The 9-1/2 Best Places to Find Inspiration

You’ve been wracking your brain trying to figure out what to write about on your next article or blogpost, but have come up with nothing. Zero. Zilch. When you’re at your wit’s end, here are a few places to go for inspiration.

Go Into Nature for Inspiration

Go Into Nature

There’s something about the sight of trees, the sound of rain, the smell of the ocean, and the feel of sand and rocks that help you to refocus and rediscover what’s important. Here’s an interesting article about sounds: Why Buffalos and Crickets Help Us Relax. A field trip to a nearby park can really get the inspirational juices going.

Take a Shower if you want inspiration

Take a Shower

A warm shower is one of the most relaxing places there is. You don’t have to take one with your dog to get the benefits, but that could help as well. Look at how happy that dog looks!

Get Enough Sleep for Better Inspiration

Get Enough Sleep

Getting enough sleep has been touted lately as important to alertness and health. And if you don’t believe me, take a look at these articles:

Go for a Drive

A drive forces your mind to focus on something other than your work (unless you’re a taxi driver). Hopefully, there’s a place to drive nearby with trees and that doesn’t involve sitting in traffic. Rolling the windows down and feeling the wind can help clear the cobwebs out of your mind and help inspire you.

Get inspired: Go Drive

Explore Other Blogs–Or Your Own

Other blogs may give you ideas that you hadn’t thought about. You could even search Google for “Inspiration,” and see where that takes you. Another idea is to go back through your own blog and see if you could take off or expand upon an idea that you had.

Explore Blogs

Spend Time with Pets to Be Inspired

Spend Time with Pets

Your pet cat, your pet iguana, and your dogs would all like you to inspire you. And it turns out that you can get a lot of great ideas from man’s (and woman’s) best friends. Being more curious is but one of the things you can learn from your pets.

Go Somewhere with No Internet

Better still, go there without any way to record those new ideas. Then you’ll be forced to remember that idea. Many of us who are online all day find being offline a welcome relief.

Answer the Questions Your Clients Ask You

Clients will often ask you the best questions, questions that you didn’t know that anyone had! Last week, someone asked me how to have a conversation on Twitter, and seemed surprised that a conversation was even possible. That could turn into a blog post, or a series of tweets.

Talk to Your Friends

I’ve talked about having a blogging buddy before. That is someone who supports your crazy, crazy ideas, and inspires you to have more of them. Bridget Willard is mine. You could also have coffee or lunch with someone, especially if, like many entrepreneurs you often eat lunch alone.

Let Tweetchats Inspire You

Sometimes I’ll get inspiration from others on the #DigiBlogChat Tweetchat (Tuesdays at 1 pm pst if you’d like to join!). Recently, someone asked about Twitter best practices, so that became a blogpost and it also turned into chat questions, too. Yes, the tweetchat idea was the 1/2, but really it’s more like one and one-half. That chat always invigorates me!

TweetChats: How to Participate

Getting the Most from a TweetChat

You’ve been invited to a tweetchat and, full of enthusiasm, you say yes without fully realizing what you’ve committed yourself to. After all, how difficult could it be, right? Actually, this is one of those times when you can do a Happy Twitter Dance because TweetChats are fun and easy to learn! You can easily participate in a TweetChat, with the help of a few tools (not necessarily a Weedwacker). As my ol’ granpappy used to say “Never bring more than one Weedwacker to a TweetChat. But I digress.

Each TweetChat Has Its Own Hashtag

For instance #DogFriendlyChat or my friend Amy Donohue’s #KidneyChat. Hashtags help to organize chats. If you need to know how not to use hashtags, here you go!

The Day or Week Before the Chat

A chat’s creator will often create and post questions so that you can prepare for that chat. For instance, Bridget Willard holds #ConstChat for Riggins Construction, and tells people the questions ahead of time. In last week’s #ConstChat, we chatted about insulation. This gave everyone lots of time to study the questions about insulation and prepare ahead of time if they wanted to. Bridget has created a really neat Tagboard for #ConstChat.

Prepare Ahead…or Not!

You can prepare answers to the questions ahead of time and for extra super-duper bonus points, you can even put your answers into a file which you can then cut and paste during the chat itself. But for the most fun during a chat, why not be spontaneous and interact with the others in the chat? When it’s your first chat, or maybe any time, maybe it’s fun to just be spontaneous.

Whether you decide to be spontaneous or prepare ahead of time, so long as you follow some basic etiquette, you’ll be fine. Don’t talk about the heartbreak of psoriasis, unless you’re on #PsoriasisChat, for instance.

Five Minutes Before a TweetChat

Log into TweetChat.com using your Twitter account. Get a cup of coffee or water, and take a deep breath. TweetChat.com automagically adds in the hashtag for you, so you don’t have to think about. It aggregates all the tweets with the hashtag for you, making the chat extra easy. Another benefit is that you can slow down the stream using TweetChat.com. It’s really a great tool. There are other third-party apps to help you, but TweetChat has been the most reliable for me.

During the Chat

The most important tools you’ll need during a TweetChat are your ears and eyes. Watch what everyone else is saying and have a discussion, be engaging, be funny, or entertaining. Everyone will have a much better time if you’re not too serious. Retweet others, have fun, and talk to everyone.

Follow Others

Follow Others After a TweetChat

One of the biggest benefits of being in a TweetChat is to gain high-quality followers. So join TweetChats that are important to you as a brand and that will help you grow your business. If you have a new interest or your business is growing, seek out a TweetChat related to your new interests. You’ll meet other like-minded people to follow and connect with.

After the Chat

I like to add people to a list if the chat is one I regularly attend. For instance, Larry Mount (@LazBlazter) and me will be starting #DigiBlogChat today, Tuesday August 5th at 1:00 pm pdt. So I’ll start a list called DigiBlogChat within Twitter. You can read my previous post about how to use Twitter lists (for the power user). You can create a list even if you’re a participant. Or, subscribe to someone else’s list (why reinvent the wheel?).

Keep track of those you’ve met virtually in the chat through your own or others’ lists. Engage with them, retweet them, and check up on them regularly.

Please Participate in #DigiBlogChat!

Please drop in some Tuesday and visit! It will be loads of fun!