How to have ideas Practical skills to improve your creativity & idea generation for content
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The thing about thinking is that no one thinks too much about thinking
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Experts on creativity..
LATERAL THINKING
A TECHNIQUE FOR PRODUCNG IDEAS
SOME CRITICAL ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH IN CREATIVITY
Edward de Bono
James Webb Young
Donald W. MacKinnon
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“You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig”
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“You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig”
A piece of content can look good but without substance it will struggle to gain audience connection
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“Concept is king”
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Content marketing needs creativity & much less of this...
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https://klientboost.com/ppc/the-top-10-worst-infographics-ever-created/
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http://www.pennyjuice.com/htmlversion/whoispj.htm
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http://www.gatesnfences.com/
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Learning basic thinking skills can drastically improve creativity
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THE HANDY REFERENCE GUIDE FOR ANYONE WHO LOVES TO COOK
Simple ideas based on a users needs METRIC CONVERSION Everest Kitchen Cheat Sheet
OVEN TEMPS
˚F ˚C 250
120 VERY SLOW
275
140
300
150 SLOW
325
170
Weights IMPERIAL
½ oz ¾ oz 1oz 2oz 3oz 4oz (¼lb)
METRIC 15g 20g 30g 60g 85g 115g
g
oz
IMPERIAL
METRIC
10oz 285g 11oz 310g 12oz (¾lb) 340g 13oz 370g @ sh elliw 14oz 400ga lsh 15oz 425g
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THE HANDY REFERENCE GUIDE FOR ANYONE WHO LOVES TO COOK
METRIC CONVERSION OVEN TEMPS
˚F ˚C 250
120 VERY SLOW
275
140
300
150 SLOW
http://www.everest.co.uk/products/kitchens/kitchen-cheat-sheet/
325
170
Weights IMPERIAL
½ oz ¾ oz 1oz 2oz 3oz 4oz (¼lb)
METRIC 15g 20g 30g 60g 85g 115g
g
oz
IMPERIAL
METRIC
10oz 285g 11oz 310g 12oz (¾lb) 340g 13oz 370g @ sh elliw 14oz 400ga lsh 15oz 425g
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Input – Process – Output
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Input...
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Moz, smashingmag, A List Apart, The Manual, The Great Discontent, 99u, Entrepreneur, Poynter, Nieman Labs, Sitepoint, ConversionXL, Creative Bloq, The Creativity Post, Fast Company, Design Milk, Swissmiss, Grain Edit, Information is Beautiful, Contently, The Guardian, NYT, WSJ, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Wired, Laughing Squid, Neatorama, 3quarksdaily, State of Digital, Search Engine Land, Brian Solis, Dave Trott, Pscychotactic Zingers, Zen Habits, Adweek, Brain Pickings, Aeon, Delicious, Contently, Search Engine Land, The Guardian, Quartz, Redef
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“The creative person wants to be a know it all, he wants to know about all kinds of things. He never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea... but the creative person has faith it will happen.� Carl Ally, NYC advertiser
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Be an ideas magpie
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“You can find inspiration in everything. If you can’t then you’re not looking properly.” Paul Smith
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How to deliver long form content New York Times
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ec0fMhs0Vd
http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/10/27/south-china-sea/
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Process...
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Pattern matching
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Intelligence is a potential Thinking is an operational skill
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Vertical thinking
Lateral thinking
Traditional thinking
Non-sequential
Logical
Non-selective
Methodical
Removing preconception
Sequential
Being wrong
Stops at first solution
Open to all ideas
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Reverse information & reject the obvious
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Oppose elements
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Brainstorming
http://spin.atomicobject.com/2013/01/08/innovation-brainstorming/
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Six Thinking Hats Edward de Bono
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White hat: Information, the input and gathering of facts
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White hat: Information, the input and gathering of facts Who is the target demographic? Where is the content to be placed? Who will we outreach to?
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Red hat: Emotions, expressing feelings and intuition
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Red hat: Emotions, expressing feelings and intuition I feel we should My gut tells me I like this/I don’t like this
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Black hat: Risk assessment critical thinking
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Black hat: Risk assessment critical thinking What are the selling parameters? What would alienate our demographic? What would be too much of a risk?
