Whether You’re An Individual or a Business, Engaged in Social Media or Not, You Need to Consider the Quality and Consistency of Your Content.

Never Underestimate the Power of a Shower.

If you’re like me and read other bloggers’ blogs, receive regular Webinar invites, get a weekly e-newsletter, or listen to a weekly podcast, you may sometimes think to yourself, “My word! When do they have the time to come up with all this CONTENT?”

Well, I have figured it out.

In the shower.

All great ideas come to you in the shower, no? Is it just me or is it being in perfect isolation with your thoughts, as warm (or scalding hot, as is my preference) water beats down on your head that really gets those inner content molecules colliding? I don’t know. But I do know there are a few other places where you can generate some really good ideas…

Twitter: the BirdBath of Idea Sharing.

Practice makes perfect, (approximately 10,000 hours of it according to Malcolm Gladwell). And while I’m no blogging “Outlier” and I’ve clearly spent my 10,000 hours with reckless abandon, I’m wise enough to know that in between blog posts I still need to preen my brain a bit. That’s why I twitter. It’s the birdbath of idea sharing, perfect for the time in between those high-shower-powered posts, so you stay engaged in the conversation and keep your thoughts percolating. If you’re using twitter effectively, you’re sure to see, hear, discuss, link to, tweet and retweet some really great ideas.

Showertime Fail Whale? Take another!

During stressful times, when the creative pressure is really on, I sometimes take a second shower, should the first result in a total Fail Whale. If a shower doesn’t do it for you, a few folks far more committed to water conservation than I am have created a handful of really helpful ideas to refresh your thinking and get you going again:

• 200 Blog Post Ideas for your Company Blog
• 101 Blog Posting Ideas
• 40 Sites for Writers
• Blogging Secrets Revealed
• A Blog About Getting Blog Ideas
• Time-tested, proven story ideas for your employee newsletter
• 31 content tips and ideas for your B2B email newsletter
• Small Biz: Know when to outsource your email marketing efforts

Good Conditioning for Your Business…

No one says you have to blog or tweet, but if you’re in business, you need to be connecting and conversing with your clients/customers/vendors/etc regularly, whether it’s in traditional media or new media (preferably, both). So whether you develop your content in-house or you outsource, take a minute to think about all of the “content” your business generates, in any/every medium, and ask yourself:

• In what ways are you maintaining meaningful business relationships?
• Do you have a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system in place?
• Do you have a process in place for internal or external communication that all employees are familiar with?
• How accessible are you and in how many different ways are you accessible to clients or employees?
• Do you broadcast messages or invite two-way communication that’s not always sales-driven?
• Are you letting your client base know you’re on top of the latest industry trends (even if you haven’t implemented them)?
• Have you empowered your employees to be ambassadors of your business or your brand? After all they’re out there developing content, too! What are they saying about you? Are you monitoring your “reputation” on the Internet? For example, is your business using Google Analytics and if so, who outside of IT is reviewing the data regularly?
• What is your Reputation Management strategy?
• How effectively are you using email and could your email be doing more?
• Is your business always ready to “pounce?”

So As Not To Water Down My Point, Here’s EXACTLY What I’m Trying To Say:

1. The best business communications often involve elements of two-way conversation (that is, a “call to action” is useless if you’re not ready to “respond” to it).
2. Creating truly valuable conversations requires a communication and CONTENT strategy.
3. Coming up with new content takes time and dedicated thought, and possibly multiple daily showers.
4. (NOTE: This is the big one.) If you’re not generating valuable content, are you at least monitoring the content being generated about you?

Rinse and Repeat.

The demand for new content is continuous, so I’ll never underestimate the power a shower will have on my creative process. And now that you know where I came up with this blog post idea, I would love to hear your favorite ways (or favorite place) for coming up with new content for your communications.

For those who have yet to try their hands at commenting, this is a great opportunity to get your feet wet. (Ba-dum-bump.) I’m not looking for any kind of huge comment-commitment here. Just the name of a place where you do some good thinking. It’s a word or two. No biggie.

Think about it. Your comment to this post could be the fastest, easiest and yet most thought-provoking content you’ll ever have to create.

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Tags: Blog Ideas, Content Development, Content Ideas, email newsletter, Malcolm Gladwell, Metrics, Monitoring, Reputation Management

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 11th, 2009 at 10:00 pm and is filed under Blog, Social Media, Time. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.