State your challenge correctly.

In order to get the right ideas, you need to ensure that you are giving the brainstorm session participants the right challenge. Otherwise, you could end up with a lot of ideas which do not actually solve your problem.

No squelching!

Squelching is when you criticise an idea or a person contributing the idea. Squelching can be obvious, such as “That’s the dumbest idea I have ever heard!” or subtle, such as “you’d never get the budget to do that.” No matter what the form, squelching does two terrible things to a brainstorming session. Firstly, it makes the person who contributed the idea feel bad. As a result, she is unlikely to contribute any more ideas to the session. Even if her idea was not a good one, it is likely she would have had other, better ideas to contribute. Secondly, squelching tells other participants that unusual ideas are not welcome at this brainstorming session. Since most creative ideas are also unusual ideas, a single squelching effectively prevents participants from offering creative ideas. So, if you remember nothing else about brainstorming when running a business, remember: no squelching!

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2. Brainstorm. If properly carried out, brainstorming can help you not only come up with sacks full of new ideas, but can help you decide which is best.

3. Always carry a small notebook and a pen or pencil around with you. That way, if you are struck by an idea, you can quickly note it down. Upon rereading your notes, you may discover about 90% of your ideas are daft. Don’t worry, that’s normal. What’s important are the 10% that are brilliant.

4. If you’re stuck for an idea, open a dictionary, randomly select a word and then try to formulate ideas incorporating this word. You’d be surprised how well this works. The concept is based on a simple but little known truth: freedom inhibits creativity. There are nothing like restrictions to get you thinking.

5. Define your problem. Grab a sheet of paper, electronic notebook, computer or whatever you use to make notes, and define your problem in detail. You’ll probably find ideas positively spewing out once you’ve done this.

6. If you can’t think, go for a walk. A change of atmosphere is good for you and gentle exercise helps shake up the brain cells.

7. Don’t watch TV. Experiments performed by the JPB Creative Laboratory show that watching TV causes your brain to slowly trickle out your ears and/or nose. It’s not pretty, but it happens.

8. Don’t do drugs. People on drugs think they are creative. To everyone else, they seem like people on drugs.

9. Read as much as you can about everything possible. Books exercise your brain, provide inspiration and fill you with information that allows you to make creative connections easily.

10. Exercise your brain. Brains, like bodies, need exercise to keep fit. If you don’t exercise your brain, it will get flabby and useless. Exercise your brain by reading a lot (see above), talking to clever people and disagreeing with people – arguing can be a terrific way to give your brain cells a workout. But note, arguing about politics or film directors is good for you; bickering over who should clean the dishes is not.

By Jeffrey Baumgartner

Jeffrey Baumgartner is the managing director and a major shareholder of Bwiti bvba, a Belgian based company that provides innovation and creativity services to organisations around the world. Bwiti is a member of the JPB (www.jpb.com) a small group of companies founded or owned by Jeffrey’s family.

Jeffrey is a specialist in organisational and group innovation. He is fascinated by tools and techniques that make groups – whether small teams or multinational firms – more creative and more innovative. Moreover, thanks to more than 15 years of experience in a variety of organisations on three continents, Jeffrey has learned more than most about what makes organisations more innovative – and what hinders innovation.

DO demonstrate your professional skills by starting an industry-related blog or by helping your peers on LinkedIn Answers.

DO use your real name to brand professional profiles on LinkedIn or other sites. For personal profiles (stuff you don’t want employers or colleagues to see, such as family photos), pick a made-up username that only your friends or family knows about.

DO buy your domain name (www.JohnDoe.com), even if you don’t intend to use it right away.

DO develop your “elevator pitch” (a concise description of who you are, what you do, and who you do it for) and post it to your online profiles.

