How do you help your creative team to unclog the Creative Block?

“I am stuck”

Everybody, irrespective of their job have felt stuck at one point. It’s known as creative block in the marketing world.

When you hit that block, it is hard to come out of the hamster wheel process you picked along the way. Everything — the content, the ideas and the thought process becomes diluted. One common symptom of this creative block is your focus is on quantity rather than quality.

The great copywriters or the content creator(or as I call content cookers), never focus on the number. It is always about quality for them.

One of my favorite content creators is Lois Lane, the girlfriend of Superman. She is an extraordinary journalist. She inks her thoughts with a significant story. At the end of every Superman movie, Lois writes a special message with a social note, an emotional encounter, and a question.

Stan Lee, the kingmaker of the marvel comics, never ceases to amaze with his creativity. His content also has three important pieces, attractive introduction, engaging storyline, and enticing CTA. (If you watch one Marvel movie, you cannot stop till you complete entire series)

It is common even for these giants to get dissolved in the middle of their content creation process. In one of his interviews, “If you have an idea and if you believe it, go for it. But not all of your ideas will be good, it will be stupid too”. This shows that the creative blocks are common.

Have you hit that road too? (I can hear you telling, why the hell I am here then!?!)

I take that road sometimes. They make me feel anxious and depressed. I do some random things and bring myself to the track. But this time I wanted more than just a temporary band-aid, so I did a 90-days of social media detox to unclog creative blocks — avoid places where most of the content was dumped to me.

I quit watching YouTube, paused Instagram scrolling, muted WhatsApp notifications, unplugged podcasts and the heart wrecking move was turning off the “LinkedIn reading”.

On the brighter side, I was lucky to spend quality time with three prominent people who helped me with building a rigid content creating and marketing frameworks without getting diluted often. Here are the things I learnt and hope it is useful too. This is 3-step process, which I do for every new service, product or campaign.

Learning Never Stops

The first person who taught me the important part of the content creation is Amitabh, National Program Manager, Lenovo. We met during a digital marketing training session. It is a blessing for me to teach him. He has moved mountains in bringing Lenovo sales to the top-notch in India.

His experience is more than my age and he says, “It is when you stop learning, it stops flowing. If you want to understand the nuances of framing new marketing ideas, keep your learning consistent, constant, and continuous,”

Most of our training sessions would be him teaching me the tricks, discipline, and routine that every sales/marketer person needs to have irrespective of the technology advancement. Here are his methods to learn daily without requiring extra time in your schedule.

4 ways to learn (new) quality things

1. Don’t rely on too much with social media to learn. The dilution gets even quicker. Social media needs to be at a social distance. It can create ripples and leave you with unfinished projects.
2. Reading or listening skill is important than talking and writing. The more you read, the less you write and the more you listen, the less you talk. If you follow both of them, there is a synchronised content creation process.
3. Productive dates or texts is more awakening. To a complete stranger or a friend from work, talk about the user engagement or product plan throughout the night. (this is a treat to introverts like me)
4. Teach at least one person so you don’t forget, so it sinks inside your soul.

Your Customer is Your Story

The next important step is to implement what you learnt. While implementing your new profound idea, you need 99.999% a convincing content (story) that has seamless flowing ink.

Most of the time, the ink is dry and doesn’t want to come. The writing becomes messy and you remain somewhere between the hungover-sober mode. The reason is you forgot or missed why you started and what is the reason of its existence.

Even while building a sales funnel, “Why the funnel will work is important than how the funnel will work,”

This is hard to figure out. Many of you had stared the screen without knowing what to put in. I call this a “Sober Staring Contest” mode. During this time, I had the chance of meeting a phenomenal person who introduced me to idol of content creation — your customer.

Balamaniyam, founder of an advertising agency(oops, can’t disclose her company name in public), personal branding specialist to MS Dhoni, head of the CSK branding team and she is from MICA. It is her creativity is the reason we all get CSK fever.

The lady has got more than just words. I shot so many questions while I had my time with her,

How do I know what to put in social media?

Who will tell me what are my customer needs?

Where do I ask if my content helped them?

How to frame my content strategy?

Here is her branding exercise plan, which is fun and 100% productive.

4 actions plans for content creation

1. Write all the questions you have in your mind about content creation, social media posts, webinar ideas and pretty much everything you wanted to ask your founder or manager.
2. Reach to your customers in offline mode, get on call, or face to face. Ask them all the questions you have.
3. Write all the answers. Now if you look at the answers, you will see a pattern. Major of the customers have something in common. That is the key reason they chose your business.
4. What if you don’t have customers? Then do the same with the people you think who fits your customer persona.

The lesson is,

“The answers are with your customers not in any of the online channels”.

Your content is with your user. It is her wisdom that pushed me to explore beyond social media channels.

You need a system, not a goal

Content creation becomes diluted when you don’t have a robust system. First two steps are the baby steps that keeps your ideas fresh, but this step leads to the persistence. It is about building a system. The person who inspired me with this is Hari Narayanan, director of Ram-Nath Chemical trading company (75 years).

His belief, “Systems survive, goals don’t. Goals have a tendency to put you in a state of failure or risks, but system creates empire. It leads to forming a fresh team, a new brand and even a new company.”

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, in his book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life, mentions,

Losers have goals

Winner have systems

When you write or create content, you get all worked up and try to have goals like that may be unrealistic sometimes. Focus on making the whole content creation process as a system.

I hear few of you mumbling, “Creativity doesn’t work that way”. I thought the same too until I built my system, which is an organised chaos. In the art of content marketing, systems are hard to set up, but looking at HubSpot and Content marketing institute, it makes sense. They are putting out always meaningful content through a clever system. The improper content management system is the reason many marketers feel frustrated many times.

Conclusion

Digital marketing is a field where so many misconceived theories revolve. The field demands many skills — plan strategy, training resources, analysing, networking, writing, editing and hosting events. But it requires one vital skill — Storytelling. Well, it is underrated at some places and overrated at other places. Let us debate over that another day.

When you go forward, it is common to get lost in the middle. Remember the basics because they help you find back your path.

If you resonated with me in this creative block process, here is a deal, drop me a message at my LinkedIn handle and we can have that productive date chat :-) (I promise to be not boring)

Well, I am ending up my social media detox but it opened a few other dimensions in the offline world where I can hustle for my dream.