Posts Tagged ‘creative minds’

Look around at the people in your life – those who have nothing to do with creativity or your work. Those are the people that are going to give you your next great blog post or idea for an advertisement.

1. IRL friend. Or a friend who isn’t on twitter, linkedin, blogging, stumbleupon, etc. More than likely they are on Facebook, but if they aren’t, even better. This person lives in the real world, and only in the real world. They will know what’s going on in the news but not from tweets or status updates. They will know it because they spent time looking for a story and reading articles. Ask them how their experience is without social media. What do they think when they hear all the radio/tv stations asking you to “follow” them.

2. The generation older than you (or 2 generations above you if you can). Ask them to tell you a story about growing up, college life, working, or raising a family. Listen to how they talk, the words that they use and how they engage you into the story. It’s like what Abigail Chase said to Ben Gates in National Treasure, “People don’t really talk that way, you know”. But they should…

3. A family member or friend under the age of 13. I have talked a few times about bringing out your inner child, whether it is through crayons and a coloring book or letting yourself lose control. But, neither are the same as actually talking with a child. Ask them what they think about something going on in the news, or have them tell you about their day. The fervor with which they use to describe one thing or the other is always interesting. Secondly, the younger generation can often help us to be more free, and have more fun in everything that we do.

4. A teenager (13-19). Despite some of them having a surly outlook on life – many of them are still willing to talk and analyze what is going on in the world (or their lives, which usually is their world anyway). Ask them about the communities in their school, cliques, groups, whatever. The same dynamics exist throughout the rest of our lives, but those in their teenage years often have a clearer picture of what is actually happening. In addition, these are the people who will be the most involved with social media, the newest trends and what needs to be created. They are the future of twitter, linkedin, facebook, etc. Knowing what they think and need will help us to craft the tools and technologies before they need them.

The point of these people – whomever you choose to talk with – is to find out a new perspective on something. Or, to take a step away from your everyday and check out someone else’s world.

Who would you choose to talk with? Is there a type of person I am missing?

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. Powerful name, powerful idea, even more powerful messages inside. About 2 weeks ago, I mentioned that I would be reading Groundswell. I am slowly working my way through the book and wanted to share some thoughts on a section that caught my attention. On page 44 of Groundswell (for those of you who have the book), you can see a chart that looks like this (for those who don’t have it):

(click to enlarge)

The focus for this article is the last column – the 44% of people that are inactive on the Internet. Inactive doesn’t mean that they are not on the Internet but that while on there, they do not have anything to do with the groundswell (or “the spontaneous movement of people using online tools to connect”). These are people who go online to shop, check their email, maybe read a story or 2, but their involvement in the Internet is minimal at best, and benefits no one but themselves.

The question that I pose – and that we can discuss in the comments – is how do we take an inactive Internet user and turn them into one of the other 5 types listed above?

I’ll get the discussion started. I believe that the inactive users need to be divided into two categories – inactive because of personality and inactive because of an unknown reason.

Let’s look at the first group: Inactive because of personality. There is a certain percentage of Internet users that you could stand on your head, offer them free cars for using social media and they still wouldn’t become involved. They just don’t care. Let me repeat – they just don’t care. As much as we all hate to think that there are people like this, I know of one personally. My mother. She has used the Internet for business for the last 15 years, but would be considered an inactive user because she has never touched a social network, doesn’t read blogs, stay away from forums and ignores the fact that there is anyone else on the Internet. This isn’t for lack of understanding. In fact she understands blogging and social media very well – she just doesn’t want anything to do with it.

The second group: Inactive for some unknown reason. This group is harder to understand because we have a large variable. Although some people may have similar reasons for inactivity, many of them won’t actually know why they are inactive, therefore making it extremely difficult to help them to become active. The most important fact about this group is they are often wary of interaction. Which means one false move or bad comment towards them, and they could be scared off of social media forever. So, if we are going to make them active, we need to do it slowly and in a way that they can be protected until they are more comfortable.

Share your thoughts to the question in comments and let’s see what we can figure out together.

And if you haven’t, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Groundswell. Only 50 pages in and it has already become one of my new favorites.

We are getting to the end of the problogger challenge, and as such, it was finally time for him to cover social media organization. The concern has always been where to spend your time and what to do while on those sites. Today’s challenge is to  develop a plan to boost your blog’s readership through the social media channels, without spending all your time on it. The post that he wrote is packed with information – I had to read it a couple times to get everything to sink in. I would definitely recommend checking this one out – it was really well done and had some killer ideas.

Anyway, the basic point I got from it was to focus on a select few networks where you can gain the most exposure from the right audience and hopefully gain more of the same type of readers. A few months ago, I analyzed my social media strategy, and what I did on a daily/weekly/monthly. But, the analysis wasn’t focused on what I did to promote myself. I took a look back through it, and a lot of what I do is to promote, but indirectly. The promotion exists because I am active in all the sites that I am a part of. This is the key. You can be a member of thousands of social media sites, but if you don’t interact and use them, then they area waste of time. The sites that I choose to spend my time on are:

And of course, I am a guest blogger on a few sites that help to drive traffic back to my blog. Not only does this improve my writing (and pay well), it gives me one more place that people and search engines, can find my name. Lastly, it also creates links between me and the blog, which improves my overall SEO.

Personally, I feel that I have a strong social media strategy and wouldn’t change how I spend my time. But, this article was definitely worth reading as it gave me reasurrance that I was doing the right things, and reminded me to stick with them.

Are you managing your social media strategy correctly?

Problogger’s challenge is giving me deja vú.

The 31 days to a better blog challenge is supposed to be 31 days of advice/challenges to improve your blog and your writing. It’s also supposed to have a unique suggestion every day. But today’s challenge is not only focused on someone elses blog, but the ideas in the post replicate many of his other challenge posts. Not really what the challenge should be, right?