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In this week’s “Five Questions for Creatives” we turn to Lloyd Dangle, graphic artist, comic strip artist and blogger. Lloyd is widely known for his Airborne™ brand illustrations and at night he dons his comic cape and draws his highly popular Troubletown comic strip. Lloyd blogs at – www.troublogtown.blogspot.com/. Lloyd’s web site can be found at www.lloyddangle.com.

Lloyd is a multi-disciplined writer, designer, and artist whose works, over the past 20 years, have appeared in over 100 magazines and newspapers of every type. His weekly comic strip, Troubletown, was first published in the San Francisco Bay Guardian in 1988 and has grown to become a widely-syndicated cartoon feature in alternative newsweeklies and lefty political magazines. Lloyd is also widely sought for his live Dangle-tooning at corporate events and meetings.

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In this week’s “Five Questions for Creatives” we turn to Lisa Haneberg, author, blogger and management guru. Lisa is the author of the much-lauded book, “Two Weeks to a Breakthrough” and blogs at managementcraft.com. Lisa’s web site can be found at www.lisahaneberg.com.

Lisa shares her insight on all things creative.

Five Questions for An Author, Business Strategist and “Breakthrough Champion”

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In this week’s “Five Questions for Creatives” we turn to Lynn Kindler, freelance blogger, writer and life/career coach. Lynn is also the host of the show “Book It! Words for the Soul” on the popular Coaching Commons web site – coachingcommons.org. Lynn’s web site can be found at sacredpathcoaching.com.

Lynn shares her insight on all things creative.

Q. What do you think is one of the biggest challenges to being a successful creative person? Read the rest of this entry »

Note from Oddpodz: we’re thrilled to add Nettie Hartsock to the idea engine blog. She’ll be authoring a new weekly feature, a Q&A with a creative expert. So, without further ado…

In this inaugural “Five Questions for Creatives” we turn to Meryl Evans, longtime Content maven, copywriter and web gal extraordinaire. Meryl’s web site can be found at www.meryl.net.

Meryl shares her insight on all things creative.

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Tim Frick discusses web development issues and his new book, Managing Interactive Media Projects.

Five biggest web developer mistakes:

1. Not Giving the Big Picture – Clients usually have no idea what a web update or overhaul entails. Make sure to take them through the ENTIRE process so they have a clear understanding of activities and timelines.

2. Ambiguous Budgets – “We can do it for about …” Initially it may seem fine to give a budget number without parameters, but it usually comes back to haunt you. Developers need to be clear about defining EXACTLY what the budget and timelines entail. And be sure to ask clients for their budget expectations prior to putting together the proposal – it helps everyone in the long run.

3. Improperly Defined Projects – Exactly what is considered a “revision”? How are maintenance or glitches handled? This helps avoid “feature creep” (clients adding on time-consuming and expensive features) and sets expectations.

4. Viewing Deadlines as “Suggestions” – Clients usually have their own internal or external clients they’re reporting to who are also looking at deadlines. Respect the deadlines you and your client set as finite.

5. Dismissing Brand Guidelines – “The logo would pop better in green…” Clients have spent time and money putting together their brand and identity guidelines. Make sure you’re familiar with what can and cannot be altered.

Why I wrote Managing Interactive Media Projects:
I have always been interested in workflow process from the very first time I picked up Adobe Premiere and Photoshop back in the early 90s. Finding better, faster, more efficient ways of doing things has been at the forefront of my professional development since day one. When you are a self-employed designer, which I have been since the mid 90s, you often work alone in the vacuum of your back bedroom and must be extremely proactive in searching out approaches that will keep your skill level fresh, fast and up-to-date. Learning new technology tricks is one thing, but being able to efficiently apply those techniques to your workflow and still maintain some level of profitability is something else entirely.

When I began teaching in the late 90s I encountered many students whose creative and development talents were exceptional, but who had no clue whatsoever about how to manage expectations, meet deadlines, or keep others abreast of their project progress. In looking around for a text to address some of these general communication and workflow issues as they related to Flash or Web design projects, I really couldn’t find any that were specifically suited to creative people like me or my students or to those who maybe hadn’t worked on a long-term larger scale project before.

