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What’s Your Blog Going to Be for Halloween?

written by Sonia Simone
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What’s Your Blog Going to Be for Halloween?

It’s that time of year again . . . time to get your trick-or-treating gear ready.

Trust me, this year you’re too old to troll the neighborhood begging for miniature Twix bars. Your neighbors are wise to you and your “Eminem costume.”

Instead, how about putting a little thought into what your blog will be this Halloween?

Sure, you can go the cheap and easy way and get a Perez Hilton mask, but where’s the fun in that? Instead, look through this collection of spooky archetypes and see if you can spot your blog on the list.

The devil

Instead of a pitchfork, the devil blog sports a yellow highlighter and screaming red headlines.

The devil blog is all about setting up scams and systems so you don’t need to show up to write every day. Sure, the convoluted “blueprint” you paid for that combines scraped content, Adwords arbitrage, and finding a source for counterfeit Acai berries is going to take you about three months to build. And that’s if you don’t sleep. But one day it’s gonna pay off big, baby.

The devil blog is all about the blogger. Your needs, your income, your rewards, and to hell with your readers, or anyone else for that matter.

Double bonus points if your blog is about making money online and you have yet to make your first twenty bucks.

The angel

You’ve been blogging since 1968, back when your posts took the form of hand-embroidered manifestos passed from coffeehouse to coffeehouse via traveling folk singers. Readership really picked up once the Internet got invented.

You’ve given thousands of hours of your life to your community and never asked for anything in return. You are saintly beyond reproach.

Ok, there was that one time, back in 2002, when you asked your audience to do you a favor. They flamed you like a campfire marshmallow. You blamed Al Quaeda and global warming, and have never tried it since.

The zombie

This is the blog that actually died about 18 months ago, but somehow it just keeps limping along, looking plaintively for brains.

You keep meaning to get serious about your cornerstone content. You fully intend to get your blog moved over to your own domain name. And you’re definitely going to write a new post since that last one you did on Groundhog Day. But frankly, Farmville takes a lot of free time, and you just don’t have the bandwidth.

Our advice: Put the damned thing out of its misery and give it a decent burial already.

The sexy witch

You’re tough and smart. You’re ballsy. You’re outspoken. You swear, a lot. You’re prickly and inconvenient, and possibly a little nuts.

You’re not afraid to mock your male compatriots for having smaller/less effective testicles than you do.

You look pretty darned good in that costume, and you know it.

The trendy costume

You’re swine flu or Dead Kanye or the Public Option for U.S. healthcare.

The main thing is to get people talking, stir up lots of controversy, and get some buzz going. Six weeks after Halloween is over, even you won’t remember what exactly the point was.

To paraphrase Andy Warhol, in the future, everyone will be a trending topic on Twitter for fifteen minutes.

The power ranger

You do everything right. You have superhuman strength, agility, and you can fly. Your content is strong, your headlines are sharp, your Twitter etiquette is impeccable.

You’ve got everything going for you, except no one can tell the difference between you and the other 10,000 power rangers that showed up at their door on Saturday night. Find a little spark of something genuinely different and you’ll be ready to actually unleash that ninja storm and do some damage.

So how about you?

I was trying to think of the canonical cool costume to end with, but there really isn’t one.

Because really good costumes can be funny, weird, interesting, creative, insane. The things that make for great Halloween costumes are pretty similar to what make great blogs. But they can’t be lame me-too copies of what some other cool person is doing.

Let us know in the comments what your blog is this Halloween. We can’t wait to check you out.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.

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Reader Comments (59)

  1. My blog is the toddler who’s costume was picked up by mom at Target a week ago. One day I’ll don a stellar costume but for now, it’s the store bought one and I’m still growing. 🙂

  2. I think that the costume for my blog this year is probably Joe Plummer. Not that I’m as politically charged as old boy was during the campaign, but my blog is just about a father who’s on a campaign to help save his daughter’s future. Nothing crazy, incendiary, etc. Just a guy working to make a future happen.

