The Brainzooming Group

Yesterday’s Brainzooming blog post was about 7 easy ways to get one or two more blog posts weekly by improving your social media productivity. Today’s post takes it one step further to answer a question that came up with Max Utsler’s Blogapalooza group last week: How do you keep yourself and your blog content fresh when you are blogging daily?

7 Keys to Keeping Your Blog Content Fresh when You Are Blogging Daily

With the limited time to answer during the class, here is a more in-depth answer on 7 things it takes to keep blogging daily:

1. Self-discipline

There has to be a reason your daily publishing deadline is meaningful and motivating. The answer will vary by blogger. For me, making a public commitment  years ago to blog daily has been the ongoing personal motivator to keep producing daily content.

2. Developing more blog topic ideas than you need

You always want to have choices when it comes to the blog you plan to publish. When you have multiple blog post possibilities, you can select the best option from among a few topics instead of being in the position of having to run the only blog you have close to being done.

3. Improving your communication skills all the time

If you’re signing yourself up for daily blogging, you need to be getting better and faster at producing and publishing content all the time. If you stand still or go backward in the effectiveness and efficiency of your communication techniques, you’re doomed.

4. An audience that cares

Even if it’s only a few people, you need to feel (or better yet, know) somebody will notice whether or not you publish a blog post on any given day. That’s why I so appreciate those of you who have reached out over the years to say you look forward to reading the Brainzooming blog daily. That’s huge information for any daily blogger you enjoy to know.

5. Flexibility in some way, shape, or form

If your publishing commitment is going to be unwavering, something else has to be able to waver in your life if need be. Making any type of daily commitment is about both discipline AND compromise. Make sure you know where you can compromise when you need to in order to sustain a daily blogging schedule.

6. Comfort with brevity and incompleteness

When you’re producing daily content, you aren’t going to want to write a novel or shoot a feature length video blog post every day. That means you have to be comfortable with and good at editing liberally, leaving things out, and revising and tweaking what you publish later.

7. Tools to make you better than you otherwise would be

There are many moving parts behind a blog. It’s not just writing or shooting a video. It also involves editing, making SEO adjustments, creating graphics, scheduling posts, and social sharing, to name a few activities you’ll be doing. Tools that are both effective and work well with your style are vital to blogging. daily.

That’s my formula for keeping blog content fresh when blogging daily

I hope you agree our content here is fresh! And if you’re doing a daily blog, what is your formula for doing it successfully?  - Mike Brown

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If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

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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Photo by: Bastografie | Source: Photocase.com

There is value in increased web traffic and brand reputation from being more frequent and consistent with business blogging. But achieving a multiple times per week business blogging schedule can be a challenge when an organization does not have enough people to handle everything it needs to get done.

In those cases, it is beneficial to consider easy ways to enhance your social media productivity by taking advantage of normal business activities to create one more easy post weekly.

Seven Ways to Enhance Your Business Blogging and Social Media Productivity

A key to improving your social media productivity with business blogging is to tie the extra weekly blog posts to typical weekly business activities you (or your organization) are doing any way. Here are seven ways to take advantage of your:

1. Online Reading – Create a compilation blog post featuring links to valuable articles you read in the past week.
2. Tweeting – Put together a post with ten of your most pithy tweets (or use Facebook or Google+ status updates instead).
3. Customer Service Calls – Feature a customer service question of the week along with the answer.
4. Email Inbox – Summarize the most intriguing upcoming webinars and conferences related to your industry that you’ve been invited to this week.
5. Web Analytics – Create a compilation post listing previous blog posts receiving the most recent visits related to specific keywords of interest.
6. Sales Calls – By using a three- or five-question set of guest blog interview questions, feature a written or video interview with a client or business partner of interest to your readers.
7. Business Conversations – Share insights and industry commentary from discussions you’ve had with business associates and clients.

Through these ideas, it is possible to create an easy one or two additional blog posts weekly. If you’re better with video or images than writing, there are even more possibilities. This boost to your social media productivity can move our business blogging from one post weekly to a consistent multiple times per week blogging frequency. - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

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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During a conversation with a business owner on the advantages of content marketing, he asked why he’d want to continue paying to educate somebody who decided to go with another provider other than his company.

My quick response during our conversation was to ask whether potential clients his company didn’t win ever come back after being frustrated with their initial choices. He said they did. If the client opportunity was significant in the first place, that’s reason enough to keep using content marketing to maintain contact and educate even those who aren’t doing business with you right now.

11 Reasons to Use Content Marketing to Educate Non-Customers

Unfortunately, the business owner didn’t select us to develop and implement his social media strategy. But demonstrating that we do what we recommend, here’s a more in-depth answer to his question.