Shortly thereafter, I helped a large client of mine set up their own internal interactive communications department. They asked me to write a “best practices” white paper on my process and for the first time I was faced with sitting down and compiling what I’d learned over the years about how to successfully manage and run my business. As I compiled research data and began to outline my process, I realized that the contents would not only be helpful to my clients but to students as well. Eventually the contents of that white paper morphed into the outline for Managing Interactive Media Projects.

Mightybytes is a small company, which allows us to be flexible when unforeseen project hiccups arise, as they always do. Of course no one can predict every possible production stumbling block or out-of-scope request that might occur during any given project, but building steps into your workflow that help accommodate for those unforeseen hurdles can go a long way in maintaining a high success ratio of profitable projects and happy clients. The intent of my book is to help readers implement these best practices for interactive media projects into their own workflow. Not every step outlined in the book is appropriate for every project, but each chapter has take away tips and tricks for keeping projects on track, on budget and so on. Detailed case studies with a “real world” approach to various production tasks round out the content.

Who can benefit from it:
Managing Interactive Media Projects can be an extremely helpful tool for marketers and designers looking to expand their skills, take on larger projects, or learn how to manage development tasks without becoming developers themselves. Since it doesn’t address a lot of specific production tasks, such as how to wrangle code or edit layer masks in Photoshop it has a broader appeal than a book on Flash or Dreamweaver might, for instance.

The book discusses how to manage the art direction process, address multiple rounds of revisions, build a good proposal, create prototypes, implement effective testing techniques, and so on while also maintaining timelines and budgets. I specifically set out to write an easy-to-understand, friendly and accessible book on the rather, well, dry topic of project management that would be attractive to the creative community and those to whom technical or development expertise may not be a strong suit.

By putting a face to concepts that might be a bit baffling to the average marketer or designer, real world case studies peppered throughout the book can help demystify many production tasks in the life cycle of a typical interactive media project. Nearly every chapter contains interviews with developers, designers, project managers, producers, programmers, writers, testers, research analysts, and so on, talking about various elements of their craft. The book also follows an actual project – the development of a Chicago theater company’s award-winning Web site – from concept to completion, outlining various challenges that arose during production and how they were addressed.

Tim Frick is the president and founder of Mightybytes, Inc., a ten year-old digital media design firm located on Chicago’s north side. A former instructor at Columbia College and Ascend Training, Tim is also a frequent conference and seminar speaker with recent engagements for the American Marketing Association, the Web Design Conference and the Motion Graphics Festival. He is the author of Managing Interactive Media Projects, a digital media project process guide from Delmar-Cengage Learning.

By Luis Rivera

Marketers plan to increase their pay-per-click (PPC) budgets by at least 11 percent in 2008, according to MarketingSherpa’s Search Marketing Benchmark Guide for 2008, as reported by eMarketer.

It’s not hard to see why, when you consider the immediacy and the measurability of PPC advertising. A marketer can follow someone who clicks through to the company’s Web site from Google, Yahoo and other search engines, knowing the visitor found the site using the keyword phrase “hotels in Miami.” He’ll know what pages the consumer visited and exactly how much time she spent in each area of the site. The marketer also will know whether or not the consumer booked a room and, if not, at what point she left.

It’s this measurability that makes it such a valuable channel. In 2006, North American companies poured $8 billion into paid search. There’s no question that PPC lures a significant portion of new customers to Web sites. But less than 5 percent of PPC visitors typically take the desired action once they arrive at a site.

So what happens to the other 95 percent – or roughly $7.6 billion that marketing departments spend on PPC programs?
As companies invest more of their advertising budgets in PPC, marketers are under pressure to protect those investments by squeezing all the ROI they can from their PPC spending. But to do this, they must abandon the linear concept of driving clicks from a search engine to a Web site, and instead embrace the idea of PPC at the center of a larger, living online ecosystem.

