How To Come Up With A Blog Tagline

blog-taglines Taglines are perhaps the most underrated and underused elements of personal and business blogs, yet they serve a huge function.

The social web has conditioned us to move through content-based sites quickly, and if we reach a site with an unclear thesis we're likely to click to the next thing. You also can't count on visitors to read your "about" page. In a world that increasingly moves at 140 characters or less, having a hook such as a clever tagline can make all the difference.

Taglines are your brand's elevator pitch and help people get a quick snapshot of who you are. It's your opportunity to be descriptive, catchy, memorable and create a unique brand for your blog. They also present a great opportunity for keyword inclusion, but not at the sacrifice of stickiness. Ideally you can combine something catchy and SEO friendly.

To help inspire you the next time you launch a blog – or any type of web publication – I pulled together what I think are some of the more creative, clever and effective taglines from around the blogosphere:

1. How To Change The World: A practical blog for impractical people

2. Successful Blog: You're only a stranger once

3. Conversation Agent: Connecting ideas and people – how talk can change our lives

4. Sugarrae: Never mess with a woman who can pull rank

5. Boing Boing: A directory of wonderful things

6. PR Squared: It may be the future but you still gotta eat

7. The Consumerist: Shoppers bite back

8. Zen Habits: Simple Productivity

9. Yoast: Tweaking Websites

10. PR 2.0: The future of communication starts here

11. CopyBlogger: Copywriting tips for online marketing success

12. /Film: Blogging the reel world

13. Broadcasting Brain: Harvesting cognitive surplus for uncanny content

14. Psyblog: Understand your mind

15. Lifehacker: Tips and downloads for getting things done

16. Think Simple Now: Creativity, Clarity, Happiness

17. Violent Acres: Like you, but with poor impulse control

18. Bacon Today: Daily updates on the world of sweet, sweet bacon

19. Shoemoney: Skills to pay the bills

20. Techno Theory: Technical…Practical…Theoretically Interesting

21. Publishing 2.0: The (r)Evolution of media

22. Geek Sugar: Geek is chic.

23. Smashing Magazine: We smash you with the information that will make your life easier. Really.

24. A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

25. Steve Pavlina: Personal development for smart people

26. Simply Fired: If you don't laugh, you'll cry.

27. So Good: An absurd look at the world of food

28. Get Rich Slowly: Personal finance that makes cents

29. Personal Branding Blog: Navigating YOU to future success

30. SEO Book: Learn. Rank. Dominate.

31. The Impulsive Buy: Putting the "ew" in product reviews

32. PluginID: Plugin to your identity

33. Kottke: Home of fine hypertext products

34. Freakonomics: The hidden side of everything (also a book, but a great tagline none-the-less)

35. Web Worker Daily: Rebooting the workforce

36. Online Marketer Blog: If Copyblogger and JaffeJuice had a bad-ass baby

37. Auto Blog: We obsessively cover the auto industry

38. Advergirl: …yeah, I have an opinion about that

39. TwiTip: Twitter tips in 140 characters or more

40. Duct Tape Marketing: Simple, effective and affordable small business marketing

41. Apartment Therapy: Saving the world, one room at a time

42. TechCult: Technology, Twisted

43. Illuminated Mind: The less boring side of personal development

44. Don't Drink The Kool-aid: Join the conversations. Just don't drink the Kool-aid.

45. Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters

A few quick observations noted while compiling this:

It was easy to get quite a few of these as the catchier taglines are sticky enough to recall without even visiting the site
Only a few of these taglines are conscious of SEO, but it is an opportunity
Many taglines were part of the image instead of as HTML text on the page, so if you're going to include keywords be sure that they are text-based or at a minimum, include them as alt text to the image
Many blogs have no tagline at all, relying purely on their name to tell the story
Strong taglines make a great first impression
Descriptive taglines work just fine too if they match the content
Taglines can work in conjunction with the name of the blog itself – the two support each other
Simply reading the taglines of sites you already know can provide a mental image of the site
For blogs with non-descriptive names, taglines become even more important

This is of course an incomplete list, so we'll turn it over you. Share your favorite blog taglines in the comments that you think are creative, clever or effective.