Rather than stress yourself out and scrawl down the first, lame ideas that strike you (such as a fallacious ‘top ten greatest of all time’ list, or the indulgently obvious ‘top ten best’ idea), take a moment to marinate in your creative juices.
Demand time and space to be compelling, or explain that instant gratification will lead to flat content and failed promotions. Surely, they’d rather give you half an hour to brainstorm than waste time on content that’s doomed from inception. If you’re ready to brainstorm complex, original angles and perspectives that will make people click, then here are a few insights to help you realize your creative genius.
1. Top Ten
Wait! I’m not being hypocritical and jumping into generator mode for ‘top ten’ ideas; rather, this is a brainstorming tip. Google this: top ten [adjective] X; with the adjective supporting your agenda for the content, and the X equaling the subject. For example, if you need to brainstorm for positive content around the key phrase ‘black shoes,’ then try this: top ten best black shoes.
What you’ll find in the results is a compilation of other people’s research. List after list of information, which other people have painstakingly researched and consolidated is accessible, with sources listed, and even insights as to which angles have already succeeded or failed (if you look at their shares and comments). This search will also help you weed out overdone concepts that you might have thought were gold if you’d thought of them without checking for similar publications.
2. Infographic Heaven
I love infographics: visually appealing, easily understandable, and well sourced, these gems provide countless resources for any topic. If you enjoy perusing infographics, or IGs, as much as I do, then a few might spring to mind on any given topic, like ‘black shoes.’ Even if the content you are brainstorming for is going to be an article, infographics provide a wonderful resource for quick distillation of information.
Search this: infographic X; with the X equaling your topic, again. If you search for “infographic black shoes,” you will find this:
…and many more. You get the point, right? The best part of these IGs isn’t that you can quickly gather information to develop ideas for your own content, but that you can read the lists of sources and get info straight from the first-hand source. Also, linking to these infographics can add value and pizazz to your content, without requiring ten hours from a personal graphic designer.
3. Walking a la Thoreau
If there’s a fellow creative mind in your office, tap that person for a brainstorming session, and lace up your shoes. Sitting in a cubicle, facing a taupe, asbestos-covered wall for up to 14 hours a day isn’t going to have lightning bolts striking over a phrase like ‘black shoes.’ Stand up, walk out the door, and keep walking. Be the eccentric coworker.
As long as you return with great ideas, your walk will be attributed to quality creative time. Try to time your brainstorm/walk with other coworkers’ breaks, and ask them to brainstorm with you. Getting people out of their day-to-day surroundings will open their minds to new thoughts; you don’t have to go farther than the corner to trigger your brain to think outside of the (taupe) box.
4. Fresh News
Open the News tab on your favorite search engine, and search the key phrase and similar terms for newly popping topics and angles. If you find a hot topic that could work for your content, make sure to search for already created content that may have just been published.
This is an activity best done when the ink is still drying on your digital newspaper, so that you can find out what’s going to trend before anyone else. Ecstatic to read that someone developed a new material for black shoes? Don’t assume no one else read it: do diligent research.
5. Angry Hipsters
Go to the trendiest social site you can think of, and find the forum for angry hipsters. Depending on which site you haunt, this could be located under different names. When you’ve found the epicenter of anger and hipster-hood, find out what they’re talking about. Lurk through a few pages of comments to see if anything is irking the trendsters in their natural habitat: if something is just building as an issue, it’s possibly going to go viral across all networks.
Check the trends on Google, double-check other social site forums, and search for related infographics and top ten lists to see if you, in fact, missed the action; if not, you may have truffled a topic or perspective that is truly fresh and unique.
CONCLUSION
Brainstorming is an ever-changing art because you have to keep moving. As soon as you find a routine that works, your brain will accept it as normal, and stop reacting with creative solutions.
Think about it: when you drive home on the same route every day, do you sometimes arrive at home, unsure how you got there? Brainstorming is the same: if you take the same path, you’ll end up in the same, tired place for each piece of content. Take a new path, see new things, and even if you do end up in the same location, you’ll have arrived with fresh insights and a conscious understanding of how you arrived there.
Do you have old or new brainstorming ideas that could help others? Share them with other thinkers.
