You are probably wondering what this photo has to do with this post. Well, in part one of this series, Five Key Elements To Creating Compelling Content, our friend, Rubbermaid blogger Jim Dietzel, laid out his five key elements for creating compelling content. Number 3 was “pictures are good.”
Our digital colleague, Rodger Johnson from GetSocialPR, also thinks that imagery can kick your content up a notch. He says use compelling images to support the story, a lesson he learned from his journalism days that still works today.
The photo above may be interesting, but it doesn’t really go with this post. So, good pictures are not enough. Photos can help draw attention to a post, keeping it from looking like a huge gray mass of words. But - to be most effective - the image must complement, or support the the story in some way.
If you are going to use photos, you also must respect copyright law. Don’t just do a Google search and use the images. They may be copyright protected. We did a piece sometime back about some free photo resources that you may want to revisit.
Below are a few more related posts on the use of images in your blog.
An Introduction To Using Images On Blogs
Finding Compelling Flickr Images
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2010 keeps flying by - it’s week #30 already. I hope you are enjoying the creativity links we bring you each week. Here are five more.
Absence Thinking: Think about what is not there.
CATWOE: A checklist for thinking about problems and solutions.
Jump Start: Enter a “How can I?” question, then get a list of adjectives that can help start the brainstorming process.
Mindomo: Use this mind mapping tool to organize your thoughts and start your project with a clear plan.
365 Picture Prompts: Use these photos and imagesto spark your creativity.
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We’re examining the ways to make your blog more compelling. A number of Twitterati responded to my request for their ideas. The quality of writing was on their minds:
As we heard from Jim Dietzel, a Fortune 1000 blogger for Rubbermaid, “Hire a good writer. Seriously.”
Colleague Tom Pick of Webbiquity tells us we must do a better job in naming our posts, using compelling headlines like “Common Myths of…” or “Mistakes to Avoid in…”
Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer thinks we need to consider the way we approach the content. He says to think like a movie trailer, not a journalist. Compelling content isn’t reporting. It’s entertaining.
If you can afford it, hiring a good writer for your blog is solid advice. If you can’t, then you need to become a better writer. A few simple things can help take your writing to the next level. Let’s address a few of these basic ideas that we have tackled here in THINKing previously.
Write Tight - My first news editor hammered one thing into my consciousness: write tight. Leave out the frills, just present the facts and move on. You don’t have to create an act of literature every time you sit down to write. But remember, as Jason Falls points out, simply reporting is not enough. Don’t edit out the entertainment while editing out the extraneous.
Tell Me A Story - Since the dawn of time mankind has been a sucker for a story. We may be wearing synthetics now instead of skins, but that one truth has not changed. Storytelling is a way to add some passion, interest and drama to your blogging.
Tell Me A Story About Me - Well, it’s all about me after all, isn’t it? Don’t tell a self-serving story. Tell one that speaks to the self-interest of the reader.
Get Active - My lovely bride and mystery novelist par excellence, Terry Hoover, is the queen of the vivid verb. Peruse the first chapter of her book, Double Dead, to see what I mean.
Storystarters - Sometimes you are just stuck for an idea or an approach to a blog post. Leap those obstacles with these methods.
Do you have some thoughts on compelling content? Well, what are you waiting for…tell us!
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Igor Stravinsky Agrees: Standards Enable Creativity - There is a stereotype of the creative person who chafes at standards, convinced that any sort of process-driven continuous improvement will have a negative effect on how his work is performed. Just the opposite is true.
Can Creativity Be Taught? - Newsweek says creativity scores among children have been falling since 1990. Can we turn it around?
Forget Brainstorming - Brainstorming in a group became popular in 1953 with the publication of a business book, Applied Imagination. But it’s been proven not to work since 1958, so why are we still trying it?
Creative Car Advertising - Campaign for the Smart Car.
43 Things - Publish your lists to keep yourself accountable and browse through other lists to find creative ideas.
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I have been thinking a lot recently about creating compelling blog content, and at first blush, there seem to be a lot of barriers. But like getting over a barbed wire fence, you just have to step back for a minute and think through your approach so that you don’t catch something important on a barb.
The primary reason I have been pondering the topic is purely selfish.
This blog once had great traffic, but it has fallen off recently due to spam attacks which hijacked my blog and took out my RSS feed. I had nearly 1,000 subscribers to that feed. Not a huge number in the grand scheme of things, but enough interested folk that we had some good conversations going. So, now I find myself trying to rebuild what I had originally built over a span of about five years.
Compelling content brought subscribers here in the first place, and it will bring them back.
I reached out to some of my Twitterati to ask them to define compelling content. Their input will be the basis for much of this series on compelling content. My friend Jim Dietzel from Rubbermaid was first to get back to me and he had a list of five key elements.
#1. Hire a good writer. Seriously.
#2. Write about what your audience cares about.
#3. Pictures are good.
#4. Make it easy to read/scan
#5. Look at what is working and do more of that.
That’s a pretty simple, but effective formula. We’ll explore these ideas in future posts.
I’d love to hear from you, as well. So, please comment on this post with your thoughts on creating compelling content, or take our poll.
More on developing compelling content:
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When it comes to creativity and innovation, you are your own worst enemy. We wrote about this sometime back and this story illustrates it perfectly:
A New York publisher was concerned about the lack of creativity among his editorial and marketing staff. He hired psychologists to try to determine what differentiated the creative employees from the others. After a year of study, the psychologists discovered that there was only one difference between creative and non-creative employees: belief in their creativity. Creative employees believed they were creative, and the non-creative ones believed they were not. So, you are creative, I guarantee it. All you have to do is believe me. Is that too much to ask?
Mike Brown discusses this and other creativity-related topics in this free ebook, Taking The NO Out Of InNOvation. It’s worth a read.
]]>- Have a plan before you start.
- Give great content.
We’ve written about these topics before and we are preparing more in-depth posts on them.
What other items in this infographic should we write about? We’d love your thoughts and even some guest posts. Comment below, or drop us a note.
Via: The Steel Method
Our weekly post providing you some fodder for your little gray cells continues this week #28 of 2010. Here are a few thought-provoking links to stimulate your creativity.
5 Websites To Spark Your Creativity
The Key To Creating Remarkable Things
5 Creativity Refreshers For The Workplace From The Work Of Art
]]>Communications Planning 101 - Developing a communications plan requires a disciplined approach. Your first order of business is reviewing your current program for impact and efficiency.
How To Be A Great Radio Guest - Radio - despite changes in media habits - still is a great way to get in front of a lot of people. As a radio talk show guest on a national program, millions could hear your message.
Pithy Pitches - Your painstakingly crafted email pitch is completely customized and ready to send to the in box of that carefully targeted reporter. There it goes! Did you hear that? That was your email pitch being deleted.
Six Tips For Perfect Email Pitches - Your media pitches can go straight over the plate. With a little forethought, and a few tips, you can throw fewer balls and more media relations strikes.
Slow Day? Create News - Sometimes there seems to be no client news worthy of coverage. That’s when the savvy PR pro digs deep into the old bag of tricks and pulls out one of these ideas to perk things up.
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Do You Recognize These 10 Mental Blocks to Creative Thinking?
10 Ways To Expand Your Creative Possibilities
6 Ways To Go Beyond Your Limiting Assumptions
201 Ways To Arouse Your Creativity