The SEO landscape has changed so much in the last few years in the wake of the Penguin and Panda apocalypse that the discipline is now considered in the broader terms of online marketing or digital marketing. The one element that is common is the requirement for new skills such as PR, classic marketing and most importantly: creativity. Agencies and freelance individuals who can't adapt, evolve and embrace the new mode of thinking/operating are vulnerable with nowhere to hide behind mediocre work and outdated tactics.
Be more creative, is a phrase often used within business and marketing with little consideration given to its meaning. But, what does it mean to be creative?
There is much confusion about what creativity is and a general misconception of mistaking style for creativity. Most designers are stylists: they make things look good. Creativity is about concepts, ideas and innovation. In art school, I was always taught that being able to justify the concept was the most important element of creativity. You had to argue your reason for why the design piece was a solution to the problem. I can still recall how nervous I used to get before a group critique session (the phrase blood bath comes to mind) even though it was over 20 years ago. It's not about how good it looks - it's how well it answers the questions.
Creativity is a skill we can all access. Everyone has the capacity to generate ideas. Admittedly, some people are more inclined towards creative thinking, just as some are able to figure large maths calculations in their head or swim like Michael Phelps. But anyone can increase his or her level of creativity by learning the skills of thinking and exercising their idea muscle.
I recently published a free ebook called 'What is Creativity?' and the following are six ideas extracted and expanded from the book to increase your creative thinking and improve your online campaigns:
“Creativity is not a talent, it's a way of operating.” John Cleese
Learning to switch into open mode
Ex Monty Python, John Cleese understands and defines the creative process as learning to switch between two states or modes: open and closed. When we are under pressure and stress to deliver, such as in our everyday working lives, we are in closed mode. When we are relaxed, detached from problems and playful, we are in the open mode. Open can be considered playful (lateral thinking) and closed logical (vertical thinking). Just as we need both lateral thinking and vertical thinking, we need open and closed states to solve a problem: the open state allows us to develop creative ideas and then the closed state to plan and implement the idea. These are similarly aligned to vertical and lateral thinking processes.
1: How to achieve an Open state
Schedule time to avoid being distracted and remove the pressure to instantly generate ideas; your brain needs time to open up. The optimum amount of time is 90 minutes, it takes a minimum of 60 minutes for the brain to focus on a task and after 90 minutes will be prone to distraction and need a break.
Place of work is essential for creatives to get into state - most writers and artists will follow a routine and often have isolated spaces such as garden offices to minimize distraction. Some artists need to be surrounded by ephemera such as the collection of memorabilia that Paul Smith surrounds himself with for inspiration. Others, like Maya Angelou, prefer minimalism and, like myself, need an uncluttered desk and space for an uncluttered mind to be able to think.
Agatha Christie preferred to work in a large Victorian bath whilst eating apples. Benjamin Franklin would work naked for an hour every morning. Maya Angelou preferred the isolation of a hotel room and requested everything removed from the walls; she would bring her own sherry and ashtray. The eccentric poet Dame Edith Sitwell would lie down in a coffin finding inspiration in the claustrophobic and restrictive space.
You don't need to go to the extremes of a coffin but find a space which is conducive to relaxation and without distraction, anywhere that removes you from association with work or pressure (preferably not home). Try a coffee shop (JK Rowling famously wrote Harry Potter in her local coffee shop), the library, a hotel or even a camper van (Breaking Bad style). Removing yourself from the usual place of work will remove yourself from distraction, help the brain to break pattern which in turn will switch into a more receptive state for ideas.
To access open mode if you are in a group:
The open state thrives in humor and play so try the dinner party technique: create the dream dinner party guest list, such as Einstein, Da Vinci, Churchill, Kennedy or even fictional characters such as Don Corleone, Jack Sparrow and Luke Skywalker. Each person should take a persona and become their character - they must answer questions and think like they would imagine that character to think. The perfect warm up exercise; it is huge fun, encourages humor, it breaks awkwardness and forces the brain to break pattern from your normal style of thinking. Keep this game going for a minimum of 20 minutes before your brainstorm.
