In the last post, we discussed what an asset was, in the strict financial sense; Investopedia defines an asset as: An asset is a resource with economic value that an individual, corporation or country owns or controls with the expectation that it will provide future benefit. We’ve established that content could be an asset, could…
If you’ve not spent a lot of time around your creative services team members, you may have never heard the term swipe file before. A swipe file is a collection, a scrapbook of materials that have worked, arranged in such a way to inspire you and give you future ideas. Done properly, it can be…
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…
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…
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…
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:…
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…
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…
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…