For example, today he suggests leaving helpful and interesting comments on a post, but he also suggested leaving comments on day #20. Another suggestion from today (oh, and from day 5 as well!) is to email a reader. And one final ‘duplicate’ (although there are more), he suggests today, just like he did on day 22, to recommend them to your readers. Now I understand that ‘improving someone elses blog‘ sounds different then all these challenges on the outside, but when you really look at it, it’s not a different challenge at all.

C’mon problogger, I thought you were supposed to be the professional here. You have over 10,000 people doing this challenge, and this is the best you could come up with for today? I’m sorry, but when you have that many people trusting you to lead them in the right direction, you should take them down a path they haven’t already done a few times! Unless, of course, you tell them that it’s the same path, just wearing different shoes.

Now that I have cleared the air, I am sure many of you are thinking “well, if you’re so smart, what would you suggest”?

So here you go ladies and gentlemen, Kirsten’s take on day #26 of building a better blog:

Write a post that has nothing to do with your niche.

We spend so much time writing about what we know and what we love, what happens to learning something new? Today, I challenge you to do some research on a topic you know very little about, and write what you learned. Not only is it a great exercise for improving your writing abilities, but it is a great way to open your eyes. So, how do you decide on a topic to research?

1. Scan through stumbleupon‘s top pages and see if a topic catches your eye
2. Is there an activity you have always wanted to try or a hobby you’ve wanted to explore?
3. What about a location you’ve never visited but want to learn about?
4. Do you find yourself asking a lot of questions about a certain thing?
5. What did you dream about doing as a child but never pursue?

What did you decide to write about? What do you think of problogger’s ‘cop-out’?

How many times have you said this (or at least thought it) when someone asked/recommended that you do something? I did it when I read the problogger challenge for today: Using a magazine to improve your writing. It’s a great idea, and probably a really beneficial challenge, but that doesn’t mean I want to do it.

So what do I want to do? I really want a deep tissue massage on the beach in Hawaii while sipping a Mai tai.

But that doesn’t benefit my blog, my readers or my business. The reality is, just because you don’t want to do something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Especially if the person suggesting you should do it is trying to help you improve. I know that problogger isn’t writing this challenge specifically for me, but I can’t deny the fact that doing the challenges every day has helped my writing and my blog. With that said, attempting to do something that you can’t wrap your mind and your passion around is difficult, and can be counterproductive. Don’t work past your creative breaking point, and don’t force yourself to do a task that you know will be done poorly.

In my case, I don’t want to do the challenge, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to write for my blog, it just means I don’t want to do that challenge for my blog. Now that I have determined the issue, I just have to find something else to write about that can benefit my readers and my blog, without having to do the challenge.

Oh, wait – I just did!

All joking aside, there are a lot of roads that lead to the same place, you get to choose which one you take to get there.

What don’t you want to do today? Which road will you choose?

Problogger is worried about passive readers. I was too, so I asked all my readers to de-lurk. A lot of them did But problogger says de-lurking isn’t enough, your readers need to act and they must be called into action by you (okay, by me, but you get what I mean).

For his challenge today, he offers a solid list of ways to get readers to act, including asking them to donate to a charity, purchasing a product you support, writing a comment (de-lurking post covered that!), hiring you for services or even asking readers to visit someone elses blog.

So I had to think about it. I get once chance – one shot to get you to listen and ask for you to do something. But what is it that I want you to do? Well, I could use it selfishly and ask you to donate to my goal to get to BlogWorld 2009 (it’s that green widget below recommended blogs) or to ask that you send out a tweet, recommending my work to someone you know (or hiring me yourself). But I trust my readers and know that if you could help, you would be (or at least I want to believe that so I will!).

So, I decided to use my ‘ask for action’ in a way that would benefit someone else (hopefully a lot of someone elses).

Here is your call to action:

Post a link in your comment to a blog or twitter profile of someone that you respect and enjoy reading, but that doesn’t have a lot of traffic/recognition. Tell us a bit about them, and why they deserve us to visit them. Then, visit at least 1 other commenter’s recommended person.

Lights! Camera! ACTION!

 Aim’s (artists in mind’s) vision for a specialist centre for the documentation and storage of artworks by artists who experience acute and enduring mental health problems. We provide studio spaces, artists materials, mentoring by practising artists and professional support and development. aim also initiates and manages creative projects in prisons, secure hospitals, forensic units and in the community.

…even better than their message? The artwork. The level of hidden talent in the world is incredible, and I feel lucky to have found this site through twitter. To find out more about the gallery and the artist’s, visit http://www.artists-in-mind.org.uk/aimart.html.  

Acording to an article from CNN, there may be a stronger connection than we thought. The article outlines the connection between depression and extremely creative individuals like David Foster Wallace and Sylvia Plath. It discusses whether creativity brings out or causes depression. Their finding is that they can’t prove creativity causes depression but there is a chance that it can cause depression to surface if the person is already depressed.

I agree with a lot of the points made in the article, especially the point that creative people are more heavily effected by the world around them than your average Joe. It makes perfect sense that those who are most creative tend to be more effected by things around them; creative people pay more attention to the details. Normal people can see or hear something and let it go, more creative minds tend to take a basic idea and try to pull more out of it.

Verhaeghen, who is also a novelist and describes himself as a “somewhat mood disordered person,” had a particular interest in the connection between creativity and this ruminating state of mind. “One of the things I do is think about something over and over and over again, and that’s when I start writing,” he said.

After reading the article I find it hard not to believe creativity and depression have a link. What do you think? Is depression tied to creativity? Would you concider the people you think are creative also depressed? If you concider yourself creative, do you also concider yourself depressed?