Critical Skill 5B: Sparking Spectacular Ideas

Filed Under Branding, Idea Bank, Motivation/Inspiration, Outside the Box, Successful Blog, Writing | Leave a Comment

Spectacular Ideas

Future Skills

Do you recognize where we are? We’ve been here before. This is the place where I tell you that ideas are already in your head, that it’s a matter of letting yourself have them — not shutting them out. It’s when I remind you that you can be an idea magnet again. I tell you that ideas are waiting for you. I ask you if you’ve started seeing and hearing them.

Whew! Now that the déjà vu is over. We can get on with sparking spectacular ideas.

Caution: Now Entering Liz Think Zone

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Critical Skill 5A: 3 Parts of Spectacular Ideas

Filed Under Branding, Idea Bank, Outside the Box, Strategy, Successful Blog, Writing | 10 Comments

Originality

Future Skills

When I compiled this list of ten critical skills, it was an original list — the list came from my head not from the Internet, not from some book. I’ve done continuous work on thinking skills for years so it wasn’t a huge hardship to think some more on the skills I consider critical. Is any one idea original? No. Not one on that list is unique or spectacular. The value-added is that I put them together and pointed the need to have them for success.

Originality Versus Spectacular

Originality is often how we look at things. The most original thought I’ve encountered — that hasn’t been around for years — was my six-year-old son’s drawing of the solar system as if he were standing on Pluto, looking in toward the sun. Even that was just a new take on a picture that’s been around for a long, long time.

True originality –a brand new idea — is hard to come by, but that’s okay. It rarely works in business. True originality is expensive and rarely sells. As good as I am with ideas I’ve learned if I find one that has been done before, tha it’s because of one of three reasons. Read more

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Stop. Listen. Hear that Idea?

Filed Under Idea Bank, Marketing, Outside the Box, Successful Blog, Writing | 16 Comments

It Happens Constantly

Finding Ideas Outside of the Box logo 2

I can almost count on it happening. When I’m stuck on how to write something, when I really need some direction on how to frame a concept, I just start listening for one. Sure enough in a day or two, someone will say something.

I was working on the post for Critical Skill 5: Originality — no small task I might add. How do you talk about being original? I did my usual walking and thinking, but most of my way to original thinking is intuitive, hard to explain in words.

I like challenges, but sometimes they make my head hurt. So I put my question to the universe and left myself open to any answer it might bring me. Sure enough, it did within a couple of hours.
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Blogs Aren’t Mini-Websites.
They’re Powerful Tools.

Filed Under Business Life, Marketing, Strategy, Successful Blog, Tools, Trends | 20 Comments

PART 1 IN A SERIES

Personal Computers as Tools

In Companies
When personal computers first became standardized and affordable, and software for using them was readily available, it wasn’t that long before they were sitting in every office. The ability to push rote tasks down to the lowest level has always been a strength of an effective business. Taking advantage of computers to do that–calculate spreadsheets, retype and revise documents, generate mailing lists–was an immediate no brainer for business folks focused on productivity. It wasn’t long before Information Management and IT became terms, then whole departments.

Personal computers changed how we work. They changed how we organized information, how we stored it, and share it, and even how we thought about it. Businesses–some more quickly than others–recognized that the computer was a tool of great value.

In American K-12 Schools
Schools, on the other hand, didn’t see the computer as a tool. They saw it as a subject, a class called Computer. Its highest honor was the day it replaced the class in touch typing. Even now in some prestigious New England high schools, the college prep strand kids still only officially see computers in the mandatory class called, “Computer Applications.”

It’s worth saying again. Schools don’t see computers as tools–like pencils and paper and textbooks or desks. Granted this a is gross generalization, but as an entity, Amercian K-12 schools can’t see past the contraption to take full advantage of its uses. The problem is not one of resources; it’s one of not enough folks feeling the need for them.

Blogs as Tools

Now companies and the mass media are acting like schools did. They see the physical blog and not the uses for it. They stop at the idea of what they think a blog is. Just as the school who sees computers as another subject, companies often see the contraption–blogs as another form of website, possibly as a way to do viral marketing.

We’re all missing that blogs are technology too.

The beauty of blogs is they are a flexible tool. The technology allows them to be that website and so much more–intranet, team project site, email replacement, advertising platform, billboard, company picnic, conduit to ideas, real connection to customers.

What Every Company and School Should Know

What most non-bloggers should know is that the number of both public and private blogs will continue to grow. They will outnumber websites based solely the fact that the expertise required to run a blog makes it inevitable. Small businesses start blogs because they already know that blogs are more flexible–can do more things, more easily, more quickly, and for much lower start up costs.

We owe it to our readers and our customers to to let them know that a blog isn’t just a poor person’s website.

If you want to add value to a business relationship, share that information with someone who needs it.

Let’s talk about how many ways blogs can be used. What do you see when you look at your blog as a tool?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles:
Part 2–Blogs: The New Black in Corporate Communication
Business, Blogs, and Niche-Brand Marketing
Chicago Goes Wi-Fi . . . What Does that Mean to Business?
Marketing Strategy ala Mickey Mouse

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A Blogger’s Personal Narrative Checklist

Filed Under Checklists, Content, Successful Blog, Writing | 1 Comment

Successful bloggers write well. As a professional writer, I have a few tips, tricks, techniques, strategies, and of course, checklists that I use to keep me on the right path. It’s time I started sharing them.

Almost everyone uses personal narratives. They’re the stories we tell to our families and friends. They’re the incidents we relate at work about meetings we attended. A personal narrative is any story you might tell about something that really happened to you. Bloggers do that all of the time.

Use this short checklist to review your next personal narrative to add value and polish to it.

Personal Narrative Content Editor’s Checklist

  • Does the introduction make readers want to continue?
  • Are the events clear and in chronological order?
  • Does the body stay to the core of the story, using only rich and relevant details for support? Less is definitely more in most cases.
  • Do you use exact words that portray the experience in a way the reader can understand it?
  • Does the conclusion tie the story together, leaving the reader glad to have read it?

Taking a minute to review the narratives you tell will kick them up a notch. Your writing will be just that bit more entertaining. It might be the difference that makes readers bookmark your blog to come back again.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles:
Editing for Quality and a Content Editor’s Checklist
What Is Content that Keeps Readers?
SEO–Five Traits of Relevant Content
Turning Reluctant Readers into Loyal Fans

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