You may wonder what taglines have in common with toenails.   Well, I’ve spent the last two years trying to come up with a tagline for my blog and the best I can come up with is Writer, artist and wine cork bath mat maker.

Just the sort of tagline that brings viewers back for more, don’t you think?  I’ll answer that question: Noooo, I don’t think so!

Trying to come up with a tagline is like trying to cut your toenails – there’s just no easy way unless you’re a double-jointed contortionist.  Or clever. I’m neither so I’m screwed. 

But there are many writers out there with great taglines.  Here are some of my favorites:

• Deep thoughts from the Shallow End of the Pool  from Return of the Modern Philosopher.  I love the way deep thoughts plays off against shallow end of pool to let you know this writer doesn’t take himself too seriously. 
• Pop Culture and Geekery with a Dash of Mischief  by Sourcerer.  Another writer who lets you know with his tagline that reading his blog will be fun, fun, fun!

• Vague Meanderings of the Broke and Obscure from Yadadarcyyada  I love this tagline because of the words: vague, broke and obscure.  Aren’t we all my friend, aren’t we all.

Some bloggers just tell it like it is:

We are all Miss America from Short Subjects I feel like writing about tells you two things right off the bat.  Women rule and she’s not going to be tied down to any particular subject.  Right on!

I wonder what will happen when the daughter of Savvy Stories – whose tagline is currently Funny things I learned from my daughter – puts him in an old age home. Will the tagline on her blog be: Funny things my doddering dad said!

One of my favorite taglines is actually a bio, of sorts: 

Mother, writer, whisky drinker, pilot, card shark, wishful thinker from Peak Perspective.  How delightful!  Can’t help but love this blogger!

There are hundreds of very clever bloggers out there with great taglines, why not me?  I was so desperate that I googled and found a questionaire guaranteed to help you come up with just the right tag line:

1. What does your company do? (in 10 words or less) 
2. Why does your company exist?
3. What is your company striving to become?
4. What core values guide your company’s behavior?
5. How is your company unique? What separates it from the rest of the pack? 
6. What solution does your company sell? What does it promise and deliver? 
7. What is your company’s key strength/advantage over your competitors? 
8. Who is your target audience? Describe what is special/unique about it.  
9. What compels people to buy and use your company’s product/service? What are their hot buttons?

There was only one I could answer without sounding snarky, Number 3: What is your company striving to become? My answer: A humorous respite from the world.  Which has, of course, been used a zillion times.

After spending an inordinate amount of time freaking out about my lack of cleverness, I stumbled upon this article.  It asserts that marketing gurus are moving away from recommending set taglines to their clients.  Sheesh.  So I decided to visit the web site of an established author, someone’s who’s been a “business” for a long time and see what he did. Sure enough,  Stephen King’s tagline is: Official Web Site. Can’t get more generic than that!

Finally, my buddy Duke came up with this tagline: For Drunks Who Can Still Read.  What do you think? Too specific??  Do I really want to limit my audience to only drunks?

Of course, I could just steal Stephen King’s idea:

JTTwissel, Official Web Site

Too presumptuous?