To access open mode if you are alone:
Research has shown a correlation between increased dopamine and creativity. Dopamine is a pleasure chemical which the brain releases to signal success but this chemical is not as straight forward and predictable as a reliable tool. The increase of endorphins will elevate our mood and help us achieve our open state: physical exercise is one of the easiest ways to access a rush of endorphins although, spicy food, sexual activity and pain can also trigger release - so whatever gets you going!
Try a walk, swim or bike ride to stimulate feel good. You want to ensure a careful balance of feeling exhilarated but also avoiding energy depletion. Opt for a route that you haven't been on before to break any automatic behavior patterns. Walking in a new part of town and observing the unfamiliar territory or running backwards will stimulate new thought and movement patterns thus putting you into a more creative and receptive state.
"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, the just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.” Steve Jobs
2: Make connections with an ideas wall
The ability to make connections and see relationships between seemingly random elements is the secret to creativity. Combining old elements to create something new.
Idea walls solve crimes
It's no coincidence that you see examples of ideas walls on TV dramas and movies such as: Homelands, Sherlock Holmes, A Beautiful Mind and Three and a Half Days Later. Detectives have long used this technique to assist solving crimes. Placing photographs of the known or suspected perpetrators, victims, crime scenes and evidence on a wall enables items of evidence to be repositioned and grouped; string can link items together for visual affect. A detective can then stand back and mentally take in a great deal of information at once. The brain begins to process and use its natural ability to seek the connections between the items, find the clues and answers to the case.
images from Crazy Walls
When the BBC conducted a site redesign in 2010 they printed out the entire site and mounted on a wall affectionately known as 'the wall of shame'. To enable them to better visualize what they had and to unify the visual and interaction design of the desktop and mobile sites.
How to create a content strategy ideas wall
Tools needed: paper, colored pens, highlighter pens, print outs of all reference material, colored string and push-pins, post it notes, blu tack or tape, and a large wall space, pin board or sheets of foam board.
- Organize your reference material into themes or groups and pin/stick to the wall.
- Devise a color code system for your different groups with the pen color you have and use the colored pens and highlighter and mark and highlight relevant pages and sections of information. (Homelands style, see above)
- For example, if you are working on content strategy for your site group into:
- Influencers - list influencers who could help to broadcast your content and sub group in different social media channels, newsletters and authority sites (eg Guardian, Huffington Post, Fast Company)
- Audit - audit current site content
- Idea sources - places to mine ideas from such as offline periodicals, online Q&A sites like Quora, social media channels and Google trends
- Host Locations - potential sites to target for exposure, shares and links: authority hub sites, bloggers, online magazines/publishers, email newsletters and social media sites
- By grouping related themes we start to see patterns. If you have a piece that doesn't fit into a group this 'outlier' could in itself give ideas.
- Stand back from the wall and look for potential relationships or connections between the information. Using push pins and colored string make a visual link between the two. (See photos above)
- The key here is flexibility: move pieces of paper round, create new string links, devise new groups - by repositioning, regrouping and relinking this is where your ideas will start to form and generate as you begin to make the connections.
If wall space is an issue or you prefer a digital version, Mural.ly is an online alternative to creating an ideas wall; describing itself as "an online whiteboard designed to visually organize ideas and collaborate in a playful way." Mural.ly allows collaboration of team members and you can drag and drop your reference material onto the white board and reposition items and make notes. I have only just begun to play with this tool and it has huge depth and potential to assist in creative projects.
image from Mural.ly
Pinterest is one of my favourite scrapbook tools for collecting visual information as an alternative. I use Evernote extensively for collecting information and research material. Quora is my favourite site for finding ideas for content.
4: How to brainstorm the right way:
Generating ideas for content, marketing strategies or even creative use of data can all be more productive if tackled in a group - the synergy from more than one person will bring fresh perspective, new ideas and energy. But, brainstorming is such a common term that most people don't consider how to undertake a session effectively.
