Category Archives: Tips and Tricks

Suggestions for how to find new bros and for how to be a better bro.

Tips and Tricks

It’s that time of year, bros

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That’s right, dudes. It’s that time.

No, I’m not talking about Christmas or Festivus.

I’m not talking about the countdown to midnight at New Years’.

I’m talking about Game Watching Season! It’s that time when the greatest number of big games (in multiple sports) are broadcast. Which means a lot of opportunities to do what bros to best: gather in packs to take in those games.

Sooner or later, bro, you’re going to have to host one of these events. Sure, you could invite your posse to watch at a bar, but the markups on booze make that one of the most expensive options. Which means that, in addition to your having the beer available at your place, you’re also going to need some food.

Don’t panic: nobody expects you to be slaving away in the kitchen. But at the other extreme, you don’t want to have everyone stuffing their faces from bags of cheese puffs. It’s just not healthy. So a nice compromise would be a big snack tray, like this one set up to look like a stadium:

In addition to the awesome design, this tray is full of stuff that most dudes enjoy:

  • Chips (thick enough to dip)
  • Mini pepperoni sticks
  • Ham slices – also mini
  • Cheese slices – also mini
  • Bread slices – also mini
  • Crackers
  • Carrot and celery sticks
  • Pretzels and nuts
  • Sweet pickles & sweet onions
  • Buffalo chicken dip
  • Cole slaw dip, topped with bacon pieces

If you hate to cook, don’t sweat the dips. You can always pick up some substitutes at your local supermarket. But of course, if making custom dips is your idea of fun, go for it!

Happy gamewatching with the bros.

Later,
-The Blog Dude

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Tips and Tricks

A deep, unreal bro hug!

Hey bros,

I realize that it’s been a while since I addressed you last, but we’ve all been going through some difficult stuff lately. So, to help keep up your morale, here’s a bro hug:

What makes it so deep-unreal is that the dude on the right is wearing my face. It was the closest I could come to hugging all of you, since a picture is worth a thousand words.

If you feel like deepfaking yourself onto the dude with the cap, go for it!

Later,
-The Blog Dude

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Tips and Tricks

Is your package dumbing you down?

Hey bros,

The late George Carlin summarized “…everything you need to know about male-female relationships: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.” In our case, science is starting to show that George was right.

Although it’s true that the big dumb jock is a cliché, in this case there may actually be a reason that it became a cliché. The reason? Testosterone, dudes. We’ve known for a long time that it makes you bigger, and that it makes you more athletic, but now we’re seeing some early studies that it makes guys dumber, too. Our favorite hormone gets the hat trick.

In one of the best-known examples of such a study, guys were tasked with taking a “Cognitive Reflection Test.” This type of test consists of questions and puzzles involving logic and math, but where most people are likely to spot an intuitive answer before working through to the correct answer. In other words, the less impulsive the test takers are, the better they do.

These bros took one part of the test, and then given testosterone gel to rub on their chests. After the T kicked in, they began the next part of the test, but their accuracy dropped by a good 20%. They were also more confident about their answers. Yup, instant dumb jocks!

Now I can hear some of you guys panicking: “I love working out, bro, but I don’t want to be DUMB!! How do I fix this?”

Dude. Calm down.

It’s true that when you train your muscles, your body produces more testosterone. But fortunately, there’s a counterbalance. That same exercise also gets your blood stream absorbing more oxygen, which in turn improves your brain’s cognitive performance. Remember, nature loves to keep things in balance. (Of course, if you mess with nature and take steroids, that’s a completely different situation.)

So feel free to keep going with your workout program. Besides, you now have an excuse when your girlfriend, wife, or other female relative gets exasperated with you during a conversation. You can just shrug and say, “You’re right; I’m talking out of my nuts.”

Later,
-The Blog Dude

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Tips and Tricks

Online Fun for Lockdown (Part 1)

Hey dudes,

This lockdown hasn’t been easy on us. After all, the whole point of seekBromance is to help you find a potential guy friend that you can meet in person, which is not an option for most of you right now. So lately I’ve begun to have trouble coming up with bromance-related articles. Over the last month or so, I have been researching a bunch of possible things I can do to make this site better. That’s resulted in many discoveries, one of which I’ll introduce you to now.

