There’s nothing like being inspired to maintain a blog. If you have ever dabbled in marketing or websites, you probably have had some motivation or goal to keep up a blog.
I’ve been there too. I’ve had numerous blogs that I’ve had the ultimate goal of contributing to every single day.
In most cases, I’ve failed miserably.
Recently I did some reading though and I think I came across the main deterrent to having a consistent blog.
Trying to be Original is Your Problem
There is this goal that we all have to create new content and ideas the world has never seen before. With the world at our fingertips and the internet is an equal playing field, I think we start to romanticize the opportunity.
What this ends up looking like is you sitting in front of a computer, trying to think of a whole new blog post idea that’s funny, new, and never been seen before.
This is the equivalent to trying to come up with a new invention every single day, its nearly impossible, especially when you have a bajillion other things to do during your day.
Before you know it, you have 2 – 3 blog posts published over a year ago.
Understand that Creativity is Not What You Think it is
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.” — Steve Jobs
I wanted to start off this section with a quote I found from a great post that helped motivate me to write more.
Steve Jobs to many people is seen as the human embodiment of creativity. However, with this quote, I think it starts to bring the bar of creativity much lower.
Not to say that creativity is easy, but as we’ve discussed before, people seem to think of creativity as this super high bar that only years of pain can attain.
Change Your Frame of Mind
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to be creative. You can simply just make improvements and combine different things to make something new.
So how do you translate this creativity into your business and blog?
A piece of great advice that I read from the post I cited earlier is to combine aspects of your professional life and happenings in your daily life.
For example, if you went to a coffee shop and had terrible service, you can relate that to your own clinic in a blog post. You can write about how your clinic takes certain steps to make sure that what happened to you, doesn’t happen to your customers.
Leverage What You Already Read & Consume On A Daily Basis
There is a lot of great content out there. Whether it be books, articles, TV shows, or podcasts. You most likely partake in this content as well.
Many of these pieces of content deal with the same thing that you are trying to accomplish.
They’re trying to create great content so that their users can engage and form a deeper bond with the brand. Much in the same way your veterinary clinic would like to engage more with the community and your current clientele.
This is where you truly have to be creative.
Don’t be creative in the sense that you need to think of something entirely new. Be creative in how you connect 2 different topics.
How I Connected My Favorite TV Show with my Profession
If you’d like an example, here is a running series I just started about The Simpsons and how it relates to Digital Marketing and Business.
How I was creative with it was not by trying to teach boring marketing and business lessons through clips of the Simpsons. Rather I found areas of the show that highlight everyday struggles and frustrations of marketers and entrepreneurs.
It’s much more of an amusing series than it is educational.
Alright, I’ll finish my shameless plug. But if you ever want to take a look, you are more than welcome to give it a read 🙂
Which brings us to the last point.
You Miss 100% of the Shots You Don’t Take
Creativity is all about being vulnerable. You cannot wait to come up with the perfect ideas. Because they never come and before you know it, months pass by and nothing has been done.
The only way to get your marketing efforts off the ground is to put yourself out there. Write posts. Some will be corny. Many won’t even be looked at. The point is that you have to keep doing it.
Once you continue producing content you will have attained a great level of experience and have a huge bank of content to show for it.
