If your email marketing looks like the example below, you may well be loosing a large percentage of readers who have no sense of what your offer is or why you are writing.

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This recent email from a Charleston restaurant gave me no clue as to why I might want to display the images. There is no text message, no insight into what the Special Mother’s Day Brunch consists of. Sadly, too many email marketing campaigns fail by not including text messages.

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Of inspiration and dreams

In my thirties I was an executive director of an arts non-profit. I was continually amazed by the creativity of those whom I served. Artists and their inspiration were and are vital for my own inspiration. In the course of my five years’ work with the agency, I arrived at the idea of eventually opening an arts retreat center where artists from diverse fields could be “curated” to be in co-residence in order to create synergy and cross-pollination of ideas. I’ve always believed that new ideas come from mixing disparate thoughts and perspectives.

Inspiration from un-related items

Via Fast Company, author Tina Seelig shares a few perspectives on cross pollination and where to find inspiration. Seelig enumerates ways to develop ideas using cross-pollination. Her note,

“…playful inventions … result from connecting and combining objects and concepts that on the surface seem unrelated. By exploring ways to fuse them together, we see many surprising and interesting ideas surface.”

These words struck just the right chord with me. I’ve been working on the development of a corporate identity for a new client.

Avoiding pre-existing thoughts

My client’s business is a new-in-concept service uniting her lifetime of experience and education into a brilliant service for those wishing to build a custom home or renovate or expand an existing one. She will provide a service previously existing primarily in the commercial interior design world to the homeowner. Many of the words and phrases one uses to convey the “what” of her business are weighted with pre-existing definitions. Wishing to avoid pre-existing or connotative thought, I’ve been wandering in the land of unrelated items.

Finding inspiration

To find my inspiration, I’ve examined all the platitudes, idioms, and phrases which get at the “what” or “why” of the client’s work. I’ve also brainstormed with my business partner, and my client and my colleagues. I’ve created lists and phrases and smashed together more than a few ideas. And there may be a few nuggets of gold in there.

At this point, my greatest challenge is to stay out of my own way–preventing myself from determining which idea is “best” or “most workable” or keep myself from deleting any idea.

Where do others gain inspiration?

I asked a few Twitter friends how they gain inspiration. And similarly to Seelig and me, Doretha Walker*, uses a combination of tactics.

Realizing that one cannot wait on inspiration to spring from others, Walker says, “I decided I needed to inspire myself. I started small. I wrote down only the good things that happened to me (real and imaginary.) You laugh at imaginary, but there are times when I feel great because I thought something happened or I dreamed something and I take credit for those things.” Critical to her self-inspiration is the lack of judgment. Staying open to all ideas pays off as Walker found. “After a while the list was very long.”

Self-judgment gets in the way of creativity. As does lack of gratitude. Gratitude and the feeling of bounty beget more. Walker has tapped into that too.

“When things get bad I read my list and channel those good feelings. If only for a moment in time, I feel better. Those tiny moments over time add to minutes, hours, and then days.”

“I also thank God and myself for things that happen throughout the day. Thanking myself is sometimes just the words THANK YOU or it is run, a yoga class, a break from grading papers, or other things.”

“It has become second nature now. I am appreciative when others encourage and support me; but I feel so much better when I allow myself to bask in my glory even for a short time.”

And there it is, the single most critical element to coaxing, cajoling, canoodling inspiration–lack of self-judgment coupled with delight in your ability to be creative.

So, whether your inspiration comes from combining disparate things, examining idioms, or reflections on bounty, bid it come with some of the habits detailed here and in Seelig’s post. But, bid it come, for life without inspiration is little fun. 

*Doretha, who established the Walker Phenomenal Spirit Award that funds women’s dreams, is a marathoner and triathlete. She is a public speaker, author of The Traits that built African American Women Leaders in the Area of Governance in South Carolina, an academic ebook, frequent guest columnist for the Post and Courier’s Moxie section and book reviewer for the newspaper. She is also a former regular contributor to Living Roots magazine and guest blogger on several sites. Her own blog, We Can Fly Higher, inspires people, especially women, to think bigger and aim higher. dorethawalker.com

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Click on a thumbnail above to view one of the sample research queries and how results are presented.

