Since the mid-2000s, millions of brands have flocked to social media in an effort to earn a piece of the perceived value of social media marketing. Because these social networks connect billions of people and have the potential to improve both your reputation and your traffic streams, the hypothetical return on your investment could be enormous.
However, this increased popularity has also led to increased competition—which means your run-of-the-mill strategies will have a hard time standing out in the crowd. You need more creative ideas if you want your brand to be differentiated, but at the same time, you can’t force creativity.
So, what’s left to do?
Strategies to Improve Creativity
Instead of forcing yourself to be more creative, you have to create an environment that naturally encourages more creativity. You can do that with these strategies:
- Work remotely. According to Dialpad, between 77 and 83 percent of workers agree that working from home boosts their productivity and creativity—that’s a massive figure. If possible, consider spending more time working from home, or at least get out of the office to a café or a similarly comfortable environment.
- Create a better work environment. According to Larry Kim, your environment has a substantial impact on how creative you think and feel. Working from home is a great first step to building a more comfortable, creatively stimulating workplace, but you also need to make it your own. Keep pictures, toys, trinkets, and other decorations around your desk to inspire you to keep working and feel like yourself. You’ll also want to invest in nice furniture, including a desk and a comfortable chair.
- Expose yourself to diverse experiences. Try to break out from the routine whenever you can. Getting trapped in a rut prevents you from doing your best thinking, while seeking out novel and unexpected experiences will help you learn, grow, and come up with new ideas. This could mean anything from taking a new route to work to going skydiving—you just have to do something new.
- Listen to inspiring music. Background music helps some people work harder and think clearer, but if you choose creatively inspiring music, you’ll be all but guaranteed to come up with better ideas. Poetic lyrics and complex melodies help your mind think in different ways and can help you return to a calm, contemplative state if you’re stressed.
- Engage with different people. Just like diverse experiences can help you come up with new ideas, engaging with a diverse range of people can do the same. Talk to people whenever you can and learn what they have to teach you; you’ll get more perspective on how the world works and may earn some secondary ideas in the process.
- Follow lots of interesting accounts. There are tons of examples of brands on social media doing amazing things—just take a look at this list from Hubspot for some examples. Make sure you follow these interesting, creative brands and pay attention to what they post. You don’t want to steal any of their ideas, but you will want to draw inspiration from them. For example, think about how they’re trying to connect with their audience or think of a unique spin you could put on their most recent ideas.
- Take time to decompress. When you stop consciously thinking about a problem, your subconscious mind tends to continue working on it. This is why it’s so important to take breaks during work, get enough sleep, exercise, and meditate—the more chances you give your mind to decompress, the more time your subconscious mind has to work (and the less strain you’ll put on yourself in the meantime). When trying to come up with new ideas or develop your campaign, make sure you’re taking ample time for yourself between tasks, during evenings, and of course, in days off.
Getting Started
It may seem overwhelming at first, but as you grow more familiar with your own creative strengths and limitations, you’ll uncover better strategies to encourage more ideas from within. Some of these tactics will naturally work better for you than others, and you may find strategies nowhere on this list that help you more than anything else. Remain open and try not to put too much pressure on yourself; the more experience you gain, the easier it will be.
