The Millennium Marketer

As promised, I’m posting my mind map here to show you how you can use an extended metaphor to communicate an abstract idea by connecting it to a better known idea. I chose social media as my topic and the flower as a basic metaphor.
Some of the basic elements of this include:
*a developing idea about how flowers are not separate entities from the rest of the world, so in a way they are like people or maybe even your website content.
*There are different types of flowers, which can translate to your social media objectives.
*Insects live in flowers=digital natives, immigrants and even pesky spambots.
*Gardens are places where flowers inhabit.

Got a better idea? Leave a comment below.

Glen’s (LifeDev) post string on “Ideas from Start to Finish” is really clever. He focuses on refinement as a means to develop an original idea. Observation is also really key, and one way to best communicate what you observe in the trends is through metaphor.

If you read on, you’ll find five steps to writing a blog post and using extended metaphor to make your idea clearer to the reader. In other words pick a theme, much like some high schools pick their prom’s party theme (Mine in high school was Starry Night Sky).

The steps on this IdeaMeme are included here, as well as an example that I found from a REI mail order catalog.
Then tomorrow, I will post my extended metaphor to show you that I’m definitely in on it. Will you join me on pushing the limits on your blog writing?
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I’m always trying to figure out how I could blog better and keep people coming back to this website. One of the trends that seems to work well is to write about writing. I’m starting to notice that when I comment somewhere, I get links to my blog. Social bookmarking also seems to work well. My best day was May 3, thanks to a bunch of referrals from StumbleUpon. But it’s already May 13. Needless to say, blog maintenance if you are to do it as a profession is a campaign in itself.

Introspective thoughts aside, I’ve compiled a list of blogging advice from different sources which is a great way to get a good review of what you’re doing well and other things you could improve. Please leave a comment and add your links since it’s without a doubt that I will have missed a number of interesting posts.
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When I started running my own blog, I decided that I wanted to mesh my interests in entrepreneurship and business into the scope, to understand the challenges of starting your own business. This recently segwayed into a partnership with TriplePundit.com doing some of the same stuff, but with a sustainability angle.

Since I haven’t been very good about linking to TriplePundit and directly to my articles, I thought this would be a good chance to talk about how blogging for yourself is different than when you are doing it under a shared brand name. If you read on, you’ll find the articles I’ve written and how each interview experience is different. If you’re a blogger, I’d love to hear more about your thoughts/challenges on acting as a citizen journalist.

Links:

Brian T. Mullis, Sustainable Travel International
Sean Stannard Stockton, Ensemble Capital
US and China Collaborate at Green Energy Conference
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When blogs started to get popular and hit the mainstream media, there was (and still is) talk about how blogging is a very different experience from traditional journalism. Both genres of writing are supposed to be very short and concise.

The difference is traditional journalism often tends to give summaries of events. It’s the long camera view of an event seen from afar. Here is an example from today’s Wall Street Journal “What’s News” column:

Bush will propose stopping growth in U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025 and signal he is open to legislative action to curb power-plant pollution.

The internet influenced the writing format very differently. It started with personal home pages, based on individual hobbies and interests, and then blogging just became another form of expressing individual interests. It suggests more of people’s reactions to events and favorite hobbies rather than the cold, hard facts. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see the perspective of a politician involved with this speech? Let’s suppose that George Dubya is a blogger. What if he wrote this instead:

“I was in the White House gardens and for some reason or another, I started to cough and could not stop. I saw the effect it was having on my children. That is when I realized that it is just about time we need to truly make a commitment to stopping greenhouse gas emissions.”

This would be the short, honed-in camera shot of blogging.We can all relate to pain, like incessant coughing or discomfort, which makes the experience more relevant to the reader, even if they aren’t big on politics. It’s also a very effective tactic in spoken presentations that are being given to a wide audience. This is actually the approach Al Gore took in his speeches presented in the Inconvenient Truth.

There’s been some research done that people remember things better if it ties in to their memories or are being entertained while being taught or convinced of something.

In PR, I’ve been warned about being careful when speaking to bloggers because they have to be treated differently from the mainstream media. I wasn’t sure why exactly, but since posting my own posts online, it seems more apparent to me. Any conversation that I have with someone can potentially turn into a blogpost, but I’m usually fairly scrupulous about this. It’s happened before, though, with PR agents who have written e-mails to bloggers, which have resulted in rants about PR people.

Bottom line: Anyone’s interaction can turn into a story, which is both the coolness and caveat of new media.