One of the most important elements within team idea generation is trust and harmony. The group must be able to work well together through respect for each others' opinions and ability and a general air of amiability. Any disagreeable personalities, critical individuals or large egos are not conducive to successful creative brainstorming and should be excluded from the group.
image from Atomic Spin
The following rules should be set to deter any fear or negativity that can squash creativity so that you can encourage a safe space to open up:
- A diverse range of skills present in the group works well in bringing alternative approaches, as does varying levels of experience, age, gender and personality.
- Allocate enough time to warm up and to focus. Between an hour and 90 minutes is preferable - after this the brain loses focus and needs a break. I recommend the 'dinner party' game above or another icebreaker to create an open state.
- Allow the most junior person in the room to speak first and in turn to most senior. This removes any pressure from a junior member who may be intimidated to follow an experienced authority.
- Stay focused on the topic. It is natural in group discussion to lose focus and drift into other subjects. The moderator must be vigilant in this area.
- An experienced moderator is essential to the process and should be able to direct and manage the group without obstructing and keep the group on track and focused and ensure everyone follows the rules (such as not being negative or overbearing). The moderator will take notes (on a white board) and assist as an objective opinion to draw connections between ideas.
- Above all else no judging, criticism or rejection of any idea – anything is valid and can be considered.
"Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.” Sir Ken Robinson
5: Change your thinking, change your life
If your natural disposition is not creative a creative thinker you can become more creative through repeated action, discipline and learning new ways to think.
Repetition and discipline
The more the brain processes a routine or skill, such as a new language or driving a car, the deeper the synapses physically carve a channel in the brain. Which explains to some degree why when we first learn a skill we have to concentrate intensely; it takes a great deal of energy, but through applied discipline it eventually becomes almost automatic and we don’t appear to think about what we are doing, the subconscious takes over.
Ten ideas lists
One of my favorite exercises to train your brain and develop your idea muscle is to generate lists of ideas everyday. I have to credit James Altucher and I recommend his article on how to become an idea machine here:
The concept is simple but challenging: think of ten new ideas. These can be for anything such as ten new business ideas, ten new ways to obtain quality earned links, ten new ways to improve conversion on a page or ten new ways to save energy, ten new ways to make a better cup of coffee or ten new ways to travel to work. For example:
Ten new ways to travel to work for free:
- Walk
- Push bike
- Run
- Roller blades
- Hitchhike
- Horse
- Skate board tied to a car (do I need to explain why this is a bad idea?)
- Get a job next to a canal and kayak to work
- Move to the Caribbean, live in a beach hut and swim to work
- Move to the top of a hill and go kart - makes the home journey a challenge (next list?)
The purpose is not to create ideas you will act on or even sensible, rational or reasonable ideas. This is gym training for the mind only so don't get precious with your lists. Your first few lists may appear deceptively easy but as you begin to run out of obvious ideas you have to work hard just to think of list ideas and ten new ideas for my ten new ideas list is going to make your brain work for it. Don't make the mistake of underrating this exercise; everything improves and becomes easier with practice and repetition.
6: Garbage in: Garbage out
My advice above all else is to read as widely as possible as I believe this feeds a creative mind more than any other activity. Just as athletes can only achieve their personal best if they eat a highly optimized diet, creatives need quality brain food and mental stimulation on a regular basis to operate at their creative best. You get out what you put in.
This article is an extract from 'What is Creativity?' a 76 page free ebook which offers an introduction to creativity with actionable tips to improve your thinking skills. The second part of the book is dedicated to thought leaders interviews who were posed the question: "what does creativity meant to you?". Contributors include: Rand Fishkin, Bas Van Den Beld, Paddy Moogan, Neil Patel, Dave Trott, Lee Odden and Chris Brogan. You can download a free copy at creativity101 here...
Great article Shelli! One of the points you brought up in brainstorming was "One of the most important elements within team idea generation is trust and harmony." This is key. Unfortunately, as you stated, the members of the brainstorming group may not get along or have strong opinions on a concept. I try to always list the concepts and get consensus on the top few ideas and a/b (or multivariate) test them. This is a good way to help build the team and get results through letting our visitors decide. Once again great post.
Hi Kevin - thanks for your comments.