I recently came across a cool piece of software that lets the user create the kinds of quizzes and lists that you see on sites like Buzzfeed. You know, just good, clean, lockdown fun online. I’ve got a few bro-ey examples already, so I’m going to kick this off with the one you see below. Feel free to share the link, and let me know if you like this idea or hate it.

Which TV Bro should be your real-life bro?

TV bros

Enjoy, dudes!

Later,
-The Blog Dude

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Tips and Tricks

Top 5 Interests of seekBromance.com Members

Hey dudes,

Today I have a nice surprise for you. Something I think every member of seekBromance is going to like a whole lot.

First, a little background. As you know, if you’re busy looking for another bro for your posse, one of the best places to start is with what kind of interests you and he have in common. Online sites like seekBromance make it easy to search for common interests, and so does the app. But what if you aren’t getting the results you were hoping for?

That’s where today’s surprise comes in. For the first time ever, I have compiled a member count for each of the 56 interests that can be checked in your bro-file. All of them have a nice, solid following among the seekBromance membership. But here, my bros, are the five most popular:

Number 5: Music – Rock

The only music category to crack the top 5, although Pop/R&B isn’t too far behind. Makes sense, though: there’s such a huge variety that to call yourself a fan of rock music is like calling yourself an American. It can mean a lot of things.

But you don’t have to analyze: just rock on, man!

Number 4: Computers – Internet

I’m actually surprised this one isn’t higher, to be honest. After all, every one of us is on the web and/or using the app. It’s cool: there’s a lot of fun to be had with geeking out.

Number 3: Hiking – Camping

This one can even work during a lockdown, as long as you stay at least 6 feet apart – or wear your masks when you aren’t. With all of the U.S. and Canada to hike around in, you couldn’t ask for much more. (I’m sure the UK has awesome trails and campsites too, but I don’t speak from personal experience there.)

Number 2: Nature

Yeah, this includes hiking, but there are plenty of other fun things involved when you’re out in nature. Picking berries, tracking wildlife, swimming in creeks, and many more. Even watching squirrels can be fun: I used to feed them breath mints, and it was hilarious to watch them hold the hard candy in their paws and efficiently nibble it down to nothing.

So now it’s time for number 1. This is it. Here it comes.

Number 1: Movies/Cinema

These aren’t going to be available until after the lockdown, and some movie theaters will actually go out of business because of Covid-19. Not to worry, though. If you’re not close to a surviving theater, you can be sure that plenty of organizations will hold their own movie screenings. And the big studios aren’t going to let their new releases languish on Netfilx forever. The movie business will find a way.

The bottom line

So if you checked any of these interests in your bro-file, you’re in really good company. And if you haven’t, but think you might like one of them, by all means update your bro-file. Now that everyone knows the top 5, it might just bring in some bros who want to get to know you.

And finally, remember that if you’re in a lockdown, the smartest thing to do is to wait until the “all clear” before you meet someone in person. Until then, keep the conversation on line, and…

Happy bromancing!

Later,
-The Blog Dude

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Tips and Tricks

4 Secrets to Using Your Phone Like a Bro

Hey bros,

We’ve talked before about things we can do with our cell phones, such as gym selfies, but there are some other unwritten rules that will help you guys make the most of your mobiles.

  1. It’s still a phone: Talk on it.
    As social creatures, we humans rely heavily on speaking to others. Maybe you can get away with using only text messaging if you’re Sherlock Holmes, but hopefully you’re trying to be more approachable than that. Of course, in a lockdown or shelter-in-place situation, the need to talk to more than just the people you live with is even greater.
  2. Google is a search engine, not an answer engine.
    Having access to Google from your phone is almost miraculous, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking you are now knowledgeable about topic X because you just Googled it. After all, you can Google the most ridiculous concept and get back tens of thousands of pages written by people who believe that very thing. So Google is not a replacement for research, even if it’s a good place to begin research.
  3. Have some class: DON’T send dick pics!
    Our horny impulses aside, there are some very logical reasons not to go this route. First, the penis is simply not an attractive part of the human anatomy, regardless of your gender or sexual preference. This makes sense, because the penis is meant to be inserted into things, rather than waved around like a peacock’s tail feathers. Second, when you send a photo to someone, it becomes theirs to do with as they wish. You wouldn’t want someone with photoshop skills to make it look like a lost kitten and post it on Instagram. Especially not if that picture goes viral.
  4. Get seekBromance any way you want it!
    Our website has been retooled recently to make it friendlier to cell phone browsers. If the laptop isn’t convenient, download your favorite browser app and go for it! In addition, we’ve got apps for Android and iPhone that interface with the membership site.

