Brainstorm tool guaranteed to make you better as a content creator

Ideas for content continue to be one of the hardest obstacles a lot of the businesses that we work with need to overcome to create content regularly. When it comes time to sit down and create content, it can be tough to come up with ideas.

We’ve previously discussed idea generation through customer problems, frequently asked questions, and other very basic things to create a baseline of content. However, responding to customer problems doesn’t always fit the specific opportunity before you.

Here at Heard, we’re all about being efficient, so rather than spending a bunch of time and money on a creative brainstorm, there is a storytelling technique called “Crash and Burn.”

How do you do it?

#1 — How to

Set a timer for 10 minutes and don’t stop writing for the course of that 10 minutes. 10 minutes can be a little bit intimidating at first, but it’s really not that long once you get into it, so don’t worry about it.

Write a story from your past or from your business or a customer story that you’ve encountered or some type of continual series.

Also have a device for pauses, like colors. Whenever your thought blanks out, list out colors until the next story pops into your head, then make a slash and continue on with the next story.

#2 — Write freely

Write whatever comes to mind. Write that story until it’s complete or until a new thought pops into your head, then make a slash and talk about that new thought. Whenever that new thought runs out and you don’t have any more thoughts immediately, go back to colors.

The key is to not stop writing for the totality of 10 minutes. Cycle through as many different stories and as many different thoughts as possible. Continue to write and think in that 10-minute time frame and do not stop until you’ve come out.

#3 — Pull ideas

Once the 10 minutes is up, then go back and circle or highlight the stories that have some potential because…

  1. You can flush them out a little bit and tell them as a story in your content
  2. You can combine them with another story from a different crash and burn session or you just knew of in general to create something valuable for your audience

Connecting ideas over time is really the value of Crash and Burn sessions, along with how it…

  • Helps you conjure up old stories you may have forgotten
  • Brings new ways of looking at the same thing you’ve talked about multiple times
  • Can help you combine things that have happened to you or to your company over time into a new story or a new way of talking about that story

#4 — Repeat regularly

This exercise can’t be like a one-and-done when you’re looking for ideas. This is every day or three times a week or once a week.

This needs to be an ongoing thing because there are going to be a lot of days where the ideas you generate may or may not seem like compelling stories at the moment but—when you combine them with other stories or ideas that you come up with during these exercises over time—there’s a compounding effect and you’re able to generate a volume of ideas that have some value.

Ideas are not easy, but they are within you. The difference between someone who is a creative versus a non-creative person is just knowing where to look and the ease of finding those ideas within yourself. This is kind of training your brain, training your mind to know where to look and how to identify those ideas over time.