As my COMI610 course at Marist is coming to a close it has
taught me to ignore my inhibitions about blogging and dive into the possibility
of educating others about my passion. I
doubt there is much confusion about what my passion is – meditation. Revealing the personal and business profits
that can be driven from this mental practice has been a pleasure these past six
weeks and I must ask you, my audience, should I continue beyond the conclusion
of this course? Be honest.
The next step is a request upon me to “storify” my blogging
experience. Shall I start with "Once Upon a Time" as all good stories do? Storify is a new platform allowing
me to “pimp out” my content as I did my blog per the recommendations of Scott
(2011, p. 244).
My focus has been to aid
my audience in overcoming any inhibitions surrounding meditation and building favoritism
for the mental maintenance practice. Blog
topics were chose based on whom I wanted to reach with an incorporation of reliable
sources and shocking revelations into the practice of meditation. Did I do this?
Did I engage you with facts you could trust, guidance you could follow, and expose you to details about meditation that may have accumulated a “wow” factor?
I would like to share with you the outline of my digital
paper in hopes that you will be eager to provide me with any advice on what to
add, subtract, revise, or a “job well done” is always accepted. Who doesn’t love a high-five for the ego
boost once in awhile?! Alright, here it
goes:
Introduction
I will blab about myself for a
brief moment. Full-time student + mother
of two = life of chaos. Chaos + need for
moments of sanity/clearness = meditation.
Due to my personal upbeat outcomes driven from meditation, I began to research its effects on business. As I came to realize what a
powerful impact meditation brought to the 9-to-5 world I was eager to share my
passion in a way that allowed my audience to learn, respect, and incorporate
the practice to receive the ultimate corporate outcome.
Plans and Policies
This section focuses on
quantifiable and measurable objectives and goals as well as the strategy I
developed going forth into my blogging experience. Essentially the blueprint of expanding my
audience and influential reach.
· Goals
o
Include informative content to relate meditation
to business
o
Encourage fellow classmates to begin meditating
· Objectives
o
Participate in social networks surrounding the
topic of meditation
§
@TMmeditation (The Trascendental Meditation
Program)
§
@UncleRUSH (Russell Simmons – advocate for
meditation)
§
@CMind_ACMHE (Contemplative Mind- non-profit
involved in meditation practices throughout professional settings)
o
Promote my posts via Twitter & Pinterest
Activities
Here is when the fun
begins! I plan to talk a bit about
Stipple – the company I used to bring additional content to my images and how I
thought they were engaging and a rather awesome addition. I will share some “pins” and “tweets” and
explain my intentions with each.
·
- Considering the strong following Oprah and Paul McCartney possess - I shared tweets/pins about their devotion to meditation. I thought this would bring new curiosity to my blog. These tweets and pins demonstrated that elite members of our society practice meditation – persuasion!
I think in this section I will separate it into sections
based on each blog post I published – thoughts?
Analysis
Analysis
For me the biggest setback to
blogging is assuming you will be speaking to no one, essentially. So you push forward, well because your
professor tells you to, and you hope for the best… right?! I am pleasantly pleased with the outcome:
(this is just a peak)
- Pageviews for February: 271
- Sum of comments: 69
I will also be including any retweets, repins and analyzing
and trends that I saw. Does it make
sense to separate it into sections based on each blog post here as well?
Conclusion
The conclusion – who does not love the end of one’s workload? This is my chance to close this chapter on Storify
where I will summarize my analysis and draw conclusions on how well I did in
managing my social media blog. Thus far
I think I did well with:
·
Pimping out my blog – building engagement
·
Building an audience
·
Revealing interesting information
·
Pushed for an intense conversation between
audience members
Considering there is always
room for improvement I will be talking about what actions I can take to
perk up my blog for the future.
- A blog post that allows for members to share their concerns/difficulties about meditation.
- A blog post that details how to get meditation into your corporate culture
Then I will completely conclude my story with what I have learned through this blogging journey or essentially my "happily ever after."
Resources
Scott, D. M. (2011). Chapter 17. In D. M. Scott, The
New Rules of Marketing and PR (p. 244). Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc.
Hi Krystal. Great post and yes you should continue blogging about your passion if it is something you enjoy. What better way to keep track of progress, help others and potentially make money in the process?! You have a great detailed outline for your Storify digital paper and I am looking forward to reading your final draft.
ReplyDeleteThis week's lesson is about where we started, where we are now and where we want to end up. So should you decide to continue blogging (which is seems you have) you may want to consider including where you want to end up post SMST with your blog. Based upon the readings are there any tools you think you might benefit from?
Also, to answer you question, I do think it is important to section out your activities for each blog. I think this will give your Storify audience a clear understanding of where you began and how you applied your new findings and research to create blog postings that were not only beneficial to them, but also to you both personally and professionally.
Honestly Nia I think I would use The New Rules of Marketing and PR as a 'bible' if I were to continue. All the information Scott presents about blogging specifically as well as the content you could relate to blogging is priceless. I actually follow his blog and I must say he has the tactics down pat.
DeleteThanks for your feedback Nia. I was thinking that I should separate sections out according to my blog posts and with everyone agreeing I feel confident. Let my story begin.
Yes, good ole' Scott. I posted a while how much I loved his book and even purchased one for my Executive Director at work. I think anyone working in any Comm field can appreciate his suggestions.
