Yesterday’s post, “Social media – your will is your only limit“, took the example of a comic book super-hero, Green Lantern, and suggested that social media practioners have virtually limitless potential subject to our strength of will. In other words, the tools are out there, we have to find them and learn how to use them. However, although we can do virtually anything we want, we can’t do everything and neither can a Green Lantern. Let’s explore the weaknesses of a Green Lantern and find out how they cope with them. We can connect these concepts to social media and use them wisely.

The need to maintain focus – The Green Lantern’s power ring is the device that allows this superhero to wield the “green energy” to do all of those amazing things that I described in yesterday’s article. Willpower is the term used to describe the mechanism of channelling this energy to manifest your thoughts or needs.

If you want to fly, you have to concentrate and focus this energy to allow you to fly. If you want to pick up a car and move it into a better parking space by creating a crane, you’ve got to focus and want it bad enough. Green Lanterns need to protect themselves from distraction or mental attacks that would disrupt their concentration. Otherwise, this poor super-hero would drop like a brick and splatter on the ground.

The lesson: the need to maintain focus is critical with any task. If you work in social media, it’s extremely easy to randomly surf the Web, chat, or otherwise eat up productive time. Distractions can stop you in the middle of something important; you must prepare yourself for them to withstand them or put things into a safe state while you deal with them. Save that document or blog post that you are working on before you deal with the distraction!

The need to recharge - imagine that a power ring has a rechargeable power source inside of it. Eventually that power source needs to be recharged. A Green Lantern uses a device called a power battery, which is a conduit to the central source of “green energy” at the center of the universe (work with me on this, OK?)

Historically, a power ring held a charge for up to 24 hours before it needed to be recharged. If the power ring isn’t recharged in time, it goes inert and won’t work until recharged.

The lesson: you, the creator, need recharging, too! Whether it’s rest, relaxation, play, sex, food, exercise, whatever – you can’t create content 24 hrs/day, 7 days/week. Many other people have written far more extensively that I about this subject. They are right!

The yellow impurity = fear – Green Lanterns were supposed to be beings without fear. The most famous, a guy named Hal Jordan, was a crack test pilot with Air Force experience. Just picture him alongside all of the pilots who participated in the early space programs, plus guys like Chuck Yeager, to get an idea of the kind of cojones that are needed for that kind of job. Strap me in a sealed capsule above tons of material and shoot me into a vacuum, then hope that I land safely after a red-hot re-entry and splashdown? Yeah, right. However, fearless people are usually stupid, arrogant, or LIARS. We all have to deal with fear.

Maybe they needed this state of “fearlessness” because the power rings had a HUGE weakness, just like Superman’s Kryptonite – the color yellow. Anything with the color yellow could disrupt or ignore anything that a power ring could generate. What’s worse is that Hal Jordan’s prime nemesis, Sinestro, makes good use of the color yellow:

Plus he recruited a few thousand “friends” to use their yellow-colored power rings to wreck fear and havoc on the universe. These “friends” also happened to be good at scaring people.

Fortunately, there was a solution. The Green Lantern writers “tweaked” the back story a bit to remove the fiction of a fearless super-hero while allowing a means to get past this yellow vulnerability: the yellow weakness only existed until a Green Lantern could learn how to master and contain their fears. Once they passed that mental barrier, yellow was no more of a weakness than anything else. Kind of poetic, isn’t it? Not to say Sinestro and his bad gang didn’t do some serious damage, but mastery of fear is key.

The lesson: “fear is the mind-killer”, as some people say. Sometimes we fear the unknown. Perhaps we fear embarrassment, ridicule, or harrassment. Maybe we doubt that we’re really good enough to succeed in social media. Yes, all of these things are possible. Starting something new is often difficult, especially when you’re in a new “neighborhood” with no contacts and no idea of what the rules are.

We must not let our fears control us. We must educate ourselves, practice through training, find other like-minded people willing to help, and steel ourselves against the naysayers (which, fortunately, are normally a minor factor in social media). We must have the will to focus our efforts and drive ourselves forward. We must make time to rest, recharge, and regain our focus when it eludes us. And, to succeed, we must continue pressing onward. The Green Lantern mythos offers an example, albeit fictional, that we can follow.

Thanks for reading. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this subject, or anything else here at the blog.

