MARKETING BUZZ
Three Ways to Stay Creative on Social Media
By: Rheanna Bernard
With everyone posting all the time and social media changing almost daily, it’s hard to feel like you are keeping up with the Joneses. Staying creative when everyone is doing the same thing can make social media frustrating. When thinking of how to stay on top of things, it’s important to take into account your niche, your message, and your individual or company personality. Using those key elements, you can make your own social media unique and CREATIVE.
- Publish Instagram Stories. Instagram Stories are the easiest way to show your creativity. Getting out there and showing your face to your followers are the best ways to connect with them. Show who you (and/or your company) really is by talking about your goals, your mission, and your everyday life. Make your Stories eye-catching by utilizing GIFs and stickers. Include hashtags and geotags to draw in a new audience.
- Consider using Facebook or Instagram LIVE. Creating videos is a great way to include more creative content on your social media. If you provide a service or sell a product, create a LIVE experience for potential or current customers by showcasing how your product works or a providing a review of your product by an actual user. Another way to get creative with your video is to talk about a subject your clients might also be interested but that might be different than what you are offering. This is a great way to bring in new customers who might not already know about you. One of my favorite examples of this is the company Once a Month Meals. They offer a service of monthly freezer meal recipes and shopping lists to their customers. Several times a month, they put discussions of aspects related to cooking on a budget, cooking for families, and cooking freezer meals on Facebook LIVE. While these videos aren’t directly selling their product, they are offering helpful tips and advice to potential customers while also helping their existing clientele.
BUSINESS ETIQUETTE
Three Things You Need to Know about Unleashing Creativity in the Business Setting
By: Julie Kirchner
In a competitive business landscape—as an executive, entrepreneur, or employee—the pressure to “be creative” can be high. Your capacity to get creative can make the difference between whether or not you stand out in the crowd, determine how many customers you can reach, or affect your ability to convey your message accurately and concisely. Creativity is something we often relate to intelligence, talent, and ability. It is regarded as a very desirable quality, both individually and within an organization.
- Your creative style may be rooted in your culture.
As it turns out, how we perceive and define “creativity” actually varies by culture. If your business has a diverse workforce, customer base, or international strategy, it pays to tune in to one rather simple nuance: Is your work “unique,” or is it “useful”?
Psychologist Letty Kwan’s research on the culture-and-creativity connection is summed up in an article in Psychology Today entitled “What Is the Relationship Between Creativity and Culture?”
According to the article, “A common definition of creativity is ‘something both novel and useful.’ In this context, ‘novel’ means original, unique, or innovative. ‘Useful’ means viable, practical, or aesthetically pleasing.”
As Kwan and her team point out, recent studies have emphasized that our cultural background, Eastern or Western, may influence which ideas or creative products are selected for continued development.
And along those lines, your ability to get excited about something—and therefore devote your creative energy—may depend simply upon whether you see it as practical or original (or both). (more…)
POWERHOUSE SERVICE & SUCCESS
Client Profile:
“I hired Powerhouse when I needed help with a large rebranding effort. I knew Powerhouse would come through on time and on budget, and I wasn’t disappointed! I love working with confident, positive, action-oriented team members, which is exactly what Jess has assembled. Plus, I fully support the mission of Powerhouse to create employment opportunities for military spouses. What better way to give back to those who give so much other than to provide mobile careers they can pick up and move wherever the military sends them?”
-Rissa Reddan, Senior Vice President of Marketing, PayNet, Inc.
BUSINESS RESOURCES
Fostering Creativity in the Workplace
Fostering creativity in the workplace can be challenging. You want to maintain a professional atmosphere, but sometimes that very feeling can, well, feel stifling. Studies show that employees who are empowered to express their creativity work better and create more innovative work products. Here are three sites to help you get started with increasing the creativity in your workplace.
StartupNation’s Catherine Plano discusses why and how creativity is so important on the workplace. As she says, “creativity is a mindset.” As we all know, creativity can’t be forced, but it can be fostered. Check out what Plano has to say and get inspired to get creative!
Filestage gives you 29 tips on how to increase creativity at work. These tips all come from award-winning companies and range from getting outside opinions on our ideas to finding ways to diversify your team. These 29 tips will get your creative juices flowing and give you practical ways to implement a creativity plan for your office.
