4 Great Reads on Creativity and Social Media

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Reads of the Week – 07/26/2014

There’s a lot of content out there in Content Marketing Land—which is a good thing. It means you don’t have to reinvent the wheel! Here are four great pieces I read this week that offer fresh ideas on creativity and the social media landscape.

The Difference Between Active and Passive Social Media
by Bent Bunge for Business2Community

Favorite Soundbite:
Now I could just hope and pray for people to come and talk to me, but I learned during middle school that this usually doesn’t work out so well. Instead, I mingle, I keep my ears open, trying to find a group of people who are talking about something that interests me, then casually join in.

Takeaway:
It’s the socializing at a party analogy—which you’ll hear a lot—but here it’s really about trying to strike up a conversation with people you’d 1) liked to talk to and 2) share some common interest with. Elementary, er, middle school concept, but one that bears repeating!

Andrew Fitzgerald on Adventures in Twitter Fiction: TED Talks for Writers
by Heather van der Hoop for The Write Life

Favorite Soundbite:
Fitzgerald draws parallels to the advent of serial radio shows in the 1930s, saying that “radio is a great example of how a new medium defines new formats which then define new stories.” He explains how this real-time storytelling blurs the lines between fact and fiction and provides opportunities for writers to play with different identities and anonymity while building new and creative stories.

Takeaway:
There’s so many. The 11-minute video is really worth watching. It left me with a lot of ideas for being creative with Twitter for personal artistic reasons and just as many questions wondering how marketing campaigns could be created that were both awesome and completely new as well as valuable for clients and their fans.

9 Advanced—and Ethical—Techniques for Spying on Your Competitors Online
by Neil Patel for Entrepreneur

Favorite Soundbite:
One service, Topsy, provides a handy line graph for tracking a site’s daily Twitter mentions. You can perform searches by Twitter handle, domain name, or keyword.

Takeaway:
Yes, you could use these to scope out a competitor’s web, social, and marketing presence—but, you could also use the same tools to: help clients improve their strategy, look for areas of improvement to recommend for potential clients, or even gain insight into your own performance.

Putting Thought Into Things
by Oliver Reichenstein on the iA.net blog

Favorite Soundbite:
Do web projects fail because everybody except us is stupid? Or evil? Or both? Is it because small agencies get small budgets and no time? Because established web designers lie a lot? Because while the layout is great, the content sucks? Because the content is great but the layout sucks?

Or is it because we have 22 drawers full of of comfortable tools, fantasies and excuses to avoid the pain of sitting down and thinking?

Takeaway:
Thinking is hard. Sometimes there isn’t an easy answer. The way to win isn’t to complain or point blame at people or machines. It’s about taking the time necessary to think things through and allowing yourself to be vulnerable to mistakes in the pursuit of success. Deep things!

Did you read something amazing this week? Let us know in the comments. Enjoy the rest of the weekend and happy posting!

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