Getting a room full of creatives together is always going to be interesting with plenty of strong opinions and passionate people! Having different opinions is good, seeing things differently is good and even heated debate is good - as long as everyone respects each other and doesnt belittle. I like your process of taking the ideas and A/B testing - as you say let the visitors decide - they are the ones that matter really.
Excellent stuff as usual :)
Thanks Rishi - very nice of you to say : )
Excellent article and very nicely presented. Using the right type of graphics also put 5* for this article. Infographics and other visual aids when used in online campaigns get the best attention. Being creative in online campaigns means a lot of traffic to website and increase revenue for the clients. Thanks Shelli.
Although creativity is a blessing of God which a person cannot get himself, yet this post is going to help various non-creative people to be creative. Excellent post Shelli!
Hi Adeel - interesting concept - the Romans believed that creativity was a gift from the divine and that men were only vessels to channel the blessing. This helped them detach from the pressure of having to produce creative ideas which can stop writers and artists generating work.
I don't believe that concept 100% myself but think it is an interesting one.
Pleased you enjoyed the article.
Great article Shelli and I am so glad you highlighted this:
"It's not about how good it looks - it's how well it answers the questions."
Some call it the Dribbblisation of design - designers creating new features simply to impress their designer buddies with their portfolio rather than actually trying to solve a problem. e.g. building a website that is beautiful but entirely unusable
Hi Chris
That is a great comment "the Dribblisation of design" I will have to quote that somewhere!
Yes, you are right. In fact I have been writing about this recently:
"I see too many people jumping onto ‘new’ ideas and techniques without considering why they are doing it – for example I remember when vector graphics became the ‘big’ thing for illustration, because Macs and Illustrator was ‘The’ tool to have so everywhere you could see carbon copies of the same style (remember Hed Kandi CD covers?). No one was really thinking about why they were doing what they were doing - they were letting the tool and process dictate their work.
How many people are jumping onto infographics, motion graphics or parallax without considering if it is the right thing for their client? Following the herd and churning out same old ‘me too’ campaigns?
Go back to the start and work out your concept and strategy before you consider how you will implement and what tools are best to use."
If you focus on defining your question first it makes finding the solution much easier. I would say that most creatives/marketers are not asking the right questions. It's surprisingly difficult to ask the right questions.
Excellent write-up, Shelli! :)
Hi, Shelli!
Great article i really enjoyed and learn many things and it is helpful in my campaigns, great stuff , if you are not creative then you are not making any thing creative.
Hi John - thanks for your comment - everyone has the capacity to be creative and to apply creativity to their work even if they work in a diner, a book store, a restaurant or a creative agency.
I think that Creativity is a kind of fundamental question for all humanity. Someone tries to find it in order, someone tries to find it in the self-destruction. But the most important thing is to have a metric for measuring creativity. That is the most important thing.
Hi Lewis thanks for your comment and interesting concept about having a metric to measure creativity. Being able to measure brain patterns during creative episodes has always been a challenge but there was an experiment where the brain patterns of freestyle rappers were measured which offered insight into what creativity is. There is a link in the ebook to the experiment and a link to research from Donald McKinnon who I highly recommend reading if you want to get more technical and scientific.
It's really great, Garbage in, garbage out is also very true. I really enjoyed the tips and ideas about switching to open mode.
Hi Rahul
Thanks for leaving your comment. Check out the John Cleese video I cited in the comments above he expands on the 'open' state and offers some great insight into what creativity is.
Thanks to you for your great tips. I really enjoyed and learn many things and it is helpful in my campaigns, great stuff , if you are not creative then you are not making any thing creative. I hope that, I will be able to maintain your tips about creativity. Again thanks to you.
Its good to be reminded that creativity is not a talent. It is a concept that embodies repeated application of a process that result in problem solving. It has a blur line with style and this is the reason many still consider it as "style".
For Internet marketers, being creative has become a "must" do approach. Its not an option anymore.
There are lots of dynamism at play especially with regards to search engine updates.
I have learned a lot from this post, and one idea that has stuck is this: "Change your thinking, change your life" This is about the whole essence of creativity which every Internet marketer must embrace and adapt!