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Yellow hat: Positive logical, how an idea can be put into action
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Yellow hat: Positive logical, how an idea can be put into action How do we plan production? Where can we get placements? Who can we use to illustrate/write/code?
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Green hat: Creative, alternatives, new ideas, possibilities
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Green hat: Creative, alternatives, new ideas, possibilities What if? Can we? This is different
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Blue hat: Defining the problem and what is being thought about
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Blue hat: Defining the problem and what is being thought about How do we get more placements? How do we generate the most traffic in the budget? How do we produce the best piece of content within our limited budget?
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5 Whys
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The ‘why’ technique
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Why? Start with an element of your problem that you already know the answer to
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Why? Start with an element of your problem that you already know the answer to Student: Why are mobile phones flat and oblong? Teacher: They are flat to save space.
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Why? Focus on a part of the previous explanation
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Why? Focus on a part of the previous explanation Student: Why do they need to be small and save space? Teacher: So that they can fit in our pocket.
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Why? Keep the flow and keep moving forward (avoid circling back to the beginning)
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Why? Keep the flow and keep moving forward (avoid circling back to the beginning) Student: Why do we need to keep phones in our pocket? Teacher: It’s convenient, and we can carry them around more easily.
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Why? Generate discomfort through provocation (this is where new ideas will break through)
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Why? Generate discomfort through provocation (this is where new ideas will break through) Student: But why does the phone have to be convenient? Teacher: To make our lives easier by having less to carry around. Student: But why do we want to carry less around?
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Why? Alternatives and solutions can be offered at any point:
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Why? Alternatives and solutions can be offered at any point: Teacher:
“If we had a small watch on our wrist that we could speak commands to and that fed back to a ‘base station’ at home or the office, then we could combine a phone and a laptop and have to carry neither, only a watch.”
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Why? The roles can be reversed at any point, again to create discomfort and provocation
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Why? The roles can be reversed at any point, again to create discomfort and provocation Student: Why would we want to combine a laptop with a mobile phone? Teacher: I don’t know. Why do you think combining a laptop and a phone would be a good idea?
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Keep asking: Why?
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image from www.commonsenseevaluation.com/tag/old-spice
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5.9m YouTube views on the first day
image from oldspice.com/en/videos/old-spice-smell-like-a-man
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image from http://www.brodominiums.com/
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image from http://www.thefl atteringman.com/
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Sharp humour + social media Old Spice
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https://instagram.com/p/5xNE_MNNXH/?taken-by=oldspice
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Look for connections “An idea is nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements.� James Webb Young
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Combine ideas
The first camera phone in 2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-SH04#/media/File:Sharp_J-SH04_CP%2B_2011.jpg
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Ideas wall
http://crazywalls.tumblr.com/
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Content101.com keywords theme
niche
seasonal
trends
brand
influencers
offline media/ books
facebook people
twitter people
authority hub sites
idea source
online publishers
Reddit people
google trends
social media
hash tags
Quora news sites
hosts bloggers
hub sites
media sites
social media
offline media online publishers
emotion
I like this love this just because
new styles
looks good trends
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Combining random ideas Sportbluff.com
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http://www.sportbluff.com
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Output...
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Digest Meditate Contemplate
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distracted
relaxed
emotion
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Be prepared – ideas come at any time – don’t lose them
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Feedback & scrutiny
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Agile and targeted responsive content Totino’s Pizza
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http://www.totinosliving.com/article/buzzfeeds-50-unusable-stock-photos-used/
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Takeaways
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Anyone can learn thinking skills Intelligence does not equal thinking skills Input + Process = Output Look for connections Combine two old ideas to make a new idea Break your usual routine to get creative
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CONTENT101.COM @ sh elliw a lsh
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Web: ShellShockuk.com Content101.com Creativity101.com
hey ! you
Twitter: @ShelliWalsh
Shelli Walsh
Linkedin: /in/shelliwalsh
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