After writing Creating Your Blog’s Perfume Page I received quite a few comments regarding the topic. Many of you commented that blogs cannot surpass the boundary of visual stimuli just yet. We do however see people placing audio ads into their pages. This obvious intrusion into our quiet privacy triggers the wrong emotion in many of us.

What can we learn from sensory branding methods? How can our blogs anchor (thanks, Mark) our brand to certain feelings?

A case study might work to flesh out more telling details. As was suggested in the previous comments, we may have to go with sensory modalities when conveying a message. However, we can look parallel to that idea and say we can create the impressions of the senses through metaphoric imagery. Let’s look at it from a fiction writer’s point of view.

Writer as Branding Aficionado
A writer can cause you to feel fear, see beautiful vistas, hear amazing conversations, taste exotic foods, and smell destruction using only words. As bloggers we can use the same tools to reinforce our brand. How do they do it?

That’s the hard part.

Metaphors are a giant tool for writers and might be the most underutilized branding tool for bloggers. Let’s take my blog for instance. My tagline, Exploding across the Internet, should not be taken literally. I am not in pieces. I am however writing content I feel will be valuable to a wide audience, who will eventually spread it throughout the internet. This will create the explosion. The big bang. You get it, right?

Metaphor: the transference of a word to a new sense. A claim that a certain subject is equal to another creates a metaphor.

How to Write your Blog’s Metaphor
A metaphor can elicit a subconscious response from a reader. For instance, the following sentences:

His blog - the Sherman tank rumbling through the streets - cannot be mistaken for any other.

Her blog has the warmth of a cup of cocoa.

These metaphors compare the blog with something quite different. The first one compares a blog to a Sherman tank. You realize nothing will stand in its way. It is powerful, steady, and impenetrable — a great resource for combat. There’s a lot you can pull from a metaphor. In this instance, the blog may also be unfriendly, deadly, caustic, etc. A metaphor can speak to positives and negatives.

The warmth of a cup of cocoa brings thoughts of positive moments when we’re with friends or enjoying solitude. It usually reveals a positive moment. This metaphor’s power comes from its simplicity. Often times, the simplest metaphors create the most vivid response from readers.

The right metaphors engage an audience and create the nostalgia we talked about in the previous post. Your blog’s metaphor may be in the tagline, or it may be scattered throughout your posts. A good metaphor will penetrate a reader’s mind and then cement a feeling for posterity.

Triggering Nostalgia
The metaphor creates the feeling of joy, happiness, fear, etc. The metaphor also hooks that feeling to your blog, but then how do you trigger it? Specifically, how do you trigger it when those readers are not on your blog?

I think this is what truly great advertising does. It creates a hook that later causes you to think of a commercial, which leads you back to a brand. I’m sure you’ve all had moments where you recalled a commercial moment. When this happens to me, it’s because I’m talking about the subject matter or just witnessed a reminder. Usually funny commercials are the ones that sneak their way into my conversations.

‘Remember the Sprint commercial where the guy slammed his phone into the other guys head? What a security system that phone had, right?’

Any number of things might have triggered that phone commercials memory within me. I’m wondering, can we do the same thing with our blog’s and their brand? If something of our content goes viral, I think so. What do you think? Does this theory hold water?