Hi Sunny
Most people mistakenly believe that creativity is a natural talent and therefore just don't try.
When I was at school I was very small for my age and was overlooked in all sports games and because everyone else validated me as 'not being a sporty person' i never tried. Even though I had a desire to do many things like gymnastics.
I'm now 41 - I train almost everyday, am an excellent swimmer and am constantly asked at the gym if I am a dancer or a yoga teacher.
To get to that level I started by signing up to my gym at 30 years of age and built my way up from the bottom. Years of hard work, trying new things and persistence has brought me to a point where there are not many people who can out-swim me in the pool (average people).
I see creativity the same way - learn the right skills and techniques and keep working hard at it.
Online marketers have no where else to go now so that have to step up to the mark or they won't survive - sad but true.
It's all in the thinking : )
Shelli, this is such useful information. You give great tips and ideas to maximize our creative potential. And as everything else, if we want to master it, we need to practice !
Creating a content strategy ideas wall is brilliant. It makes ideas clearer and more organized, but also very accessible.
Let’s take the same concept a step further and create a vision board. A vision board is a white poster where you draw, stick, pin, tape any image that helps you focus on your goals.
You have to ask yourself this question : « What exactly do I deeply want to have in my life ? »
Travel to the Carribeans by the end of the year? A plan of your dream home? The amount of money you would like in your bank account? Your next book cover? Happy friendships or perfect health pictures...
By designing your vision board, you state some clear intentions. This is the beginning of your quest towards your goals. You give yourself permission to « see » the end result. You are giving your brain a mission : to assist you into making each image a reality. This is team work between your conscious (cutting and conceiving the board) and subconscious (link between the board and the coming reality) minds.
This technique is powerful. I use it myself and that is how I was able to become Amazon Bestseller with my first book. I saw this picture and I visualized it for days. When it finally happened to me, I felt pride. Personally, seeing that picture every day made me do the right actions to achieve that goal.
The brain does not like contradictions !
Excellent post Shelli - a much needed post on a subject that's key to marketers performing!
A big challenge for marketers is the ability to step into a creative mindset while performing less creative, day-to-day tasks and your ideas for achieving open-state are excellent.
A post specifically about dopamine and it's effects on creativity is here. It features insight into showers (!), being ready for inspiration (wherever you are), planning dis-engagement / distraction & over-whelming your brain - enjoy!
Re point 2 (making connections with ideas wall): "the ability to make connections and see relationships between seemingly random elements is the secret to creativity.Combining old elements to create something new."
This is also a great way to map out semantically related subjects, entities and content and is a technique I use when I first work with a new client to help create their online profile and subject-matter-expertise categories.
When mapped out, marketers can research and investigate areas of opportunity within their clients niche industries.
Thanks for sharing :)
Hi Tony
Thanks for yor comments and for sharing the article on Buffer blog - I used that within my resarch for the book and it points to some interesting in-depth articles - especially the experiment with freestyle rappers.
If you want to read something which goes into much more detail I recommend this paper by Donald McKinnon who was the pioneer of research on creativity download here.
The ideas wall can be adapted to any project and is something I have always used variations of. Especially when I was younger at art school (pre internet) the walls of my studio space were always covered with visual research to help with my creative process. I still love pencil and paper for sketching out ideas - I believe there is a link between hand and brain in fact I am sure I saw an article recently which backs this up about writing notes in a meeting helps you remember better than typing.
I think this was it here...
Hi Shelli, excellent piece. I think Moz needs more posts like this on creativity.
Have you ever tried 6-3-5 Brainwriting as an alternative to brainstorming?
I often prefer it because:
- everyone in the group is required to contribute an equal number of ideas (brainstorms are sometimes dominated by the louder members of the group
- it leads to a wider, and wilder, range of contributions (brainstorms sometimes generate lots of variations on the same initial ideas)
I'm off to try the Dinner Party Game and Crazy Wall...
Keep on keeping on!
Hi Mat
Thanks for your comments and my aim to deliver more articles about creativity (you can also sign up to my newsletter for weekly tips) hopefully i will be the Moz go-to-girl : )
I don't know the 6-3-5 technique - will look into it.