Using content marketing to educate non-customers allows your organization to:

1. Help maintain and build targeted awareness.
2. Demonstrate new thinking and capabilities as you develop them.
3. Stay top-of-mind for when the new wears off with the new provider.
4. Keep filling apparent gaps that still exist in the case you made to use your products or services.
5. Maintain contact with only a small incremental investment in effort, time, and cost when you are already engaged in content marketing.
6. Have a reason and a means to contact them in the future for something other than a check-in sales call.
7. Build relationships with additional influencers and decision makers involved in future sales opportunities.
8. Be in the potential consideration set in case they know other organizations / people who may be nearer-term prospects.
9. Add value to the relationship outside business transactions.
10. Raise ongoing issues they may be experiencing currently that you have solved for other customers.
11. Keep the door open to uncovering new opportunities matching your current or new capabilities.

Beyond this blog post, I’ve forwarded the business owner who inspired it a Content Marketing Institute article to address some of his questions and our white paper on social media ROI metrics. In our initial presentation, we also shared our own case study and strategy assessment of where his organization had clear social media opportunities.

How are you staying in touch with prospects or customers who’ve passed you over previously?

Are there other benefits you see to educating non-customers? And how are you doing it successfully?

Will our content marketing and education pay off with this potential client? Only time will tell, but if nothing else, it’s made us smarter on laying out a solid business case for successful business-to-business content marketing, so we’re already ahead of where we were! - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

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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To wrap up World Creativity and Innovation Week, here are ten of the most popular Brainzooming posts since last year’s celebration related to creativity. The ten article represent a good overview of our creativity content, including posts on strategic thinking questions, creative ideas, creativity tips, and creative thinking exercises:

1. Creating Cool Product Names for a New Product Idea – 8 Creative Thinking Questions

2. Extreme Creative Ideas – 50 Lessons to Improve Creativity Dramatically

3. Storytelling & Creative Process Tips from the 100 Most Creative People in Business 2012

4. Creative Thinking Ideas from the 100 Most Creative People in Business 2012

5. Cool Product Names – 17 Creative Questions for Winning Product Name Ideas

6. Strategic Thinking – Exercises and Tools for Creative Thinking and Strategy

7. How to Be More Creative? 3 Ways to Boost Creative Confidence

8. Creativity In Mobile Game Design by Hillary Hopper

9. Creative Strategy Lessons from the 100 Most Creative People in Business 2012

10. Creative Thinking Exercise – SCAMPER around KC by Woody Bendle

Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.

Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you improve your creative thinking skills and generate fantastic ideas! To boost your organization’s innovation success, contact TheBrainzooming Group to help you rapidly expand strategic options and create strong implementation plans. Email us atinfo@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we’ll deliver these benefits for you.

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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Monday’s post on getting the most from your creativity daily mentioned the idea of creative fakes and compiling your own creative fake book.

When I wrote this, I was thinking about how musicians use “fake” songbooks that include only the melody, lyrics, and chords for a song. From these basics, a musician can create an impromptu live performance of a song. And since the information is skeletal, it becomes much easier and portable to have access to many, many songs for performance.

Faking Creative Thinking Skills in a Live Setting

This mention of a creative fake book got me thinking afterward about what skeletal items I’d put into one for Brainzooming. Thinking about how The Brainzooming Group performs “live” creative thinking sessions that often have an impromptu feel, there are four areas I’d include in our creative fake book.

These four types of creative thinking exercises would provide the basics for faking the structures to enhance an individual or group’s creative thinking skills.

1. Creative Thinking Questions

These are the initial creative thinking questions you can ask to get people to start exploring new ideas. By starting with questions, you both prompt people to start working together to answer them, you also begin to develop a sense of where the initial creative thinking is being directed. These questions oriented toward disruptive innovation would make it into the creative fake book.

2. Creativity Enhancers

These probes and prompts provide a way to redirect an individual or group’s creative thinking into new or more exaggerated paths than it pursues originally. A creative thinking exercise we call “Shrimp” is a fantastic one in a group setting to foster both creativity and fun.

3. Comparisons

Comparisons and analogies provide powerful ways to shift an individual or group’s creative thinking perspective to address an opportunity or challenge from a different, more creatively rich direction. One of our staple creative thinking exercises for comparisons is “What’s It Like?”

4. Narrowing Exercises

These convergent thinking approaches are vital in narrowing the full range of intriguing ideas you generate. Through narrowing exercises, hundreds of ideas are winnowed into the strongest ideas and concepts an organization can implement. In a group setting, you often have to push to prioritize uncomfortable ideas to make sure the group is truly stretching into new territory when it comes to implementation.

What would go into your creative fake book?

