Creativity has been defined as the foundation for innovation and it goes hand in hand with marketing, both being very important factors when you are running a business, as Peter F. Drucker puts it:
Business has only two functions
— marketing and innovation
There are several things you can do to increase your creativity. An important factor is curiosity – a critical element to discovery and learning. Curiosity can lead you to good conversations, a more open mind and a new understanding which can lead to creations. Young children can be particularly curious, they like to taste things, handle things and ask endless questions.
As we get older, our curiosity often lessens (Coie, 1974) and research indicates that adults think of curiosity as an attribute that not everyone has (Engel, 2011). Curiosity is a part of being human but sometimes it just needs to be consciously enhanced and set free, as this quote by Albert Einstein suggests:
Curiosity is a delicate little plant which, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom
Curious social media expert
A good example of someone who uses their curiosity to come up with good marketing ideas is Gary Vaynerchuk. He is the co-founder and CEO of VaynerMedia, a social media brand consulting agency. He is also a public speaker on the subjects of social media, brand building and e-commerce as well as an author (he recently published his new book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook and we are excited to receive our copy).
We recently interviewed Gary Vaynerchuk and one of the questions we asked him was: What do you do to come up with creative marketing ideas? This is his answer:
That’s a great, great question. I think for me, and I think this is a different process than for most, but for me, it’s watching actual behavior of people in day and day life, and then layering that on top of the data and the trends that I see are going on online.
Watching what people are doing when they’re out at restaurants with their phones or just what the fashion or music trends are, things of that nature.
And then understanding the trends that are going on in the internet, like why are BuzzFeed and Upworthy doing well? What’s Outbrain doing with its advertising platform? Why is Vine and Pinterest and Instagram working? It’s just a mix of thinking about all those things.
What’s happening around you?
Gary is a great example of how curiosity can be of great value. Now it is your turn, free your curiosity, spend tomorrow as an extra curious person, pay attention to what is happening around you and ask as many questions as you can.
In the end of the day ask yourself, “What new did I learn?” “What can I use this new knowledge for?”
How would your life be different if you were very curious at least once a week?
What do you say about starting a movement and change Tuesdays into Curiousdays?
Whom do you know who could benefit from this reminder about being curious? Please share this if you like it, thank you :) If you want to be notified when we publish more great articles like this you can subscribe via email, social media or RSS here.
Here is the audio recording of the interview:
Further reading
Here is another blog post based on our interview with Gary Vaynerchuk:
How Restrictions Can Improve Your Creativity
Reference:
Coie, J. (1974). An evaluation of the crosssituational stability of children’s curiosity. Journal of Personality, 42, 93–116.
Engel, S. (2011). Children’s need to know: Curiosity in school. Harvard Educational Review, 81(4), 625–645.
About Birna Birgisdóttir
I like the post. Social Media is very important now a days because people are now more active on social networking sites so you have to target all that user. And social media is helps you in this case. It gives the huge amount of traffic. Thanks for the post buddy. :)
Thank you Bhavesh for your comment, we are glad you like the post :) We agree with you, social media is important and can help you increase website traffic.