I agree that brainstorming can be dominated by louder personalities the tips I gave above should help combat this.
There are so many ways to brainstorm that this article was only a scratch on the surface - perhaps my next article will be more in-depth about other techniques?
Hope you have fun with the dinner party game : )
Great article with awesome points. Enjoyed reading your first article.
Hi Damodar - thanks for your comments - hope I can follow up with something as good for the next time : )
Awesome post Shelli, What a brainstorming tips here. Creative, Creative and Creative...
I really like this post, share two of my friends who are not in moz and bookmarked for once more when I needy.
Thanks a lot for out of the box thinking ideas for marketing campaign, definitely I will be run with these creative ways..and hopefully all members should follow the above for a better campaign after Google's frequently updates.
Hi Manoj - thanks for the comments
Great Input Shelli!!
We all SEO guys needed such blog which could give us a bit motivation after so much of Panda4.0 and Payday loans algorithm update. Sometimes being too much technical really gets over your mind and to get out and make something really work for your projects, we need to have these tips. Many many thanks for these tips. I really liked the idea of making your work zone a cluttered free one and GIGO thing. I would also add one saying here: "If one reads what everyone's reading, then one will think and do what others are doing. So to be creative, read and think different". This would be the way out to stay creative in your work as well as life..
Hi Amit
Thanks for your comments and I like your quote "If one reads what everyone's reading, then one will think and do what others are doing.So to be creative, read and think different"
You are very right that people need to stop following and get creative.
Hi there, Shelli!
Great article, I must say. This is very informative and really creative, I like the “wall of shame” idea I’ve seen it a lot in movies, and seen how good it can be when it comes to solving crimes. It looks like it takes a lot of time to make it, but it might be worth it in the end.
Anyway, thanks for sharing this article.
Have a great day ahead of you!
Hi Ann07
Thanks for your comments. It doesn't take as long as you think to make the ideas wall - it is work in progress and will evolve through your project and campaign so you can refer back to it continually through the project.
Hope you get a chance to try it.
Shelli this is one of the best post written by a YouMoz member. :)
Creativity is the key to success; if you want to be successful you have to think out of the box.
I really enjoy reading this post; you give me some new ideas to think creatively; One think is for sure that an idea can come any time or anywhere in your mind. So always make a note of your idea before it is vanished from your brain.
Hi Nouman - thank you so much for your very kind comment. I am touched by all the comments received and it makes all the hard work I dedicate to writing and producing ebooks worth while.
I mentioned in a comment above about how I always get ideas as I fall asleep and I have to force myself to wake up and make a note or its gone in the morning. My advice is always carry a notebook - Leonardo Da Vinci was a big advocate of this practise.
Hope you get a chance to read the ebook as there is a lot more useful tips and ideas which I think you will enjoy.
Thank you for your reply; I do download your eBook; It is awesome and full of useful ideas and tips.
Shelli, this is some great information for the online-marketing community. Too many of us are "left-brainers" and focus so much on items such as code, social-media share numbers, and links that we forget about the "right-brain" side of things. In the end, creativity is what drives any successful marketing campaign -- whether it is a TV commercial yesterday or "content marketing" today. We need to find a way to blend the right- and left-brains together!
Hi Samuel - thanks for your comments. Being able to balance the right and left brain is very important and a key part of creativity. If you read Lateral Thinking by Edward de Bono he cites 'lateral thinking' and 'vertical thinking' which I imagine as 'lateral' is 'right' and 'vertical' is 'left'. Each is essential for different parts of the creative and ideation process. Lateral is for innovation, vertical is for practical and putting the innovation into action - the two work together. I think good coders have to be creative as there is so much problem solving involved.
Great tips Shelli! It goes to my pocket. If you would dig deeper in brainstorming here is an interesting article: https://www.forbes.com/2010/04/20/brainstorming-ideation-ideas-leadership-managing-innovation.html
Hi Pawel - thanks for your comments and sharing the article. I have saved to read later.
at the end i must say clearly ...awesome post ! @shelli
Hi Rahul
Thank you for your very eloquent comment.
