I recently celebrated the 365th article on business creativity and innovation that I have co-published on a biweekly basis in a Bangkok Post column titled "Creativity Un-Ltd" and the Thinkergy Blog since April 2007.
You may wonder how I could keep finding new, fresh and relevant content every two weeks to grow my blog/column to 366 articles and counting. Over the years, I have developed and refined a content creation process that helped me find creative topics. Today, I'd like to share with you seven tips that you might find helpful for your blogging or writing activities on any topic dear to your heart.
1. Have a clear view on how to start. Before you begin writing a blog or newspaper column, you need to know that you're ready to start and to maintain it over an extended period. It's not enough to be passionate about a topic; you also need sufficient domain expertise and experience.
When I first approached the business editor of the Bangkok Post in early 2007 with the idea for a regular biweekly column on business creativity and innovation, I submitted a clear plan of the topic areas I envisioned the column would cover -- plus a list of the first 20 articles I intended to write.
So, if you want to start a blog or column and cannot map out the first year of content, then probably you're not ready yet. In that case, soak the sponge (your content reservoir) with more water (topic know-how) before you begin squeezing it.
2. Collect topic ideas in a notebook. Reserve two pages in your notebook to jot down ideas for possible articles. Keep adding to this list whenever an idea for a new article or blog post crosses your mind. That way, you always have a reservoir of potential topics to fall back on.
3. Link your writing to your current professional agenda. During the past one and a half decades, I have created, tested, refined and used four proprietary innovation methods for my company, Thinkergy. Naturally, my professional agenda formed one rich source of content for my writing. So, I regularly wrote about methods or thinking tools we were working on or using at that point in time.
In recent years, I have focused on creating articles to fill vacant spots in the 64 sections of my new book, The Executive's Guide to Innovation, which I expect to launch in the fourth quarter of this year. My advice, then, is to write about topics that you are working on right now, as a way to leverage focus content and work time intelligently.
4. Pay attention to what happens in your work and life. Any remarkable or surprising things that happen at work or in your life can be another excellent inspiration for an article. At work, you might talk about unexpected wins and successes as well as your planned or unplanned failures -- and what you've learned from these.
On a personal basis, you might also spin special moments, surprises, highlights and defeats into an article. Be aware that stories about your losses, failures and setbacks often allow for more vivid stories and significant learning than your wins, successes and highlights.
5. Use regular special events and connect these to your domain topic. One of my strategies to create relevant, fresh content was to piggyback on regularly repeating holidays or special events and link these to the domain of creativity and innovation. For example, for 12 years on Chinese New Year, I published an article using a Chinese Zodiac theme (the last one was "Creativity in the Year of the Ox") through the full cycle of 12 animals. I also looked through a creative lens at major international sports events such as the World Cup or the Olympics, and applied a creative spin to popular holidays such as Christmas or New Year.
6. Opportunistically write about irregular topics that are "hot" for some time. Another tactic I used was to quickly and creatively respond to "hot topics" or discontinuities emerging suddenly. Examples ranged from the 2008 financial crisis to last year's outbreak of Covid-19, which helped me fill several columns with fresh, unique and relevant content that readers appreciated.
Other hot topics were newly emerging business concepts such as digital transformation, sustainability, or open innovation, among many others, or extraordinary events such as the passing of an outstanding creative leader (such as Steve Jobs or Muhammad Ali).
Be aware that if you want to adopt this strategy, you need to write about a topic before others do. As they say, "Eat the pizza while it's hot".
7. Leverage content as much as possible. You might have already noticed that one of my content production secrets is to leverage my various activities and related work outputs as much as possible. I regularly ask myself if anything I am doing in one area right now can be turned into a meaningful article.
For example, as I am both an entrepreneur and an academic, I have made it a habit to sum up in an article the most interesting findings of my research projects (that I mainly disseminate in the form of scientific papers and book chapters). Likewise, I have turned stimulating discussions with fellow academics and innovation practitioners and presentations that I witnessed or delivered at international innovation and creativity conferences into blog articles.
Dr Detlef Reis is the founding director and chief ideator of Thinkergy, the "Know how to Wow" Innovation Company in Asia and beyond. He is also an assistant professor at the Institute for Knowledge & Innovation -- Southeast Asia at Bangkok University, and an adjunct associate professor at the Hong Kong Baptist University.