How neat; I did a Google Hangout on this very topic yesterday. Okay, I knew I was going to do that video, which is below, but I’m going to add something to the topic here that’s in the video, but the links aren’t on the video.
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This isn’t the first time I’ve talked about the subject of blogging and creativity. If you want to reach you can look at last week’s post talking about writing in general and think of it in the context of blogging. You can look at a kind of rant post I wrote titled When Blogging Advice Is A Waste Of Your Time or another post I wrote on the topic of getting backlinks, both of which lamented the same lame advice you get from a lot of other people who don’t take time to create anything new, or say something old in a new way. And there’s two much older articles I wrote on the topic, one titled No, Reading And Creativity Are Obsolete and Your Creativity Is Inside You.
You know what creativity does? It makes people want to revisit your blog or website to see what you have to say next. That’s why I like people like Marcus Sheridan of The Sales Lion and Holly Jahangiri of It’s All A Matter Of Perspective and Marie Forleo, someone I’ve just discovered along with Social Triggers by Derek Halpern. They’re all fascinating reads that get me to visit often.
Creativity allows you to talk about one subject, or multiple subjects, in lots of different ways. For instance, over the last two years I’ve talked about blogging with posts like 5 Ways Your Blog Might Be Irritating People, 5 Things Bloggers Can Learn From Poker, and 5 Blogging Lessons Learned From The Harry Potter Series, along with a long 2-part series on Better Blogging. I talked about writing with a post titled The Art Of Storytelling and gave quick tips with 10 Writing Tips In 2 Minutes. I talked about social media when I asked if You Are An Online Troll. And I’ve run two series here, one which was known as the Sunday Question, the other called Black Web Friday.
During the same two year period, I wrote what I consider as some interesting posts on my business blog, where I mainly talk about leadership and health care. Some of my more creative posts over there have included How Bad Of A Leader Was Charlie Brown, We Are Not The Borg, Are You As Good A Leader As Kermit The Frog, Would You Talk To A Mouse, and 10 Reasons Harry Potter Is A Great Leader. That last one, by the way, is about to be included in a magazine geared towards children in Malaysia; how’s that for publicity and creativity?
The point is that being just a little bit creative gives people a reason to want to read what you have to say. You don’t have to be overly prolific; just have a point of view, keep your eyes open and your mind clear so that you’ll see relationships in things that support your view, write about them and give people different perspectives on what they may encounter on a daily basis. As you’ll hear in the video, there’s agreement amongst my cohorts, as well as the voicing of a concern that doesn’t bother me, but might be something you think of from time to time. I hope the video gives a bit more perspective than I’ve given here. If nothing else, I’ve shared some posts with you that I hope you find intriguing.
