Wish to make a livelihood out of your creative endeavours? Turn your art into business—or your business into art?
In this article, you will learn useful strategies that can turn your artistic or entrepreneurial dreams into reality. These are drawn from the book Real Artists Don’t Starve by bestselling author Jeff Goins.
JK Rowling has it. So do Paul McCartney. And Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream.
What I’m talking about is creativity – that elusive yet highly coveted ingredient which we content creators crave.
“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” – Oscar Wilde
Being talked about is the holy grail for content marketers in today’s attention starved age. You need to produce articles, infographics, videos and social media posts which are not only searchable but shareable.
As a content marketing strategist, I write a lot of content. And sometimes, I hit a wall.
When that happens, I do not scream, shout or sulk. Instead, I do what comes naturally to me. I may take a walk, catch 40 winks, or grab a coffee.
Image from Charm Magazine
When was the last time you did something truly creative? How did it feel?
Whichever profession you are in, you will experience days of creative famine. These are the horrifying days when you feel stuck in a rut, unable to cough out anything faintly imaginative or intriguing.
Guilty pleasures. That’s something many of us suffer from. Especially when it comes to consuming online content.
We scroll through never-ending feeds of the sizzling and sensational. From celebrity confessions, adorably cute animals, to gruesome murders, religious riots and the latest episode of “Who should we publicly shame today?”
Have you felt your creativity drying up? You know, that awful feeling of hitting the wall and getting a writer’s or artist’s block?
Well, dive into the wacky illustrated world of Hugh MacLeod, author of Ignore Everybody – And 39 Other Keys to Creativity. Creator of the hugely popular Gaping Void cartoons and a copywriter in Madison Square Avenue, MacLeod dishes out lots of mantras in the slim volume.
Image from ahhh_poetry
Have you heard the story of the frog in a boiling pot?
Well, if you drop a live frog into a boiling pot of water, it would immediately leap out and save its life. If, however, our webbed protagonist sits comfortably in a pot of room temperature water which is slowly heated up, it would be slowly boiled to death.
Frog legs, anyone?
Do you know that in 1795, French despot Napoleon Bonaparte offered 12,000 francs as a reward for a grand challenge to preserve food?
Or that Nike’s gamified platform Nike+ helped it to capture nearly 50% of the running shoe market?
Air Asia knows a thing or two about catching attention (source of image)
Let’s face it. We have all hit the content marketing wall.
Writers of all stripes and affiliations know what I mean. Your brain freezes. Your fingers stiffen. Your energy levels dip.
How are you going to deliver that compelling piece of customer-focused content?