Pleased to hear that you enjoyed and hope you can takeaway some benefits to apply to your campaigns.
Great article Shelli. I highly recommend grabbing a full copy of the ebook to anyone who hasn't yet seen it.
Hi Jen - thank you. And a big thank you for recommending the book - much appreciated. Was 6 months to put together and it's good to know that people are enjoying and getting benefit from my hard work. When you have a passion I think it comes across : )
really insightful Shelli - going to discuss this with our content team, and see if we can carry across some of your ideas into our own brainstorming sessions (which are a bit hit and miss)
Thank you Peter, I hope this can help you with your idea generation and brainstorming sessions. We don't always consider how emotional brainstorming sessions can be and how important it is to support and encourage each other to nurture the creative spirit. ideas are so personal we can take great risk by speaking out and this requires a great deal of confidence and feeling 'safe' in your environment. It's a very sad fact if you imagine all the inspirational ideas that have never been said because the person doing the thinking didn't have the courage to speak out. Good luck with your brainstorming.
Great post! I really like your suggestions on distancing yourself from the work environment in order to come up with ideas.
Hi Ryan and thank you.
The more you repeat an action the deeper synapses carve physical channels in the brain - this is why we can drive on automatic without realising it or why it takes so much effort to learn a new skills.
Breaking these defined brain patterns will help to see things differently - and that is where ideas and solutions appear.
Getting out of the office for a walk can be enough to stimulate thinking or just enough so that you are distracted and the subconscious takes over. I talk about these things in my book with more advice and tips, you might enjoy.
Thanks for your reply and I will certainly check out your book. (I also just realised I have two accounts so replying with my proper account!). I am also checking out Mural.ly - looks like it could be useful!
What a great post Shelli. This is what quality content should be like. Creativity is the ultimate differentiator for agencies and your post provides some awesome insights.
Hi Rick - thank you so much for your kind comments. It makes all the hard work and hours spent worth it to see that so many people are enjoying what I have written about. A good friend (sadly now departed) once said to me - "when you are on fire with passion people will come from miles around to watch you burn"
Great stuff, love the brainstorming tips...
Oh Krystian - my reply to your comment has disappeared! *rewrite*
Thank you for your comment and hope you can get some benefit from trying out your own brainstorming session.
Great post Shelli, easy read, insightful... bookmarked :)
Hi Evan - thanks for your comments - hope it is useful for you.
So important to make a great content nowadays. Actual information, thank you.
Thank you Lewis - much appreicated
Nice tips written about creativity in a creative way, that's why I can say you are also creative. Creativity and the brain-storming are synonymous to each other but sometimes you may get an Idea really creative on the go.
Hi Sasha - thank you for your comments - yes, I do have nearly 19 years professional creative experience ranging from textile design, greetings card publishing, illustration, magazine editing, web designing to online marketing. Creativity is my passion and I love to keep learning. As it says in my book curiosita is one of the elements Leonardo Da Vinci attributed his own creativity to and it means an insatiable pursuit for knowledge.
I really enjoyed the tips and ideas about switching to open mode. What has worked for me (if I'm alone) is experiencing new environments / work settings. I must be tapping into the 'observing the unfamiliar territory' part.. I just never thought about it in the way you described. Very cool stuff.
Hi Tim - thank you for your comments and its interesting that you have already been tapping into your open mode without realising. Check out the link I pasted in one of the other comments about the John Cleese on creativity video - he talks about the 'open' mode at length and its a brilliant speech for a very entertaining man.
I will definitely check out that video! Thanks.
BTW: love the Jack White quote in creativity101. He's one of my biggest influences.
Hi Shelli,,,
Beautifully drafted.... Loved the article...
"One of my favorite exercises to train your brain and develop your idea muscle is to generate lists of ideas everyday."
There's a pretty "fun" boardgame called "Scattergories" which you might want to try, Shelli. It's based on sticking with a letter of the alphabet and using it to make words from a number of categories. Can get surprisingly difficult when the egg-timer is ratcheting away!
Hi, that was legit!
Thank you for this post Shelli! - The information is structured perfectly. Just what I was looking for.
