We all love tips
Americans are suckers for tips, and lets face it, I am too. I can’t resist the daily AOL teasers, like the one I read yesterday, about ’10 Ways to Improve your Marriage’. I had to click, and read the whole article from tip 1 to tip 10. One click for each new tip. That’s a lot of time spent on one article. Today, I can’t tell you what it said, but I remember nodding with appreciation, as I read it. My point is that people love tips, but do they really use them? Skelliewag, and Daily Blog Tips, the two must read blogs for all serious bloggers, are both big fans of ‘numbered headlines’. If I want to be a successful blogger, I need to give readers numbered lists of practical recommendations they can hang on to.
Do green tips work?
I should have numbered headlines? Part of me resist the idea. I am French after all, and we French have a natural aversion for anything too simplistic. For us, articles with numbers in their headline just lack finesse. Nothing in life is that simple that it can be reduced to a rounded number of recommendations. That’s one thing. If it’s going to work however, I can put my feelings aside, and join the rest of the blogging crowd. The more important question is, in the area of green education, do tips really work? What do people do with them? And do they really use them?
The need for an extraordinary teacher
There are hundreds of sites, literally, that dispense green advice of some sort. The ones I am most aware of, are TreeHugger, World Changing, and The Daily Green. There is also Laurie David’s list. Once in a while, I go and visit. I revisit, and I am struck most by what I do with the information. I do nothing with it. Am I not using the stuff, because I lack the motivation to apply it, to begin with? Or is green an altogether different beast? Or are these sites going at it the wrong way? My first thought is that going green, is kind of like trying to do homework in one’s least favorite subject. What’s needed is an extraordinary teacher, to transform the green learning experience. Al Gore started the process. He got us convinced, that green is a worthy subject matter. Next is the less obvious challenge of answering the how’s, and of getting people to do their homework. Green tips are just a collection of loose pages from a yet to be assembled green textbook. A textbook only as good as the teacher.
La Marguerite 
One of the big problems with tips is that they often don’t provide you with enough information to do the job. Example: I spoke recently with someone from my local electric company about doing an energy audit in my home. He said that as I am a renter, it wouldn’t do me much good. However, he suggested I follow some of the energy-saving tips on their website.
I told him that I didn’t know how to do some of what it recommends. For instance, vacuum my refrigerator twice a year to keep it running efficiently. He explained that you remove the grill on the bottom front of the fridge, then use a vaccum hose to rid the dust underneath. Without his explanation, I NEVER would have guessed that that’s how you vaccum a refrigerator. (I thought maybe you did something to the back, where the coils are exposed). I asked why they don’t list this stuff on their tips, and he responded, “I guess we just assume people know what we mean.”
Thanks Amy, for this great example. I think you are also pointing to the need for a person on the other end, to guide you through the process.