Category: Creative
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Instantly Convert Mind Maps Into eBooks, Presentations, and Content
I love the power that mind maps give us to organize our thoughts. Unlike traditional outlining, mind maps let us rearrange our thoughts easily and see connections between different ideas. Mind maps are one of my secrets to productivity – I find I’m able to outline and plan much faster with them than other planning…
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Assisted Brain Writing with Google
Brain writing has come to the forefront again as a creative assistance tool. Companies are realizing brainstorming, as its currently handled, is deeply flawed, as I documented in Marketing Red Belt years ago. Why? Brainstorming suffers from group dynamics, most notably what I call the HIPPO problem: the Highest Individually Paid Person’s Opinion tends to…
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How to start your creativity workout program
Creativity is much like any other form of working out, be it physical or mental. If you do very little on a regular basis, you have very little to draw on when you need it most. If you work out at high intensity every day, you become far more capable. Creativity is no different. If…
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7 Basic Plots of Content Marketing: Conclusion
Over the past week or so, we’ve had a chance to look in depth at each of Christopher Booker’s 7 Basic Plots as they apply to marketing and storytelling: Overcoming the Monster: The protagonist sets out to defeat an antagonistic force which threatens the protagonist and the things/people/places the protagonist cares about. Rags to Riches:…
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7 Basic Plots of Content Marketing: The Tragedy
Previously, we looked at Christopher Booker’s 7 basic plots of how stories are told. Today, we’ll look at the sixth of these 7 from a content marketing perspective: the Tragedy. The tragedy is one of the oldest storytelling forms, in which the protagonist is actually a villain whose demise everyone roots for. One of the…
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7 Basic Plots of Content Marketing: The Comedy
Previously, we looked at Christopher Booker’s 7 basic plots of how stories are told. Today, we’ll look at the fifth of these 7 from a content marketing perspective: the Comedy. Comedy isn’t just funny content. While there are shows on Netflix of stand-up comedians doing their routine for two hours, that’s not comedy in the…
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3 Steps For Up-Cycling Old Marketing Content
Ever feel like phoning it in when you’re doing content creation? Ever had a day where you just can’t think of anything to create? Let old content save the day! Chances are that if you’ve been creating content for a while, you’ve got some old gems in your back catalog. The lazy marketer would simply…
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Creativity and rock candy
Did you ever, as a kid or a parent, do the science experiment where you dissolved a bunch of sugar in water and then tried to make rock candy? I’ve done it both as a kid and as a parent, and it’s gratifying either way. But here’s what I noticed as a kid and had…
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Cure writer’s block with a photowalk
Got writer’s block around a particular topic or blog post? There are dozens of different ways you can break writer’s block (some of which are unsurprisingly outlined in Marketing Red Belt), but one of the most reliable by far is to grab your digital camera (or smartphone with camera) and go on a photowalk. If…