DeleteKrystal, to echo Nia: PLEASE KEEP BLOGGING! I love your work....and people are reading it. You have a great voice, one that I think appeals to people beyond this class.
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question about connecting course content to meditation, I think you did this very very well. I was impressed on how you did it...even when the two were unrealated.
I look forward to reading more about your final digital paper, and offering feedback where necessary.
Ha! Ha! Kate, I love it. Thank you for your kind words, deeply grateful. I appreciate the statement pertaining to my voice as I think the tone of a blog is one of the big elements that determines its success. All too often you find blogs that have that mono-tone and I simply put - can't read them! I also feel that you have just a few lines of writing to grab your readers attention. Those seconds count and without the right tone behind what you are saying you essentially lose that audience member forever.
DeleteThanks Kate - if this Storify ever gets rid of its glitches - I'll be sure to share! Fingers crossed.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi Krystal,
DeleteI really enjoyed reading your post! Definitely keep blogging, you have a knack for it, and as you mentioned, "pimping it out" is not your shortfall. In fact, many times throughout this course I was so impressed by your obvious grasp on how to make a blog really exciting, interactive, and engaging!
To answer your question in your activities section, yes I would section it off by blog post. I look forward to seeing what you put together.
Again, very nice post! Insightful, interesting, and fun to read!
And you definitely ought to post about difficulties in meditating. I would think that would interest many people! I also like the other idea, about bringing meditation into corporate culture.
Oh THANK YOU Kristin. Words of encouragement are always needed especially in something of this manner. Blogging about your personal 'passion' to the world... Can be a bit scary.
DeleteThanks for the feedback and answers to my questions. I definitely thought the story would flow nicer if I did section of by blog posts. This way I think I can keep the content going with pins and tweets.
I find one of the hardest things about blogging is knowing what to blog about so I felt encouraged to ask you all what you wanted to know. Perhaps if my following became intense that would be something to do as an entire blog post. I will be sure to talk about the difficulties in meditating - as I know we all have them.
Thanks again for your comment Kristin.
Hi Krystal,
DeleteI think your blog topic is one you can certainly continue to develop and a good one to attract readers. Many people are intrigued by meditating but few understand it or know how to practice it. I think you have touched on a topic that appeals to many. Nice work!
Kristin I agree. I research meditation nearly every day whether it be in regards to business or new tactics to the practice. Recently I have seen more and more acceptance in the corporate world for meditation. As Kate had mentioned in a previous post - her job offers it during work hours and I believe she mentioned an airport actually had a designated room for individuals looking to meditate. I love its growing success in our society. Paul McCartney mentioned it as a possible solution to a growing social problem - I fully agree. Oprah actually became intrigued by the practice and visited a little town - roughly 5,000 people - who all meditate at 5pm every day. After spending some quality time in that small town she brought the practice back to her network, OWN and now has nearly 300 people in her organization that meditate at 9 and 4 every day. I just find it fascinating and I would love to see a world where it is accepted everywhere. I would strongly value the opportunity to meditate during work hours - that is when I get back to the career world. ;)
DeleteSo perhaps this could be a new career path for your Krystal. Alot of the information found on the website below offers the same direction we've gotten in the course. Keeping track of your stats, plan and outcomes, getting noticed by "pimping out your blog", networking with other bloggers to establish credibility (which we learned from Scott), and using photos to enhance it.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thedailymuse.com/job-search/5-steps-to-turning-your-blogging-hobby-into-a-job/
I've actually had to create a few different blogs for various courses at the previous institution I attended. Not to say I don't have any setbacks when I have to jump back into the blogosphere but it this previous experience has helped me out a bit. I can see that I have come far from where I first started. To be honest I was shocked to see how many pageviews I received. Of course one would hope for more comments but a great tip I found (somewhere ha ha) was to interact on blogs like yours or ones that you may be able to influence followers into checking out your own content. This is something I think I will absolutely have to try if I am to keep up with this.
DeleteThank you for the link - great information - bookmarked!
I think that was Scott in his chapter on blogging. He suggested following other bloggers, commenting and leaving a link to your site (As I am going to do below).
DeleteBeing that you're somewhat seasoned in the blogosphere have you used SEO either in the past or present that would draw the meditating audience to your site? I recently learned how to use the Google Adwords tool and I was amazed at how it works. Many people that blog as a passion might not see the benefit of using SEO but those who are trying to make a living off of it definitely will.
http://nialissimore.blogspot.com/
SEO is not something I have ever been very familiar with but I absolutely agree that it is an essential element if one was to financially gain from their blog. This article outlines 10 mistakes bloggers tend to make with SEO. (http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/seo-mistakes-bloggers-should-avoid/) Number 4 seems prime. There are many things I think I would need to learn to really make this blog bump from pageviews to comments/interaction. I can absolutely see with just my minimal experience in this course how time consuming a blog can become. As Mark mentioned having a 'game plan' is key.
DeleteTime consuming is an understatement. The blogs that I read are updated everyday and have teams of people working on them. They are a business and the work put into them is tremendous. I think you can do it though Krystal... perhaps continue to write, research and build your way up. You have a good theme, creative way of writing and a huge potential audience. Go for it and when it becomes a full-time business with staff remember who believed in you ;).
ReplyDeleteNia just because of that awesome statement, rest assured I will! :)
ReplyDelete