Happy bromancing!

Later,
-The Blog Dude

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Tips and Tricks

Time to Become Your Own Bro-Boss Online

Hey dudes,

I wasn’t really planning to write this article, but with the explosion of unemployment that we’re dealing with because of COVID-19, I think it’s important for everyone who hasn’t worried about a side hustle before to start thinking about it now.

As we all know, your employer can yank your paycheck for any reason or no reason in most professions – and it’s gotten appalling how frequently and how casually they do it. With your own operation, of course, you have a much better chance of keeping revenue coming in at a steady rate. And everyone needs steady cash flow.

Nowadays, there are plenty of viable business models that a bro working alone can succeed in with minimal startup expenses. This list of online business types is way better researched than what I could put together on short notice, so I’m just giving you the link.

There’s an important aspect of all these businesses that entrepreneurs without marketing experience often overlook, and it isn’t usually talked about. Whatever you’re marketing, bro, you can’t get new customers without three major things:

  1. An audience
  2. Building trust
  3. A solid monetization plan

Every business has the monetization defined, but without the other two, it fails. So I need to introduce you to these core concepts.

Your audience is simply everyone who knows that your business exists. They may have heard of it by word of mouth, clicked on an ad, or they may find your online content very engaging and come back to it often. In other words, the entire spectrum. Most won’t become clients, but that’s the numbers game which is fundamental to all businesses.

Unless you already have a large email list from a related business, building an audience from zero requires either some cash outlay (for online ads), or the willingness to invest a lot of time in creating content that ranks highly in search (SEO). Don’t panic about the cost of online ads; if you plan them sensibly, you can attract a healthy number of good prospects for as low as $150/month. At any rate, you need to keep attracting new audience members continually, because many of your old ones will leave and forget about you.

The other crucial element, trust, is what leads some of your audience to eventually become buyers. Without it, you’re lost. After all, you don’t purchase things from some random person on the Internet, do you?

In the online world, nearly everyone goes about building trust by using emails that they send to potentially interested clients. You’ve signed up for a few of these, dude! The main point is to get the recipients engaged enough, over a short time, to either buy something or at least feel comfortable about buying it. In addition, it helps you communicate your brand and the brand’s values. Typically, the business provides some kind of free gift or info in exchange for getting your email address on this list.

To build such a list yourself, you need an autoresponder email series of your own. In the beginning, you definitely want to use a monthly service instead of buying the software on your own. Of course, you also need to plan out and write the emails, which requires you to be good at copywriting. If you aren’t, find a bro who is, or hire a freelance copy writer; there are plenty of those.

So, a quick summary:

  1. Pick a business model and monetize it to your specifics.
  2. Build your audience (constantly).
  3. Earn your audience’s trust with an email series.
  4. Make sales.

Happy bro-preneuring!

Later,
-The Blog Dude

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Tips and Tricks

New Video Tutorial for Using Your seekBromance Blog

Hi bros,

In the past, I’ve written some articles about the blog feature in seekBromance.com, where you  can post entries and comment on other members’ posts. (You can access the blog features from the apps, too.)

Some people, of course, are more comfortable with learning by example (and there’s nothing wrong with that). For you guys, I’ve now prepared the following video:

Happy blogging!

Later,
-The Blog Dude

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Tips and Tricks

Stay home for Bro-cial Distancing

Hey bros,

Just to make sure everyone understands this “stay at home” situation, I want to give you a little more detail.

NOTE: These guidelines are valid in most jurisdictions, but you should always check the official sources before taking action.

  • No matter what your situation, you don’t have to be indoors 24/7. You can and should take your dog for a walk, or go out on a walk by yourself around the block or around the property. We all need a little fresh air. Just don’t get in your car or on your bike to go riding around.
  • You’re allowed to pick up prescriptions.
  • You’re allowed to go to the supermarket to buy groceries. It’s a good idea to plan your menus at least 2 weeks out, so that you don’t have to shop in person often. It’s also a good idea to shop alone.
  • You can get takeout from restaurants, although delivery is better.
  • You can visit family members who live nearby and who need any assistance.
  • Other than that, stay at home really DOES mean “stay at home,” bros!

Remember, those of us with essential jobs who don’t get to work from home are counting on the rest of us.

Later,
-The Blog Dude

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