The Brainzooming Group

I’d been looking forward all last week to a Saturday night event at the KC Artists Coalition. Peregrine Honig, the Kansas City artist who appeared on the Bravo reality hit “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” was speaking about her work and experiences as a finalist on the show.

I tweeted about the event several times during the week. On Saturday, I re-checked the website a couple of hours before the live event to confirm the address and learned an RSVP was now required. Calling the KCAC, they said the event was overbooked and no more RSVPs were being accepted. Hanging up disappointed, I got on Tweetdeck and set up a search on @PeregrineHonig and #KCAC to track the commentary via social media. Checking in during the event, I was, however, surprised to see no one was live tweeting. Disappointment #2.

When they told me I couldn’t attend, it never occurred to me to tell the person on the phone I planned to create social media content (i.e., live tweet and blog about the presentation), providing additional exposure for the artist, the event, and KCAC. I’d already done one blog post about “Work of Art,” on the TalentCulture blog. Yet even if I had told them of my live tweeting and social media content plans, what was there to make them believe me (especially over the phone) or to prove my intentions? If you’re part of the official press, you have a press card or other documentation to back up your qualifications. With these you can gain access even to overbooked art studio events.

Here’s the question: Is there something equivalent to a press pass for those of us “reporting” content via social media?

If there is, where do you get it? And if there isn’t, it sure seems as if there should be.

I’m not looking for special treatment, but a live event social media specialist (translation – somebody who is going to live tweet and blog) not getting access to an event has a bigger negative impact than if most people who attended Saturday night and didn’t share their perspectives via social media had been sitting at home. – Mike Brown

When it comes to conferences, high impact presentations, and live event social media content, The Brainzooming Group is expert at shaping the right strategy and implementation to create unique attendee experiences before, during, and after an event. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call 816-509-5320 to learn how we can do the same for your event!

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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There are lots of reasons to blog, and many bloggers start with visions of making lots of money blogging. In fact, when I ran into a very nice group of women at Panera last week who were familiar with the Brainzooming blog, one of the first questions they asked was whether I was making a living off the blog. My quick answer was, “No.”

But then again, making money was never the direct motivation for starting a blog. Instead, what sustains me in blog writing is the desire to share the many blessings I’ve been given (learnings, lessons, experiences, wisdom from mentors, etc.) more broadly.

The “pay” is learning someone benefitted from a blog post because it helped them get unstuck creatively, develop a new strategic approach, or consider an innovative way of approaching an opportunity or challenge.

Last week, it seemed as if I got paid for blogging nearly every day. A few examples:

• On Tuesday I talked with a former co-worker who was laid off several years ago. He told me a blog post  about identifying your life passions and creating your own “personal category” was really important to him then. The post helped him explore, evaluate, and make an industry change after considering career opportunities linked to his personal interests which he hadn’t previously explored!
• Mid-week, Chuck Dymer, one of my strategic mentors, emailed to say how much he liked the juxtaposition of literal/lateral thinking in Wednesday’s blog about the financial impact of creative thinking. He plans to incorporate the concept (credited to me, he wrote) into his lateral thinking workshops.
• In response to a retweet for a recent post on 25 blogging ideas people could do right away, @julianajoie tweeted her blog would be “awesomer” because of the resources on Brainzooming.
• It’s especially rewarding when a post seems to appear exactly the day someone needs it. Last Thursday, another former co-worker sent this Facebook message about the day’s post on dealing with challenging situations:  “Are you a fly on my wall? …jus’ wondering…seemed as if you were speaking to me with your post today…excellent post, excellent timing…and, in case you are a fly on my wall, I’m stickin’ my tongue out at you right now! Thanks for the advice…I’ll let you know if I get excommunicated any time soon!”

Not sure what in the post would get her excommunicated, but let me tell you – based on these four messages alone, last week was a very high paying one for my blogging efforts!   – Mike Brown

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call 816-509-5320 to learn how we can develop an integrated social media and blogging strategy for your brand.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Since a lot of people ask about the challenges of writing a blog 5 days a week, I thought we’d follow yesterday’s post on opening your creative perspectives about topics with how you can turn topics into 25 creative blog topic ideas. Here are 25 formats you can use to turn a topic into blog content of value for your audience.  In a blog post, you can:

• Share Your Opinions
• React to Others’ Opinions
• Report News
• Report News with Your Opinion
• Ask a Question
• Answer a Question
• Make a List
• Teach Something
• Provide Background Info
• Provide Reference Info
• Do a Demonstration
• Issue a Challenge / Task
• Make an Offer
• Reflect on Past Events
• Speculate About the Future
• Summarize a Topic
• Cover a Topic in Depth
• Relate an Anecdote
• Report on a Conference / Event
• Interview Yourself
• Interview  Someone Else
• Review Something
• Organize Information in New Ways
• Revisit a Topic
• Combine Two of These Posts
• REPEAT Any or All of the Previous Ones

These formats work for your own blog and also for guest blog posts (once again…hint, hint for potential Brainzooming guest bloggers) where you want to showcase your expertise on someone else’s blog. If you consider video or audio posts using any of these formats, the 25 potential posts immediately turn into 75 possibilities!

Additionally, depending on the class and specific assignment, this list could also be helpful in structuring essays for writing classes in school.

