I often laugh when someone asks me to dinner at four in the afternoon.
“Are we going for the early bird?”
I can’t fathom eating dinner that early in the day, but for the 70 to dead demographic, the magic happens between 4:30 and 6:30pm.
When I asked what attracts people to the early bird, a fella old enough to remember the newscaster he invoked, said, “Dinner at 4:30. Cronkite at 6:30. Bed after the Wheel.”
What a life.
But then again, the early to dine are also the early to rise so they have to hit the sheets early enough to enjoy their oatmeal before the sun comes up.
The person who invented the early bird either wanted to take advantage of the senior crowd to bring in extra revenue, or wanted to keep them out of the restaurant during peak dinner hours.
The early bird experience usually begins with a limited selection of easy-to-digest food with lots of coffee to help move it along. It may or may not come with a small portion of Jell-O or pudding. I’m told that “the good places” throw in dessert. Dinner ends either 1) by questioning the server about the bill or 2) by saying, “We did good Helen. Less than ten bucks tonight. Leave the girl a dollar.”
I shouldn’t pick on the early birders.
My time is coming sooner than I think.
I just hope by the time I’m one of them, the desert choices will be better.
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From the mailbag:
Via Email: I have two questions that are kind of related. First, how do you pronounce Pinterest and second, does my site get any link benefits from it?
Honestly, I’ve been asking myself how to pronounce the damn thing since it was introduced. I guess the proper pronunciation is interest with a “p” in front of it. I’m sure that cleared things up.
As far as getting any link juice from pinning things on Pinterest, there isn’t any. Sites like this tag links with the “no follow” tag which basically tells search engines to ignore it. But, just because there’s no link juice (I really HATE that term) doesn’t mean you shouldn’t embrace it. Many eCommerce store owners are thrilled with the fact that Pinterest users are pinning products from their website and sharing them with other Pinterest users with some of these shares resulting in sales.
Pinterest does have some SEO value, especially on your profile page where you can include your store’s URL, add a description and use keywords that are relevant to your site.
Via Email: You’ve probably answered this before, but how many times a week should I be blogging?
I always recommend at least two blog posts a week. But I’m going to follow that up with this…. if you’re going to blog, just to blog twice a week, you’re not doing yourself any favors. Your blog posts need to be relevant to what’s on your site, engaging enough so that people come back to read more and aren’t spammy. Your blog should be a secondary resource for those interested in the products or services you’re selling and serve as a great platform to promote the fact that YOU are the expert in your field.