Blogging is one of the most strategic ways a business can position itself as a trustworthy, reputable and knowable source of products and information. However, if you aren’t regularly adding value to the conversation when you blog, or posting information people want to know about or solving their problems, you may not gain any traction with prospective customers.

How do you find information that’s current and where do you get inspiration?

You can always search the Web with Google or Bing, however, if you want real-time or consumer-curated insights which are more genuine and more helpful and which provide absolute insight into your consumer’s needs, there are other options. The sources we’ll discuss here all provide genuine consumer-relevant information to inspire posts, which is your imperative as a blogging business owner.

Using interesting and relevant topics for your posts is a better way of getting blog inspiration than relying solely on what you think is important, though, that also has a place in your blog topic calendar. If you search, review and analyze live topics and trends relevant to your business and which are top-of-mind across the Web, you’ll meet consumer needs and business needs as well as get keen business insights.

Using the example of a cupcake shop wanting to get inspiration and learn what’s trending, let’s review a number of sources analyzed below. There is a hyperlinked cupcake example (search) for each of these sources, so click on each hyperlink to experience how these keyword focused searches work on each platform.

Some of the ways that you can find current topics of interest include:

1. Google Trends—Google actively indexes in real-time what people are searching for now, so using Google Trends is like having a crystal ball giving you real time access to the global mind. Using this Google Trends, you can see a graphic representation of the topic’s growth and decline, as well as important and related keywords and countries where the topic is trending. Google Trends Cupcake Example.
2. Twitter Search—Twitter, the micro-blogging platform, has a powerful search feature. Twitter Search allows you to dive headlong into the stream-of-consciousness-slice-of-life-Tweets of Twitter users.  Using Twitter to search the global hive mind provides you with a great set of “here’s what we’re talking about” and access to the a real voice of your customer. You can search Twitter by keywords or hashtags, the active operators which immediately categorize information tagged. Hashtag examples are #CHS for Charleston, and #Foodies for food lovers. Twitter Keyword search example for Cupcake. Twitter #cupcake search.
3. Storify – This story-building website allows people to curate and compile topical, thematic stories based on information they find on the Web. Searching Storify gives you a sense of what people have curated as important on specific topics. And because this is a search among curated content, you will find topical ideas from multiple social sites and the Web. Storify Cupcake Research Example.
4. Instagram and Statigram – The photo sharing platform Instagram allows users to hashtag images. Through Statigram, you can search tags, and topics for visual inspiration for blog posts. Remember, blog posts can be photos, graphics, videos, and text based. Just use the tag search which should be formatted like this example: http://statigr.am/tag/cupcake Just change the word cupcake to be your search term. Don’t limit yourself to text only. Instagram and Statigram Cupcake Research Example.
5. DIGG – Is one of the ‘granddaddies” of the curated Web. Originally started as a bookmarking site where one could curate news, websites and webpages of interest, now it is both this and a site where people share and thumb-up curated content based on interest. When you DIGG something, you can signal your feelings for it by giving it a ‘thumb up’ or ‘digg’ and you can share it to social media, and can tag it with keywords and categories. When viewed through the your research lens, DIGG search results allow you to interpret what individuals value for later use. You can also see how popular an item is and gauge it’s virality by how many times it’s received a thumb up or been shared socially. DIGG Cupcake Research Example.
6. Alexa – Is a site which provides website ranking data, including relevant keywords for which a specific website ranks and that site’s percentage of search activity. You can also use Alexa for keyword research and get data-specific URLS/Domains and ordered examples of sites relevant to your searched keywords. Alexa is helpful for blog post inspiration and for search engine optimization research. If you are want competitive insights to allow you to gain share of voice over your competition, Alexa is a great tool for competitor research. Cupcake Research Example on Alexa.

There are many ways go gain inspiration for blog posts. These are examples of some of my favorite ones. What are your favorite ways to get blog post inspiration? Share yours and help compile a list for everyone’s benefit – because, that is why we’re all here – to help one another.

