Creative Matters & You Do, Too
According to Digital Leadership, businesses can create this by investing in and empowering creatives.
What is a competitive (and unfair!) advantage?
According to Robin Landa, Author and Professor (Kean University), the 'A' in her ALTER blueprint stands for this.
What is Attract? Command attention and spark conversations and shares.
In Poet Laureate Joy Harjo's tips for overcoming creative block, she often refreshes her spirit by reading another poet's work she loves, looking at art, or even listening to music. This is more commonly described as finding this.
What is inspiration? She often refers to this as a process of rejuvenation. This gives credence to your own creativity.
According to the Freakonomics podcast with Angela Duckworth, this myth about creative people commonly skews the perception of creative work.
What is that "people who are really unhappy are the ones who are the most creative"? In fact, it has been widely studied that happiness and creativity are linked.
According to Digital Leadership, this is a key way leadership can encourage creativity.
What is getting to know the unique strengths and skills of each team member to leverage their full potential? Skills and interests have meaning.
According to Meta (via VidMob), this is the percentage that creative is directly attributed to business outcomes.
What is (about) 56%?
According to Robin Landa, Author and Professor (Kean University), the 'L' in her ALTER blueprint stands for this.
What is Lodestar? Build around a North Star core idea that aligns with your brand's mission, values, and purpose.
In Poet Laureate Joy Harjo's tips for overcoming creative block, writing or designing things that relate to personal concerns, issues with loved ones, or other life stressors might help release the mind. She frames this process as a form of this type of care.
What is self-care? Personal problems, things both in and out of control cloud the mind and create creative troubles. Expressing these head on can aid in alleviating the top-of-mind (reasonable) distraction.
According to the Freakonomics podcast with Angela Duckworth, when people broaden the possibilities they think of and build resources and connections, a positive feedback cycle occurs. This is explained in this theory by Barbara Fredrickson.
What is the broaden-and-build theory? In other words, when in a positive state of emotion, people tend to make connections that they wouldn’t otherwise make. This can even look like using negative or sad moments as humor and creating positivity through laughter (hence, the cycle).
According to Digital Leadership, nurturing a creative culture does this.
What is boosting employee engagement and satisfaction, leading to higher productivity and retention?
According to Digital Leadership, creativity and innovation allow businesses to stay relevant through this practice.
What is continuous improvement? This helps "future-proof" the business and its decision-making.
According to Robin Landa, Author and Professor (Kean University), the 'T' in her ALTER blueprint stands for this.
What is Timely? Timing is everything--make sure your ideas resonate with current cultural conversations.
In Poet Laureate Joy Harjo's tips for overcoming creative block, she claims the "magic happens" when creatives can find this in their work.
What is a sense of play? Harjo explains that improvisation and experimentation can help let go of one of the largest reasons for creative block: perfectionism.
According to the Freakonomics podcast with Angela Duckworth, a Michigan State University research found that Nobel Prize winners were 2.85 times more likely to have this type of hobby than the average scientist.
What is an artistic or crafty hobby? Having an outlet for creative expression often allows the mind to reset and/or think about things differently or even more clearly. This is not dissimilar to the common "Einstein at the patent office" complex.
According to Digital Leadership, new opportunities and markets are opened via creativity, which in turn drives these two things for the business.
What are growth and expansion? This not only opens it vertically – where an industry audience can live, but also horizontally – impacting a business's future plans to think beyond the current intent of service, product, voice, etc.
According to MoreKeting, (good) content creation has the ability to shine as the go-between agent between these two audiences.
Who are the customers and sales teams? Customers gain trust through content, which can help generate leads that support a sales pipeline and align with business needs.
According to Robin Landa, Author and Professor (Kean University), the 'E' in her ALTER blueprint stands for this.
What is Engage? Stoke interest and motivation, prodding audiences to take action.
According to Single Grain, sometimes the best remedy to creative burnout is this.
What is taking breaks? Breaks help time for reflection, energy replenishment, inspiration, boundary-setting, and returning with intent.
According to the Freakonomics podcast with Angela Duckworth, former VP of Innovation and Creativity at Disney Duncan Wardle wrote in Harvard Business Review that people with fewer resources tend to be more this.
What is creative? Wardle went on to explain his work with Qualtrics in how the internal motto of "constraints breed creativity." This theme is more often expressed by "necessity is the mother of invention." To spin this in more of a wider social scope - "poverty is not the mother of all invention."
According to MoreKeting, results from content creation often take longer than some teams and businesses hope. This timeline usually falls within this range of time.
What is 6 months – 1 year? This range is for significant results. For minor engagement, such as some lead generation or web traffic, it can be in a few weeks to a couple of months. Because of this, leadership and teams must understand impactful content and design requires patience and consistency.
According to Mo Shehu for Column Content, many content creators, designers, and marketers often want to spend time perfecting a graphic, blog, or whitepaper. Shehu suggests that creatives in marketing should aim for this when creating.
What is prolific? Albeit a small exaggeration, the theme runs deep in many content-focused websites and articles: go for excellence, not perfection.
According to Robin Landa, Author and Professor (Kean University), the 'R' in her ALTER blueprint stands for this.
What is Resonate? Address the aspirations and needs of your audience as individuals, not just an intended target.
According to Single Grain, mental health is inherently tied to burnout. For sustained creativity and long-term success, the team suggests doing these two things.
What are prioritizing your well-being and finding joy in your work? The creative mind gets tired just as an athlete's physical body. Remember that you are allowed to choose passionate topics,, explore alternative angles, take breaks, implement efficiency via systems and tools, and delegate (or outsource) tasks.
According to the Freakonomics podcast with Angela Duckworth, in an article titled “Happiness and Creativity: Going with the flow,” psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, asserts that all creative people have this trait in common (which also sets them apart from non-creatives).
What is "they love what they do?" Csikszentmihalyi goes on to explain that as long as creatives have the opportunity to do work they enjoy doing, achieving fame and making money have little impact on their purpose.
According to Zohaib Hassan for Forbes, monitoring a creative's (content/design/ad) performance is important because it helps do this for a business.
What is identifying which content pieces work best? An audience can switch during any time of year or as a business grows. Finding patterns in content that help a team understand what makes it effective and which ones are a waste of time and effort can lead to a more intentional plan of action for repeating (or eliminating) pieces in a campaign.