Here, a host of “living organisms” nurture and support each other – search engines, Web sites, landing pages, email, blogs, RSS feeds, along with tools for content management, Web analytics, bid management and keyword identification, among others. Every technology tool at a marketer’s disposal is made more valuable when it works in concert with all the others. Used effectively, they’ll increase PPC’s ROI.

Here are some ways to make the ecosystem work for you.

Your Web site is your hub – all PPC spending drives people there. Get it in order.

Optimize your Web site.

One of the most effective strategies for gaining more search engine traffic is to make your Web site easier to find in natural (free) search results. Search engines will look at your page content, meta data, outbound links, header tags and URLs – so make them keyword-friendly. But beyond that, a Web site should be optimized for conversion. Make sure when people arrive at your site they find something they’ll want – product information, interesting or educational content, discount offers, or community-building tools like a chat room.

Create customized landing pages.

Design specific Web site pages to capitalize on leads generated from your marketing campaigns. If a consumer searched on Google for a red purse and clicks on your ad, don’t send her to your home page – send her to a page that showcases red purses. Greet visitors with content that increases the likelihood they’ll take the action you want – buy a product, subscribe to a newsletter, sign up for a Webinar, download a white paper, etc.

Upgrade your content management system.

Use a Web content management system (CMS) that makes it easy for non-technical people to add or change the content on your Web site. The search engine algorithms like Web pages that are updated frequently. Plus, this pliability will allow you to adjust content according to your latest visitor trends and to respond opportunistically to any newly identified keywords.

Every click is an opportunity for a relationship. Extend the invitation.

Invite visitors into an email relationship.

The unsung workhorse that turns some of the “wasted” PPC investment into customer conversion turns out to be email marketing. Email picks up where PPC leaves off, allowing companies to build long-term relationships and generate additional business over time. A new Web site visitor who may not be ready to buy – but signs up for a newsletter or promotional email – extends the ROI of the original PPC spend.

Create community to keep them coming back.

If you turn your Web site into a thriving community where people know they can find valuable content, they’ll come back for more. Things like blogs, RSS feeds, chat rooms and even games go a long way toward making your site a destination. This approach might not be appropriate for every company, but many brands would benefit from being associated with this social approach.

Efficiently get those online leads to sales and marketing teams.

In many cases, those in marketing have PPC advertising down to such a science that they can “turn the dial” to increase or decrease the number of leads at any given time. But what happens to those leads next will determine the success of that PPC spending. If you use forms to get more information and filter the lead, choose your questions carefully and strategically, and get feedback from the sales team about the quality of the information. Then sync up those forms with your customer relationship management software (like Salesforce.com), so the leads will be automatically routed as appropriate.

Measure and evaluate everything. Then use that data.

Invest in a good Web analytics solution.

These range in price from free to many thousands of dollars per month, so find the level that will provide you with the data you need to help you know your customers, track site navigation patterns, determine which PPC ads are performing and which aren’t. Then use that data. Change your landing pages accordingly, adjust Web site content as needed, identify better-performing keywords and dump the losers.

Personalize as much as possible.

The more you know about your audiences, the more you can personalize your communication with them. Serve content to people on a landing page based on the keywords that they used, the banner ads they clicked or the Web sites from which they came. Use trigger-based email technology to send personalized messages once a customer takes a specific action. For example, an abandoned shopping cart might trigger a follow-up email message from you that offers free shipping or discounts on relevant products. All of these capabilities allow you to be more targeted and relevant in your approach.

There’s no doubt that PPC advertising drives traffic. But what we’re all after is ROI, and for that, PPC doesn’t work alone. It’s part of the larger online ecosystem.

Luis Rivera is CEO of Lyris, Inc. (previously known as J.L. Halsey), a provider of marketing technology solutions including Lyris, EmailLabs, Sparklist, ClickTracks, Hot Banana and EmailAdvisor.