P.S. I know I’m using some materials that belong to other people here, but I’m using them for effect, not for financial gain. Go to the original sources and support them, please.

The power and reach of your social media work is only constrained by your mind. Your platform, whether it’s a blog, a social news website, a newsgroup, or even your comments on other media, gives you the ability to transmit virtually any message.  Popular culture contains powerful examples of this amazing ability and here’s an analogy for you to ponder.

BACKGROUND?

One of my recent posts, entitled Your Blog Is Your Power Ring, contained a curious statement, especially if you aren’t familiar with comic book superheroes:

I think of blogs and other social media platforms as the writer’s version of the “power ring”.

At this point, you might be wondering what a power ring is and why it’s relevant to social media.

The power ring is a tool that is used to focus your thoughts and will to create objects or otherwise make things happen; a blog is a tool to capture your thoughts and broadcast them to the world, which can make things happen.

Here’s another quote from that article where I drew an analogy between this comic book device and the power of social media:

The power of the individual realised through innate talent or abilities (most superheroes, the Jedi of Star Wars) or by focusing willpower through enhancing/magnifying devices to acheive great things (the Green Lantern Corps focusing their willpower through “power rings” that enable them to travel though space, contain supernovas, and defeat evil; the Lensmen from Doc E. E. Smith’s series use a similar device).

WHAT IS A POWER RING?

If you want the detailed version of what exactly these things are, you can follow the links that I included above.  I’m going to try to summarize decades of comic book history in a few points:

A Green Lantern is a kind of interstellar police officer who helps keep the universe safe; some are human beings, most are alien to us (one Green Lantern is a living planet!) They are responsible for a certain sector of the universe (think “niche), but collaborate on cases as needed (joint ventures?)  In times of extreme peril, the entire Corps can be summoned to one location to deal with the darkest, blackest evil or problems.

The Green Lantern’s weapon or tool is a power ring, which allows them to wield a form of green energy to do amazing feats:

• Flight (on a planet, or in outer space, at unimaginably fast speeds)
• Telekinesis (using the green energy to lift, move, or even destroy solid objects – like giant robots, mountains, asteroids, planets…)
• Protection (create protective shields or force fields to protect them from harm)
• Communication – think of the world’s smallest yet most powerful cell phone, communicator, whatever you can imagine, on a very exclusive network)
• Illusion creation
• Manifestation – create solid objects (from the mundane (boxing gloves) to the esoteric (manga/anime characters and robots!)
• Mental control – power rings have been used to change or erase memories, as well to communicate with telepathy
• Other abilities only limited by the Green Lantern’s imagination and the strength of their willpower

The Green Lantern symbol is one of the most famous images in comic books, ranking up there with the Bat Signal and the Superman S-shield symbol.

The Green Lanterns (collectively known as the Green Lantern Corps) take their orders from a race of mighty, but short, blue-skinned aliens called the Guardians of the Universe.  When not under more pressing orders, the Green Lanterns follow guidelines or procedures to do with problems they find.

(You may notice more than a few similarities between the Green Lantern Corps and the Jedi Knights of Star Wars.  I’ve often wondered about that…)

WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT SOME ADOLESCENT POWER FANTASY?

By now, I expect some of you are screaming “but what the hell does this have to do with blogging and social media?”

Here’s where I draw them together:

A power ring = a blog (or other social media platform) – it’s a powerful, flexible tool with incredible potential

Your willpower = your creativity, imagination, and resourcefulness in creating content (words, images, video, sound)

The “green energy” = the World Wide Web and the Internet, which powers everything and keeps us connected

The “Green Lantern Corps” = your social media network and connections – mighty individually, nigh unstoppable when working together

A THOUGHT TO TAKE AWAY

If you’re stumped on how to move forward with social media, trying to figure out your next blog post, or otherwise wondering what the next step is, I’m going to offer you the following acronym:

WWGLD (What Would Green Lantern Do?)

A Green Lantern is limited by their imagination and their will to get the job done, plus they have a network of peers to help them out when things get rough.  That’s not much of a limitation! A Green Lantern also helps out his colleagues when needed.

Are you stuck? Pretend you are a Green Lantern with vast resources of power and will to draw upon. What Would Green Lantern Do?

P.S. I know I’m using some materials that belong to other people here, but I’m using them for effect, not for financial gain. Go to the original sources and support them, please.