Business Sphere

It is an accepted fact that a blog is like a product or a service, and that blogging is similar to a business.

Yet, during the past days, I have read in many blog posts by different bloggers that their creative juices of blogging seemed to have dried up, that they were looking for other ideas to blog about, and that they were not able to update their posts for sometime because they got tired of writing frequently on similar topics. A few bloggers even went to the extent of selling their blogs!

Well, that is normal if you will not reinvent your business, product, or blog. But life is full of constant change, and change we must if we want to stay alive, intellectually, socially, physically and even spiritually.

Recently I’ve rediscovered my clippings of  a magazine article that discusses about taking creative leaps written by James F. Bandrowski, a management consultant. I’ve found the principles that Bandrowski outlined to be very applicable to any endeavor, including blogging.

The best way to reinvent your product, service, or even your blogging, is by taking creative leaps. Here are six (6) ways to train yourself to take the creative leaps.

1). Visualize. Visualize yourself one year from now.  Visualize what your product or service or your blog be like one year from now and beyond. How will customers be served better than today? How will your readers be informed or served better six months from now than at present. What would you like yourself to be a year from now? Your business? How about your blog a year from now? Will you still be blogging and what topics and who are the readers?

2. Ideal Company or Blog. Ask your friends and colleagues and readers to describe your main competitor in your business or blog in detail. Cover all aspects and for this exercise, disregard feasibility and resource limitations. Then ask: “If you could have anything this competitor has, what would it be?” The answer to this question will give you a fresh perspective within which to rethink your options and plan things out. It is like saying you are given a new lease on life.

3. Sweeping Solutions. Finding a total solution for the situation is often simpler than trying to solve the individual elements. This means looking at the forest than see individual trees in finding solutions to a situation or problem that bug you and hamper your creativity to plan, think and do.

4. Perfect Product/ Good Blog. Ask customers to fantasize about the products that could be provided to either existing customers or new ones if there were no technical or financial limitations. Ask the readers and subscribers or even your blogger-friends to fantasize about your blog, its theme, layout, posts, and what they want to see and read in their minds’ eyes.

5. Ideal Service. View your customers as partners-the same with your blog readers. If they do well, you do well also. Don’t think in terms of selling products, or selling your ads in your blog. Sell the solution to all the customer’s and readers related problems.

6. Comic Relief. Hatching radically new ideas calls for total breaks with tradition. One way to encourage is to have a creativity session with your friends, colleagues, management team or if it’s in blogging, with your bloggers’ network. During creativity session, request that all participants come up with wild ideas-as outrageous and /or funny as possible. Humor activates the creative imagination. When people laugh, they get relaxed and they think better and more creatively.

In sum, taking creative leaps is the best way to reinvent a product, service, or a blog. The ideas that emerge may allow you to change the rules or habits that you are following and getting used to or better yet, invent a whole new rule.