Slides from #BrightonSEO Sept 2015 and #Mozinar October 2015
Practical thinking skills and brainstorming techniques that will drastically improve your idea generation for content.
Get the free ebook here: http://www.content101.com/ebooks/how-to-have-ideas/
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@shelliwalsh
Moz, smashingmag, A List Apart, The Manual, The
Great Discontent, 99u, Entrepreneur, Poynter,
Nieman Labs, Sitepoint, ConversionXL, Creative
Bloq, The Creativity Post, Fast Company, Design
Milk, Swissmiss, Grain Edit, Information is
Beautiful, Contently, The Guardian, NYT, WSJ, The
New Yorker, The Atlantic, Gizmodo, TechCrunch,
Wired, Laughing Squid, Neatorama, 3quarksdaily,
State of Digital, Search Engine Land, Brian Solis,
Dave Trott, Pscychotactic Zingers, Zen Habits,
Adweek, Brain Pickings, Aeon, Delicious, Contently,
Search Engine Land, The Guardian, Quartz, Redef
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@shelliwalsh
âThe creative person wants to be a know it all,
he wants to know about all kinds of things. He
never knows when these ideas might come
together to form a new idea... but the creative
person has faith it will happen.â
Carl Ally, NYC advertiser
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@shelliwalsh
Who is the target demographic?
Where is the content to be placed?
Who will we outreach to?
White hat:
Information, the input
and gathering of facts
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@shelliwalsh
What are the selling parameters?
What would alienate our demographic?
What would be too much of a risk?
Black hat:
Risk assessment
critical thinking
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@shelliwalsh
How do we plan production?
Where can we get placements?
Who can we use to illustrate/write/code?
Yellow hat:
Positive logical, how an idea
can be put into action
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@shelliwalsh
How do we get more placements?
How do we generate the most traffic in
the budget?
How do we produce the best piece of
content within our limited budget?
Blue hat:
Defining the problem and
what is being thought about
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@shelliwalsh
Why?
Start with an element of
your problem that you
already know the answer to
Student: Why are mobile phones flat
and oblong?
Teacher: They are flat to save space.
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@shelliwalsh
Why?
Focus on a part of the
previous explanation
Student: Why do they need to be small and
save space?
Teacher: So that they can fit in our pocket.
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@shelliwalsh
Why?
Keep the flow and keep moving
forward (avoid circling back to
the beginning)
Student: Why do we need to keep phones
in our pocket?
Teacher: Itâs convenient, and we can
carry them around more easily.
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@shelliwalsh
Why?
Generate discomfort through
provocation (this is where new
ideas will break through)
Student: But why does the phone have to
be convenient?
Teacher: To make our lives easier by
having less to carry around.
Student: But why do we want to carry
less around?
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@shelliwalsh
Why?
Alternatives and solutions can be
offered at any point:
Teacher: âIf we had a small watch on our wrist
that we could speak commands to and
that fed back to a âbase stationâ at home
or the office, then we could combine a
phone and a laptop and have to carry
neither, only a watch.â
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@shelliwalsh
Why?
The roles can be reversed
at any point, again to create
discomfort and provocation
Student: Why would we want to combine a laptop
with a mobile phone?
Teacher: I donât know. Why do you think
combining a laptop and a phone would be
a good idea?
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@shelliwalsh
Content101.com
keywords influencers idea source hosts
theme
Quoragoogle
trends
news
sites
bloggers
social
media
social
media
facebook
people
twitter
people
Reddit
people
media
sites
authority
hub sites
online
publishers
online
publishers
offline
media
hub
sites
emotion
I like
this
just
because
trends
new
styles
looks
good
love
this
brand
offline
media/
books
niche
hash
tags
trends
seasonal
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@shelliwalsh
ïž Anyone can learn thinking skills
ïž Intelligence does not equal thinking skills
ïž Input + Process = Output
ïž Look for connections
ïž Combine two old ideas to make a new idea
ïž Break your usual routine to get creative