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Good solid basic WordPress video tutorials and training

When we build a WordPress powered website for a client, we always include a two hour tutorial covering all the basics of using your website and the features of WordPress. We’ve even made a few WordPress video tutorials to help anyone out with some of the more important things you need to know. We’ve often wanted to be able to point people to a good video training series and thanks to the Charleston WordPress Users Group, I was directed to the WP Tuts Plus series.

If you’ve always wanted to know how to embed a video, or use the media library, how to manage comments and more, these basic tutorial videos from WP101 Basix Training are just up your alley. Don’t delay, because WordPress Charleston Users Group says they may not be available for free forever.

If one-to-one training is more your speed, give me a call. I provide WordPress tutorials in person and through screen sharing sessions.

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There is a reason that across history and in religious ceremonies burning effigies have helped quell the public’s anger, calm fears, and refocus the mind on new beginnings. Courts of law decide guilt and innocence and accomplish the same thing. Contemporary institutions would do well to learn from this and understand the call of the masses for visible acceptance of responsibility. There is a court of public opinion and they will determine your organization’s fate – if only in their individual minds.

After months of study, an independent investigation [PDF] report regarding the Skip Reville Citadel sexual abuse crisis has been released. The report finds there was no attempt to cover up or conceal the situation. Instead the report describes a limp, pallid attempt at mitigation and single uninformed corporate counsel staff member’s investigation attempt that never raised a red flag or reported the severity to his superiors. This failing, is the cause of much of the public’s continual disgust with The Citadel. The leaders at The Citadel have failed to understand this and continue to lack the boldness to offer public contrition for this omission. Instead, they have danced around the point of “legal obligation” to report.

In his Executive Summary attorney Joseph M. Mcculloch, Jr., who acted an independent coordinator of the investigation performed by two firms writes,

“ … there appeared to be no conspiracy or decision process with an underlying purpose of concealment of the allegation. Rather, it was a well intentioned but inadequate investigation conducted by a single administrative member, operating in a vacuum of policy or procedure, with the administration passively relying upon incomplete and sporadic progress reports which were perceived by administration to be adequate at the time, and general counsel’s unilateral decision that due to the expressed position of the complainant and family desiring privacy the institution should not report.”

The two portions of the report review the investigative actions [PDF] taken at the time of the sexual abuse report to the Office of the President of The Citadel and an institutional review [PDF] of The Citadel’s policies and procedures which must be strengthened or put in place to prevent any further opportunities for child sexual abuse.

What the public wants

I know the public believes that there was a cover-up in this case because there was no raising of a red flag, no light on a horrible event—then or now. So, in the ongoing opinion of the public, there was no shock and no statement of “a terrible thing has happened.” The public believes that The Citadel deliberately hid what happened. No report is going to change this perception now.

If your firm finds itself involved in a scandalous situation, always put yourself in the emotional place of an outside onlooker. Feel their intense emotions – then respond to those emotions with sincere statements of sympathy for the victims. While you must also address the details of the incident and how it will be prevented in the future, any missteps in addressing the intense emotions of  onlookers who put themselves in the place of the victim will leave your firm damaged, no matter how well you mitigate physical or financial damage.

Of the two independent investigations into the 2011 high-profile higher-education sexual abuse cases (Penn State and The Citadel,) the Freeh Report did more to begin the repair of Penn State’s damaged reputation, because it was emotional, vivid and immediate in addition to addressing facts. And it called for dismissal of those perceived to be guilty of allowing the environment where abuse occurred.

Public guilt and contrition required

The only thing that might have changed the public’s perception of The Citadel then and now is absolute openness – the bright light of public scrutiny on any similar incident. The public wants a scapegoat or a flogging. And in these reports released by The Citadel, there is none.

While President Rosa is on record as going on air and declaring, “We could have done more…” it was far too little, too late, and no wimpy report is going to remove the stench of perceived guilt now. The Citadel has too many clumsy mis-steps to clear their name in the short-term. Perhaps becoming the beach-head of child abuse prevention, or time, and dedication to prevention, and education will repair their damaged reputation. And in this there is hope.

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