few regular readers.

Sunday Snaphots is my most-viewed weekly feature.

If I’m interpreting my statistics correctly, each new blog post gets around 50 views in its first month. That’s not too bad. What worries me is that Running In My Head isn’t growing.

I might get one new follower a month.

Likes, shares, and comments are way, way down.

Sometimes they border on nonexistent.

I want to turn that around.

I want to engage my audience.

How do I engage with no comments?

I want to promote other blogs.

What if I have no new followers to promote?

I want to converse.

My conversation starters (apparently) fall flat.

What do you do to drive your blog?

Please let me know in the comments!

Ask the Audience

Like actors on the stage, sometimes I need a bit of prompting.

Feed me your favorite word, a vivid scene, an unlikely pairing. A piece of dialog, an object, a potent verb. I’ll write them on slips of paper and put them in my tea tin of ideas.*

[*Thanks to Andrea of Butterfly Mind for her idea and words.]

Then, I’ll turn your ideas into something solid:

A Photograph

A Poem

A Piece of Flash Fiction

A Passionate Post

You can let me know in the comments,
or use this handy dandy form!

I’ve also linked this form to the home screen menus.

Feel free to drop in any thing at any time!

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Don’t forget to follow me on:

 

Facebook – where I share news stories, articles from other blogs, and various and sundry miscellany that happens to catch my eye. It’s stuff you won’t see here! Well, mostly.

 

Instagram – where I show you my Life in Motion and share quotes and such. The widget only shows my last three photographs – don’t you want to see them all?

 

Twitter – where you can see my thoughts in 140 characters or less. Also, funny retweets.