For those who work in a virtual workforce, it can be difficult to feel a sense of belonging. The isolation that many virtual employees feel can also stifle creativity. Museum Hack’s Jesse Sussman provides ideas for creatively building a team spirit and ways to help your virtual employees bond. Some are fun, some are goofy, and some might even prove nostalgic!
GIVING BACK & GETTING INVOLVED
Find Your Passion: Danielle Jackson
By: Julie Kirchner
When Danielle Jackson started her photography business five years ago, she could never have predicted where her passion for photography—and people—would be taking her one day. This summer, Danielle is going on her first-ever mission trip to Uganda with Show Mercy International. We caught up with this busy entrepreneur, wife, mother of two teenage daughters, and soon-to-be missionary to find out what inspires her.
“People have always been my thing. I just love people. I majored in sociology, which is ridiculous…don’t ever let your child get a degree in people. That is not a ‘job,’” Danielle shares straightforwardly, with a kind of knowing chuckle in her voice. “BUT, truly, what is behind all of it—the photography, the fundraisers, all the things I do—it’s the people. It’s my love for people that gets me there.” This is evident in the way that Danielle goes about her business as well as her philanthropy.
Spotlight on Powerhouse’s Amanda Higgs
Here at Powerhouse we are blessed with a wealth of talent, which is why we love to showcase some of our amazing members from time to time. This time, we’re shining a spotlight on a true “Powerhouse,” Amanda Higgs. Amanda is an incredible video producer who edits our clients’ videos. She takes their ideas and brings them to life by doing everything from creating storyboards to helping our clients figure out how best to feature themselves and their products. She delivers top-notch, quality videos every time.
Amanda has had the privilege of working with some of our favorite clients (okay, okay, they’re all our favorites. I mean have you checked out whom we’ve been partnering with lately? Could you choose a favorite?). In the past she’s worked with Cape Henry Associates, Jacey Eckhart, and HPI. Currently, she’s working with MILLIE to edit social media videos to help them best serve the military community. Amanda has been a Powerhouse video producer for two years, and we really can’t imagine how we functioned without her.
She loves the flexibility her career with Powerhouse brings, both in terms of her position and her ability to flex her creative side. It’s very true that a career with Powerhouse will challenge you to stretch your imagination on what you can do. The success of such creative endeavors is a product of trust and expertise on both sides. At Powerhouse we listen to our team members’ opinions because we trust that they will bring us ideas beyond our wildest dreams, and the fact that we foster such a trust means that our members feel safe to reach for the impossible. We’re pretty sure it’s a win-win. Amanda even told us that working for Powerhouse is her dream job. Well, the fact that she can report to work in her pj’s probably doesn’t hurt!
Amanda is proud to have served 11 years as a military spouse. Her husband retired as an Air Force Master Sergeant after a 21-year career. They have two boys: Ben, who is in sixth grade, and Jake, who is in fourth grade. She and her husband love spending time with them and their rescue dog, Lucky Ducky Applesauce Higgs. We’ll save you the time—Amanda doesn’t know how Lucky came by her name any more than we do. Still, we’re kind of in love with it.
Our intrepid video producer is as optimistic as they come and is truly one of the most resourceful, creative, dependable, and kind people we know. Her philosophy is to leave the world better than she found it, which is sort of our philosophy too, so it’s no wonder we’re happy Amanda is at Powerhouse. It’s not too much to say that Amanda loves her coffee (she only mentioned it a few times), but she also loves reading and watching movie adaptations of the books she reads. Spoiler alert: The book is always better, in her opinion. She also loves to cook, though she does admit that her smoke detector is her biggest fan. We’ll trust her on that one.
Amanda is always looking for ways to learn new techniques and gain new perspective in her work life. She hopes to be with Powerhouse for a long time because Powerhouse allows her the opportunity to constantly discover and grow. She wants to be a part of Powerhouse growing its clientele and contractor base. Even more, though, she wants to be a part of a company that gives so much back to the greater community. As she says, “Powerhouse gives back more than any other company I know.” She’s looking forward to watching, and participating in, Powerhouse growing its “Share the Goodness” campaign. We agree.
So we asked Amanda as a parting question what fun facts we should know about her. She shared that she and her son share the same birthday. She can touch her tongue with her nose (you just tried to do the same, admit it). Also, she’s terrified of frogs and dentists. Fair enough. Of course, she also added that she’s always up for coffee, but we already knew that. Check out some of our clients’ video posts. Amanda and her coffee may have had a hand in producing them.