Being creative is an art. It is not enough to give something new. It should also bring a personal touch that can surprise other people.Lack of inspiration is now the problem of the creators (advertising agency, graphic designer ...).
I always get my best ideas when I'm lying in bed in the evening. So I started having a small notebook next to my bed so I can write them down, because I won't remember them on the next day.
Hi Bretsch - Me too!
Always just as I am about to fall asleep I can have the most amazing insights and solutions. I have to seriously force myself to wake up and make a note of the idea or it's gone forever. Some nights the tiredness has taken over and when I wake up I can't remember - that is so frustrating. An app that you could just mumble your idea into without having to wake up fully would be such a game changer!
Creativity is the key to success in any field and if it comes to online campaigns you need it very much. Nice tips, but I know people will learn a lot through this post about creating ideas by their own.
Great article.
About 4 weeks ago we decided we needed to get away from our home/office to come up with new business ideas for ourselves, and solve some problems for clients and to really think about how we were going to move forward with SEO.
We found going out for a walk really helped. We now go for an hours walk every day after work and have come up with some really good solutions and feel like we are moving forward again. It has helped us with creativity and to be more focused during the day with some of the boring tasks.
Maybe the work place needs to change and should incorporate outside time for everyone.
Simply superb & awesome post, for understand.
Thanks for sharing.
Influencers & Audit these both would be achieved to make a creativity of the king.
Hi there, Shelli!
Great article, I must say. This is very informative and really creative, I like the “wall of shame” idea I’ve seen it a lot in movies, and seen how good it can be when it comes to solving crimes. It looks like it takes a lot of time to make it, but it might be worth it in the end.
Anyway, thanks for sharing this article.
Have a great day ahead of you!
Great stuff Shelli, really enjoyable and insightful read :)
Hi Sam - thank you for the comment - hope there was some useful stuff for you.
Hey Shelli! That was so cool and very creative! I just enjoyed your post.
Great creativity tips. A dream dinner party seems a little too silly to me, but the point about having good group dynamics is well taken. Having a good people that trust each other and can banter with each other is the best way to come up with creative ideas.
Garbage in, garbage out is also very true. Taking in other people's good ideas and mixing them together or using them in new contexts is the best way to be creative. Too often, people get stuck on trying to come up with a breakthrough concept that's never been done before, when in truth creative thinking is just looking at old ideas in new ways.
Hi Takeshi - thanks for your comments.
I understand the dream dinner party might not be to everyone's taste, you can substitute this with many other exercises and games - the idea is to break automatic thought patterns, help everyone relax and prepare everyone to enter an 'open' state.
I recommend watching this video where John Cleese talks about creativity, open/closed states and his experience of writing with the Monty Python team to learn more.
I also wrote about combining old ideas to create new ones in my latest newsletter, here is an extract:
"Coming up with innovative ideas is a tough call when you consider that the amount of information we are exposed to everyday equals to a 3,400 page newspaper, every day. And that is a 2007 research figure. As someone once said, 'there are no new ideas, it's all been done before'.
Instead of giving up and going home thinking I'm not even going to try and there is no point, consider that combinations of old ideas are where new ideas are created. You don't even have to think of a radical invention - you just have to take an existing product and improve it, add a unique twist to it or combine it with another.
The very first mobile phone to contain a camera was in 2000 by J-Phone (now rebranded as SoftBank). 20 years ago who could ever have imagined a phone and a camera combined? And who can imagine not having a camera in your pocket 24/7 in this day?
Combining a camera with a phone has revolutionised how we take and share photographs, even how we perceive them as such disposable items; once upon a day having your photograph taken was a major life event. Instagram, Flickr, Snap Chat or even Facebook couldn't exist.
And all this from an idea proposed in a boardroom of what would happen if we add a digital camera to this mobile phone as an added feature to sell more phones?"
Hi Shelli, found interesting and enjoyed reading...
Hi Shelli,
thanks to you for your great creativity tips, I sure that your tips must help me in my SEO carrier. its very interesting for me.
Have a great day ahead of you
Hi,
I want to your's level. pls post another.