Those four types of items would make it into the Brainzooming Creative Fake Book. Would they work in yours or are there other items you’d want to have handy to make sure you can get through a live creative performance when the situation demands it? - Mike Brown

Learn all about Mike Brown’s creative thinking and innovation presentations!

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

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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For more on World Creativity and Innovation Week, visit http://toronto.wciw.org/

This World Creativity and Innovation Week, I’ve been thinking about the people I most cherish for their creative help, advice, and prodding over the years. They are a diverse and eclectic group!

21 Talents and Creative Thinking Skills Among My Creative Friends

Here are twenty-one talents and creative thinking skills I cherish among creative friends and team members:

1. A sense of humor
2. A strong listener
3. Active on social media so it’s easier to reach them
4. Open to having impromptu time to talk
5. Will challenge my thinking or perspectives in a constructive way
6. Have different interests in life than I do
7. Think in intriguing ways
8. They are confident in their opinions
9. Know lots of things I don’t have a clue about
10. Express themselves well in varied ways
11. Honesty
12. React to ideas in predictable ways
13. Have a positive attitude
14. Are encouraging to others
15. Can work together well with each other to create and strengthen ideas
16. Have an appreciation for spirituality
17. Both encourage and are willing to try new things
18. We have complementary strengths and weaknesses
19. They share and teach what they know
20. They push me to be better than I am now
21. They know intriguing people

What talents and creative thinking skills do you cherish in your creative friends?

Do they know how much you cherish them? If not, maybe it’s time to thank them during World Innovation and Creativity Week!  – Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.

Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you improve your creative thinking skills and generate fantastic ideas! To boost your organization’s innovation success, contact TheBrainzooming Group to help you rapidly expand strategic options and create strong implementation plans. Email us atinfo@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we’ll deliver these benefits for you.

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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For more on World Creativity and Innovation Week, visit http://toronto.wciw.org/

World Creativity and Innovation Week starts today (as it does every April 15^th) in honor of Leonardo da Vinci’s birthday.  We’ll join in with the World Creativity and Innovation Week theme this week since innovation, creativity, and enhancing your creative thinking skills are all topics core to our coverage at Brainzooming.

7 Ideas to Get the Most from Your Creativity

Maybe your job requires daily creativity while offering few opportunities to recharge your creative thinking skills in dramatic ways.  Perhaps your work environment’s attitude is less about waiting for creative inspiration and more about, “Be creative dammit!”

If this describes your work situation, how do you get the most from your creativity on a daily basis? Here are seven ideas I’ve been depending upon to boost creative thinking skills and keep them strong daily:

1. Take advantage of the time right after your sleep.

The creative refresh that comes from sleep can help boost your creativity so much. Early mornings and late evenings (after a refresh nap) are all important for a fresh view and maximum creative output.

2. Cultivate your spirituality regularly.

Might as well take advantage of the greatest creative force there is! To stay focused on spirituality, I need structure surrounding me. Attending a church service every weekday morning refreshes my creativity at the start of each day and opens my mind to possibilities I wouldn’t have imagined the night before.

3. Revisit your creative inventory.

I hang on to completed creative output, as well as interim drafts and partial ideas that might never see the light of day. Not only does this provide a source for new and reformatted creative ideas, looking at interim creative drafts helps me think about previous creative techniques that might be a fit for what’s needed now.

4. Develop reusable creative structures all the time.

Call it laziness or call it smarts, but with every client we take on for a strategic or creative effort, we review how even impromptu efforts can become creative thinking exercises we can use as future creative structures.

5. Have creative fakes available.

A “fake” songbook gives musicians enough of a song’s framework (lyrics, melody, chords) to perform at a moment’s notice. A creative fake book provides the core of a creative structure to go from nothing to creativity rapidly. For me, the Brainzooming blog is my creative fake book. When I need a creative structure to get started quickly, I visit the blog, no matter where I am.

6. Get away from the daily routine whenever you can.

Contrary to everyone else on the planet, I love airports and airplane flights. Time on an airplane is my most creative because it is disconnected from the daily routine. Even if I don’t have a plane trip on the horizon, going somewhere different around town that’s fun and new can provide the needed creative boost.

7. Be around the right people.

From experience over time, I know being around people (vs. being by myself) helps to get the most from creativity. Specific individuals can often stimulate certain types of creativity very efficiently. When it’s been too long since I’ve been around one of these people, I know it’s time to get together right away!

What boosts your creative thinking skills daily?

These seven ideas are what I’ve been using the past few years when I tell myself, “Be creative dammit!” What works for you when you’re facing the same type of creative demands, whether imposed by your client, boss, or even yourself? - Mike Brown

Learn all about Mike Brown’s creative thinking and innovation presentations!

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

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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