  3. I’m going to be a pirate! And I’m in for the extra bonus points. My blog is a little older than a month and I made about sixty bucks from it. My blog is all about how to make blogging your fulltime job. So I’m looking for treasure! ARRR! And when you visit my blog you’ll see it kinda looks like a treasure map 🙂

    Great article. Really enjoyed it! I’m off to buy my costume now – Actually, no… I’m just off.

  6. Hey Sonia,

    Hilarious and inventive reminder to make your blog remarkable.

    Don’t become a cliche, differentiate yourself, and make your value irresistible for them and profitable for you.

    Don’t be afraid to be yourself–let the amplified version of you shine through–and don’t be afraid to monetize insanely great value (in a no-hype and optional way, of course).

    Happy Blogoween,
    Oleg

  7. “I was trying to think of the canonical cool costume to end with, but there really isn’t one.”

    I disagree, Sonia.

    The perfect blog costume people should dress their blogs in this Halloween is the “Copyblogger Costume.”

    It comes with a great Heading mask, a slippery slope Opening Sentence zipper in the front, emotionally charged Body Copy wrap, and an Unforgetable Ending tail.

    Anybody who dresses their blog in it immediately gets more candy.

  8. I’m going to try to keep all the balls in the air in my current state of too-much-to-do and hope my head doesn’t fall off.

    If it does fall off, at least I’ll have one hell of a costume.

  9. @Stacey, the Headless Blogger! I like it. Very spooky.

    @Shane, 😉

    @Billy, yeah, it cracks me up every time I see it. Another hilarious one is Rich Jerk, but since he’s actually selling a product (which I suspect would cause Google to have hit men come to your house), I don’t like to link to it.

  10. How about the blog costume that is homemade, clever, unique and incredibly creative, that you stayed up late every night detailing, only to go out on Halloween to find that only a handful of people are there to answer the doors and the ones that do are old ladies who hand out dried up charlston chew bars and have no idea what your costume is supposed to be.
    Happy Halloween!

  11. I’ve got one Sexy Witch that’s feeling dressed up like a Zombie (thanks for pointing that out by the way because she’s needs a kick in the pants by the Power Ranger). We’ve also got a Power Ranger who sometimes acts like a Sexy Witch but it’s going through puberty and you know what hormones due to a teenager. The best thing we can do is to acknowledge where we are in our lifecycle, sit back, watch, continually strive for improvement and as this post points out…remember to work hard and most importantly have a little fun with it! Thanks for continuing to make me smile and laugh Sonia. I so have to buy Brian a drink for hiring you. He really is ONE SMART GUY!

  12. I guess the best say to say what my blog is.. is to say what it is NOT. And so, my blog isn’t… Baptist!

    So there! No shroud. No nails. No cross. No blood. No hell.

    And thanks for asking. :o)

  15. Thinking about it as I paint my nails, I would have to say Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. Or Dorothy version 2.0 from Tinman. Depending on the day, and some days its her sister.Tend to get into a little trouble here and there but still believe in the fact there really is good in others. Looking down the yellow brick road.. looking for the Wizard..
    Now where did my flying monkeys go??

  16. Sonia,

    Mine just turned into a vampire-pumpkin. Pretty sweet.

    I don’t think that’s on the list…

    Neat angle here as always. Who knew positioning could sound so nightmarish?

    Regards,

    Kelly

  17. Oh no! I think my blog’s in a bit of a whore costume right now 🙁 An ever-so-slightly respectable looking one and still kind of pretty, but at the end of the day…

    Yeah, after the changes I just recently made to test out a certain product, I think I’m Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman before the white-knight-rescue. But, but, but… me want treats!

    Btw, I loved this post – hilarious! One day I hope for my blog to be the sexiest bitch alive. I mean witch.

  23. My blog wears a toga and an olive wreath. It also carries a silver water pitcher and occasionally poses like a water fountain statue.

