In the late 1960’s early 1970’s upon a mountain ridge in the very small town of Chelsea Vermont a few people built a Wind-Harp of 50 stainless steel strings standing nearly 20 feet in the air. To listen to the weird wonderful melodies you had to climb the mountain and hope the wind was cooperating, it usually was. Here’s slice of a recording Wind Harp Song on YouTube.
The first Wind Harp itself was created atop a mountain in some spot on earth long ago forgotten, but even though it is not an uncommon creation down through history each one is a creative rebirth of the original one. Possibly more important than the Wind Harp itself is how it touches each of those lucky enough to make the trek to sit and listen to the mysterious music emanating from it. Wind Harp Links
I was lucky enough to make the trek to the Wind Harp in Chelsea Vermont while it was still there, and it was the thought of that trek and the resulting experience that flooded back into my conscious memory while I gazed out my office window wondering how I would construct this blog post on Creative Blogging.
It’s not hard to connect the two seemingly disparate subjects of Wind Harps and Creative Blogging when you give it a little thought. Each in its own way gives to the reader or listener a combination of inspiration and engagement of the mind, leaving them with something they can use in their lives. That’s the hope of course not necessarily the reality.
So creative blogging, wind harps and anything else we put time, imagination, and sweat into result in something that will inspire those who make the effort to trek up a mountain trail or gaze upon a glowing screen in hopes of expanding some part of their life’s experience and knowledge.
If we want those who read our work to come away with something of lasting value we must tune into a deeper creativity than what our competitors and peers are tuning into. But in the end, our only real competition is with ourselves.
5 Additions To Energize Your Creative Blogging
ONE: A great place to get a head start is with Doodling. It doesn’t matter if you can draw, the important thing is jumping in and taking a risk. Tablets make combining doodles with pictures and icons wonderfully easy, but having the ability to quickly scan a few scribbles into your computer works as well.
Start off by choosing a few black and white icons that relate to what your blog post is about and draw a few additions on paper or screen that look good with the icons. Your doodle might be a couple of trees, a street sign, stick figures or even a city space as a background for your icons. Using words that are hand printed can add some very interesting feel to your post.
The trick is to start slow and use your doodling as accents to your post, then once you get a feel for what you’re doing you can make the doodles tell part of your story or as illustrations to a how-to. It’s also a good idea to keep them in one color to start. Create your doodles on paper or screen and import them into a simple program like Draw or Photoshop… Save them as PNG or GIF files and once you have a good size upload into your blog.
TWO: One of my favorite things to see in a blog post is Audio in the form of short interviews, short explanations and how-to tips. Audio has a simple way of creating value to a blog post while helping the reader understand the message on a different level. Audio also breaks up those especially long posts.
A simple USB microphone plugged directly into your computer will do a nice job when paired with a decent audio editing software such as Audacity (it’s free). The key to great audio is doing a bit of practice with your equipment so you’ll know the voice levels you need to speak in, to make things consistent.
Use audio to create stories about your business or organization that dovetail with your blog post. The audio becomes an enhancement to what you are writing, like iced tea at a picnic or frosting on a cake. You don’t need audio but it makes for richer and more fully alive experience for your readers.
Three: Animation can be as simple as a GIF of someone waving to a full fledged explainer video and everything in between. Animation like audio is wide open and only your imagination is the limit.
Creative Blogging using animation as a catalyst to pull people into the work you’re doing also easily allows you to use the animation in other areas beyond blogging. You can use it in Presentations and export it YouTube or Vimeo allowing you to reach a larger audience.
There are many different services such as PowToon ( a personal favorite) that give you some very powerful tools for animation while also offering ease of use and of course there are more powerful and expensive tools such as one of my favorites CrazyTalk Animator, a wonderful 2D animation software.
FOUR: Presentations (digital slides) can be used in a number of different ways and by no means are limited to corporate meeting rooms. Nope presentations work great embed on social media sites and lend themselves wonderfully in blogs.
A presentation slide gives your blog color and context beyond what a series of stock photos would. To promote your idea and get your message across presentation slides are often the best choice.
The images I’ve used in this blog post about Creative Blogging are taken from an infographic I created and cut apart in order to use each block as an added piece in this post.
FIVE: Who doesn’t love Quizzes and Lists? Most popular websites are populated with quizzes and list either of the fun variety or possibly of a more serious nature. The reason is simple, people love to take a few moment to take a quiz or scan a list of what’s happening at this very moment. Quizzes especial are almost impossible to pass up when you spot one.
The only rule to be concerned with is that your quiz or list should relate to the topic of your blog post, follow that rule and you can let your imagination go wild and your creative side shine when picking a topic for quiz or list.
This blog post about Creative Blogging is not the last word on avenues you can travel to add a creative touch to your posts. I’m sure there are many things I have not touched on. I’m also sure you’ll delight and surprise your readers with content they’ve yet to see.
Here’s A Link To the Full Size Creative Blogging Infographic – Use It, Share It And Even Incorporate Into Your Own Work, But Please Give Me Or This Website An Attribution If You Put It In Your Own Work. Thanks
Below is a new slide show presentation on Creative Blogging (10 Slides) Feel free to embed it on your site of use it in a presentation. You can get the embed code by clicking this title SlideShare Slide Show and then on the share button below the side show.
