Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
I shouldn’t have to search through your website to find your big idea, your brand essence, your mainstay. Creating a linchpin brand comes from saying no to enough little ideas so all anyone can see is the big idea. Zappos gave up a lot to stand up for service. Apple let a lot of things go so they could focus on design.
Stay Positive & What Do You Let Go Of?
If you have an idea and the few people you share it with express they don’t like it, you know you can still do it, right?
Why waste the night wondering if they are right when you can spend the night making it right.
Stay Positive & They May Take Your Hope, But Not Your Time
Two hours of solid group brainstorming. A lot of bad ideas will be thrown in the air, but it’s your right and your privilege to throw as many ideas out there. Good ideas and “meh” ideas.
A friend of mine used to work at a PR agency that, during brainstorming sessions, would not let anyone leave the room until there were 70 ideas on the board. On top of that, even if their first idea was the perfect one and they knew it was, they still went to 70.
You’re a magnet. We all are when we pitch ideas. We attract the criticism and hold it with us while we shout out more ideas. The more ideas, the more criticism we hear, the heavier we feel. Finally, every magnet has its threshold and we can’t hold any more criticism. At that point, we shut up. At that point, we fail. Exhausted from holding so much criticism.
The problem isn’t that you can’t hold any more criticism. The problem is you’ve let it stop you from sharing more ideas. All the sudden you make the brainstorming session about you and not about brainstorming.
It’s two-fold. First, criticism gains weight when you take it personally. Then, second, as you take more criticism personally, you become subjective and blame yourself for poor ideas, for not moving the group forward in the right direction; you believe you’re holding the group back.
Actually, what holds the group back is your lack of more “meh” ideas.
The reason brainstorming groups work is when you share a bad idea, it saves everyone else from thinking of that same bad idea. It’s a game of trial-and-error. More specifically, it’s a game of removing all bad ideas until what you have left are the good ones. When you stop participating with your bad ideas, you’re not doing the group justice, you’re holding them back.
Stay Positive & If You’re Not Coming Up With Good Ideas Read This
Evergreen content is like a wrinkled shirt you found in your closet you want to wear. It’s still stylish, still fits, still brings out your eyes, but you’re not going to wear it wrinkled. Only thing to do: iron out the wrinkles.
I’ve banged my head on the wall a few times trying to come up with an idea for a blog post. I’ve been there. I’ve also watched brands bang walls against their social media teams’ heads trying to get them to come up with a fresh tweet, a viral FB post, a new blog post. I’ve seen people crack at the pressure of coming up with an idea when they’ve felt all the great ideas have been surfaced before. It’s a sad day when that happens. It’s a sad day when they ignore their wrinkled shirts.
Instead of banging your head against the wall, search for the evergreen content, that timeless tweet, that blog post that feels somewhat unfinished and iron it out. I’m not necessarily suggesting you re-purpose something you’ve written. After all, the idea of evergreen content is that it’s already a solid idea.
Narrow the content, take a different perspective to it, add to the narrative because you likely have new ideas to go with it because it was hung in the closet while you’ve experienced more of the world, more of the brand, more of your voice.
Don’t be afraid to dig up an evergreen when you’re lost for ideas, lost for content, lost for words.
Stay Positive & Reuse, Recycle
If you never spend a dime on native advertising, will they know what you offer?
If you never spend a dime on designing the perfect newsletter, Facebook advertising or any other marketing strategy, will people know about you and what your brand stands up for.
Perfect marketing is about the essentials, and the essentials is not to have an account on every social media platform, but to be uplifting, to do at least one thing for one person a day (free of charge), to be remarkable – that is, to be doing things that people can’t help but talk about.
The essentials don’t require a pocket full of dimes, they only require that you care.
Stay Positive & If You Care, They Will Know
You would die happy tomorrow if you ______ today
1) Do something you are afraid of
2) Go the extra mile for just one person
3) Give to the world what you think isn’t good enough
4) Go for a walk (no phone, no headphones)
5) Do anything on this list
You would die miserable tomorrow if you _____ today
1) worry about tomorrow
2) let someone else decide what you do
3) spend all your time with people you don’t love
4) stick to routine
5) Do anything on this list
Stay Positive & Now Switch “Die” With “Live”
You’re not just being watched, you’re being branded.
Before you ship a product, why not ship yourself? Create a personal page. Think of it as an ad for yourself that conveys important information about you, demonstrates your creative ability, conveys unique elements of your personality and professional skills.
Scrap the résumé, scrap your VC, scrap your cover letter.
Stay Positive & Sell You, Not Just What You Can Do
