Updated: April 18, 2008 04:37 PM
Updated: April 18, 2008 04:37 PM
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AdRantsPosted by leah.jones
In a team training last week, I found myself grasping for a metaphor. I pride myself on being a great de-geeker. A teacher who can find a way to turn Internet jargon into something that anyone can understand.
Yes, I'm the person that has compared different search engines to different strainers you might find at a fantastic kitchen store. I'm also the person that needed a new way to talk about blogs and forums. The team didn't want technical jargon. They didn't need to know about PHP and CSS. They needed something tangible, something concrete.
"Well," I finally said, "a forum is like a quilting bee and a blog is like a sermon."
I wasn't sure that it was exactly the right way to compare them, but I suddently had a room of staff nodding their heads. Now that I've had a week, I've decided that this is indeed an apt comparison.
In a forum, for the most part, members are at the same level. While there are moderators, everyone can chime in and everyone is responsible for the conversation. At a quilting bee, there is the host who has opened her house, but everyone is responsible for quilting her (or his) portion of the quilt.
On the other hand, a sermon begins as one way communication. Clergy stands in front of the congregation and talks to them. After the sermon, during the meet and greet, the clergy might receive comments and feedback from the congregation. On a blog it works the same way. I write my post and after I've published it you, the reader, can give me comments.
Like the clergy will take a congregations feedback into consideration for the next sermon, a blogger might take those comments into consideration for my next post. In a forum, as in a quilting bee, the conversation is much more immediate.
What do you think? Does blog:forum::sermon:quilting bee work for you? If not, how would you teach these differences in a concrete way?
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posted by leah.jones
Posted by leah.jones
Yesterday I got my haircut. Chopped might be a better word for what I did, but we'll go with haircut. For the last two months my hair has been in a ponytail nearly every day. Actually, my hair has been in a ponytail for almost two years.
Two years ago I was told by a man I was interested in that he liked my hair pulled back. "Oh," I thought, "then I shall pull my hair back." I ignored the fact that it looked better down or short, because I valued his opinion and if he liked it in a ponytail, then it was going in a ponytail.
Yesterday I told the stylist, "You must make it too short for me to put into a ponytail. It's okay if you take off a lot, I trust you." I like to think that I make a stylist's day when I tell her that. "I trust you, you are the professional. Cut away."
But this is a PR blog, not a hair blog, so how does this story possibly relate? Look at the tools and ideas you typically reach for first. Were you in a brainstorm a few years ago and got a compliment on a program idea? Have you latched onto that program and tried to make it fit year after year?
Perhaps you were pitching reporters and on the third day you got a compliment. Did you shift your pitching style to fit that one reporter, even if it didn't work for anyone else?
Is it time for you to get a new PRstyle? Take a good look at your habits and decide if they still serve you. If they are based on an empty compliment from two years ago, maybe it's time to cut it loose and find a new angle.
What is your "haircut" story?
posted by leah.jones
Posted by leah.jones
"There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't."
Sorry, I couldn't help it. I was about to say there are two types of people when that joke popped into my head. I love it for the niche the joke serves and I love that on first glance it doesn't limit the world to two types of people.
Alas, for this post I am going to limit the world to two types of people. The first are the people who view the world as a pizza and the second are the people who view the world as an all-you-care-to-eat buffet.
The world-as-pizza people, whome I'll call WAPPs, view the world as a place with limits. A limited number of slices that we are all fighting over. A limited number of pages in a newspaper or magazine, minutes in a TV show, or a limited budget that all people must fight over. Viewing the world as a pizza is sometimes referred to as scarcity thinking. "There is simply not enough to go around."
The world-as-all-you-care-to-eat-buffet people, whom I'll clumsily call WAAYCTEBP, view the world as limitless. No matter what you want or need, it is there and if it runs out, more will be provided. They are not fighting over the last slice of pizza or last column inch of the paper, because they are certain that there is more where that came from. In some circles this is referred to as prosperity thinking.
I am a WAAYCTEBP who occasionally slips into Pizza Mode. Sometimes I look at what I need to do on behalf of clients and think, "There is no way, the space is limited." If I can change my view, ever so slightly, I can see that there are at least other pizzas.
The internet has certainly helped shift my thinking. Granted, I wasn't in PR before the internet or blogging, but it shows that our job is to help connect brands to individuals. It is not a crowd that matters, but the individuals who make up the crowd.
When you are working on behalf of your client are you a Pizza Person or a Buffet Person? Do you see the crowds or the individuals in the crowd? Are you building numbers or relationships? Monologues or conversations?
Looks like I'm all questions today and I'm ready for your responses.
posted by leah.jones
TalkShop is a blog about word-of-mouth and the Me2 Revolution, published by Edelman and hosted by Phil Gomes, the company's Senior Counsel, Online Communications. This blog pulls in thoughts and opinions from members of the worldwide Edelman network.
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