    Unfortunately, it’s still working on the fine art of water spraying, so the water fountain poses don’t quite have the desired effect.

  25. @Chloe, laughing!

    @Janice, looking good! Tres artistique.

    @Charlie, I like it, very classy. Of course those little details always take some ironing out. 🙂

  26. Anyone remember, Louis Skolnick of “Revenge of the Nerds” fame?

    Superior source of intellect. Friend to those overwhelmed by complex topics. Awkward/nervous in the presence of superficial women with chests that deserve attention.

    That’s my blog Halloween 2009.

    It’s a place where geeks study their ass off, actually taking notes on the top tier marketing & business building programs they invest in so they spend less time ‘learning about making money’ and more time ‘making money’ from all the programs they invest in.

    And of course, people who are smart and own these programs but are too lazy/overloaded with information, take advantage of our puritan nerd work ethic.

  28. My gosh, Sonia, I just bookmarked that “poor loser” sales page in my “Sales Pages of Note” folder. What a laugh!

    My children, er, my blogs are going to be a mish-mash of things tomorrow. One’s been a zombie all year long actually, another is an angel, another is a martyred saint (crushed to death under a pile of rocks, alas), one’s veering towards a devilish costume and yet another one won’t be participating at all! (Such a killjoy, that one)

    As for me, I would like to be a sexy witch. I could pull it off, too, if I can just make a black, pointy hat…

    Lexi

  30. HaH! That is an easy one. DEAD. I usually always post every weekday, but yesterday I had no time, and todays post was limited to time as well.

  35. I’m the blogger who turned up in a little black dress and a Frank Sinatra mask because, Halloween costumes are too mainstream and confining, and I like to do it my way.

  38. @ Lexi Rodrigo ..or a big broom to shoo the dead and undead away
    I’ll come as Count Dracula with my heightened preternatural senses and immortal soul.

  41. I love those devil pages, with the red headlines… the yellow highlighter. I save them in my Firefox scrapbook, the Web 2.0 equivalent of a swipe file.

    Then, when I’m out of flow, I just fire up one of those pages and copy out a bunch of bullet points… long hand… on index cards.

    I have hundreds of them.

    Neurosthenic conditioning (or whatever).

    I’d say I was a wilderness surfer blogger, willing to walk a long way from the trailhead in search of waves nobody else has ever seen.

  42. @Charles, hm, that makes me think — I think I’d like my blog to be Shaun White, the Flying Tomato. Alas, in real life, I will never, ever be that cool. 🙂

  44. Canonical Halloween costume – The Princess

    The Princess Blogger is the one that carefully picks and chooses the comments she allows through moderation. She grooms her following to worship her and doesn’t allow any comments that question her judgment or are negative about her or her opinions in any way.

    She likes to claim she has a huge loyal following and brags about her blog like it’s the best thing since perforated toilet paper. If you dare speak ill about her in another forum, she’ll send her small army of worshipers after you. They will make your life a living hell for as long as it amuses Her Highness.

  47. My blog is dressing up as an angel for Halloween ’09. Sent down from above to share a healthy treat with all the good ghouls and boos.

    Very corny, I know, but I tried! 🙂

    Great article, Kate, and these comments kill me! So clever, witty and creative. Happy Halloween, Folks!

  48. Mine’s gonna be the “tianak”, a child monster from Philippine folklore. 😀

    Nice witty post for halloween!

    Trick’rtreat!

  51. Sonia, Everything you write is witty, smart and full of insight.
    For Halloween (and for every day) my blog costume is to be: ME.

    Sometimes funny, sometimes insightful, sometimes irreverent sometimes loud and sometimes profound. But always full of intention to provide value and to bring all of who I am to the page.

    Boo!

  54. A virtual high-five for making me realise I can be a metaphorical Power Ranger blogger.

    I think Captain Planet’s Planeteers should be added to this list – for all those folks with a green, Gaya-saving agenda.

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