If you’re still on the sidelines about blogging yourself or guest blogging, ideally these posts will prompt you to give it a try.  – Mike Brown

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call 816-509-5320 to learn how we can develop an integrated social media and blogging strategy for your brand.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Paying too much attention to Twitter one night last week while needing to write a new blog post for Stepcase Lifehack, I saw this tweet come past from Shawn Gallagher:

I quickly tweeted Shawn he could break his creative block by writing about what’s more interesting than writing a blog post. He was skeptical about it being a real idea to beat a creative block, but he rose to the challenge and wrote a nice blog post on 4 things more compelling right then than blogging.

It’s something we all face – distractions which get in the way of what we’re supposed to be doing. Because of its universality, it makes a great topic, even if it springs from something mundane.

What to do when you’re facing a similar creative block while writing for your own blog or trying to write a guest blog you’ve promised someone? (Hint, hint to a few of you who’ve said you’d do guest Brainzooming posts.)

My advice is follow the “George Costanza Blogging Strategy.” I named it after an exchange in a Seinfeld episode called “The Pitch.” Jerry and George were trying to sell an NBC executive on their idea for a show about nothing. In explaining the concept, George asked the exec what he had done that morning. When the executive said he’d gotten up and gone to work, George exclaimed, “That’s a show!”

Adopt the same attitude toward blogging when you’re facing a creative block about a potential blog topic. Especially if it’s a personally-oriented blog, anything that happens to you can be transformed into a blog topic:

• You’re facing a creative block for new ideas? That’s a blog post!
• You’re bored with what’s on TV? That’s a blog post!
• Your favorite restaurant raised its prices? That’s a blog post!

Of course, you still have to make the topic tie back to the underlying direction and purpose for your blog. But that’s often a lesser issue than simply getting around the creative block to find an idea to get started.

How do you find ideas to blog about when you’ve got a creative block?– Mike Brown

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help your organization make a successful first step into social media.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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BP video, via AP (from Cleveland.com)

Last week, John King of CNN was covering the Gulf oil spill in front of what must have been 16 different live camera feeds of BP trying to get the spill capped.  Amid all the discussions about the impact of the Gulf oil spill in deteriorating the BP brand, this scene suggested another question to consider:

Is your brand ready to have 16 cameras covering your service recovery efforts?

That’s another scary thought from this whole fiasco that other companies need to be considering and planning for as a possibility. Because even if it isn’t 16 cameras, it’s very likely your lowest paid front line employee is on camera (or being tweeted about) as he or she is (hopefully) trying to satisfy a pissed off customer. And if the video isn’t available in real-time, then it’s probably going to be posted online shortly after the service recovery takes place.

So again, ask yourself: Does your organization have a service recovery strategy that’s prepared to be shown to the world? – Mike Brown

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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If you’re blogging, are you getting together with your readers in person?

If you’re reading a blog, are you reaching out to the author to share ideas?

If you’re on either side of these questions and answered “no,” here are five reasons why a strategy of bloggers and readers meeting in person makes sense:

• You learn what messages have registered with people – I’ve often said I’m singularly unable to predict what material people will respond to most strongly. Talking with actual live blog readers helps better understand how they’ve reacted to material – even if it doesn’t help in predicting what they’ll like in the future!
• New blog ideas get triggered by the conversation – Talking recently with a reader led to discussion about his job, his role and title, and business development strategies. All aspects of the conversation were rich with future topic possibilities, including the inspiration for this post! For readers, it’s a great opportunity to shape and participate in content creation.
• You can find out how people are reading the blog – I’ll admit….I don’t always look at the Brainzooming email or RSS blog feeds; I go to the website directly. Not everyone does that though. Talking with readers helps develop a better idea of the varied ways people are taking in the material, including getting a sense of how current readers are sharing it with new readers.
• Guest post opportunities get considered – I haven’t been soliciting guest posts as aggressively as in the past, but I should be. Guest posts add variety to the blog, provide additional visibility for cool strategic thinkers, and help to extend the blog’s reach. While Twitter has been a fairly effective means to reach out to potential guest bloggers, asking a reader for a guest post (or shooting a video post) in person has much more impact.
• You re-think what you’ve written lately – I used to write weeks in advance. Now it’s usually a week ahead. Even so, between client work for The Brainzooming Group, articles for the Brainzooming blog, and guest posts at other websites, it’s challenging to remember what’s being published where. Answering questions and discussing current (and past) blog posts about strategy, creativity, and innovation makes it come alive for me as well as for the reader.

So if you’re a Brainzooming blog reader in KC, get in touch, and let’s meetup! – Mike Brown

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Thanks to an invitation from Seth Simonds, I’ve started contributing to Stepcase Lifehack, a top 100 Technorati blog featuring pieces on productivity, personal improvement, and other life “hacks” to improve yourself.

My first submission based on the creative and innovation strategy written about here at Brainzooming is “8 Ways to Bring Your Creative Passions to Work.” The response to the piece has been quite gratifying and demonstrates the benefit of getting articles in front of a very large audience. Look for new bi-weekly posts from Brainzooming over at Stepcase Lifehack.

This photo illustrates a great example of someone carrying out a strategy to be more creative at work. Shopping the deli case at our local Hen House Market for dinner, I came upon this ham salad, shaped and decorated as a pig. While I don’t usually want to dwell on what my food originally looked like, this represents a wonderful way to bring a passion for art to a deli counter job.

Yes, you truly can insert creativity into any job. You simply have to be creative in how you do it. Check out the piece on “8 Ways to Bring Your Creative Passions to Work” for ideas on how to get started!

And speaking of a taking a creative approach to an age-old experience, here’s a link to my advice on getting more creative pop out of your Fourth of July fireworks this year! Be safe!  - Mike Brown

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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