As a freelance social media manager and a content creator myself, I adopt a process that allows me to brainstorm ideas and create content seamlessly. I call this my creative process — A creative process is the evolution of an idea into its final form through a progression of different thoughts and actions.
A creative process tends to be chaotic and nonlinear — which seems to mirror what’s going on in our brains. Even this particular blog article, I can assure you that my thoughts are jumbled up at the start and things get better at the end. Creativity doesn’t just involve a single brain region or even a single side of the brain. Instead, the creative process draws on the whole brain.
This is the flow that I adopt when I approach a creative project. Finding Inspirations Personally, finding inspiration might be the only easy part of the process. You can utilize online resources to help you gain inspiration.
Search your keywords, and see where it brings you. No matter if it is a blog or a video. Consume the contents provided and get inspired by them. I typically take one day up to one week to gain inspiration for my projects, the duration depends on the importance of the project, urgency and project requirements.
You can also use Quora to research information on your project, no matter where you consume the content. Do not ever copy other creators’ content, this would show that you do not have any respect towards others’ works. Moving on to the second phase of my creative process…
Originality is important and rare as I feel that it is what defines one’s personality yet it can be hard at times to be original. I read somewhere that “no idea is original” and I somehow agree with that. By finding inspirations, we are swayed by different opinions, the way the content looks and how the content is performing. Gaining inspiration might inspire you to do something similar but you always add in a grain of your personality. You should not plagiarise other creators’ works. Be yourself and show who you are in your content and your audience would appreciate it. Authencity is what makes you different in the creative sphere. The next step would be to start…
I have designed this creative process specifically for video production. I spend 6 months studying in a vocational institution in Singapore. The lecturers taught us terms like — pre-production, production and post-production. I have tweaked a little of the process I was taught to suit my own work style. This entire creative process would be more suitable for content creators who are working alone, I have been freelancing in Singapore for 3 years. There are times that I work in teams however I mostly work individually thus this is the process I adopt to ensure efficiency. You are done with finding inspiration, you know you have to be original and now you got to start writing your video script. You have a clearer idea of how your video would flow and write your script to showcase your essence. Do not rush yourself to complete a script in a day, take a few days to write out your video script. Write as much as possible and come back to review your script afresh. Ask yourself these questions — Are you happy with the script? Should you write a 2nd or a 3rd draft? What is the purpose of your script? Do you think a stranger would comprehend your script? Once you are happy with your script’s version, you should start to…
Tell them to question the flow of your script and point your mistakes out. Always keep an open mind when people are telling you your mistakes. You can request your friend could write it out on a piece of paper or type their review or questions out on a blank Google document. Give them time you can afford, Do you know the deadline of your project? Tell them to hand you their review within a certain date. This allows you have to look through their review and have time to process their criticism. Once you have a good understanding of the things they said on your notes, you should begin to…
let them know what you think about the review you can take the piece of paper or that filled Google document to piece everything together. Discuss the things you can do to improve the ratings of their review, you can also ask them for suggestions directly to improve the ratings. Your friend should be excited to watch the video you are trying to produce and this would actually benefit your content. Think of it this way, if your video is up to par with a friend. They might actually give you new likes and a higher engagement rate on your social media accounts.
Did you understand the entire conversation? Start asking yourself these questions, don't be afraid to ask your friend for more information to be ready to start producing your project. You should take notes when you are talking to your friend so that you can review them while making a final draft of your script. Once you have clarity of what’s wrong with your script, go ahead and make the final draft of your script and start making the video.
Having a process in place has countless benefits, my creative process works for me and it might not work for you but you should try it out if you are having trouble completing a creative project. Go and research how other creators’ creative process works and it might just be able to work for you. Everyone works differently and you should not expect one process to work for you, go test different processes out and be the creative you are!
All content creators should have a content planner of some sort, if you are in the market looking for a clear content planner, you should check this out! I have created a monthly content planner where you can delegate by your priorities, rate of difficulties and weekly schedule for you to plan your day to day to routine and workload. This planner is flexible for all content creators and you can customise it to your own likings using your brand colours or fonts of choice.
The planner does come with detailed explanations of how you can utilise this planner, however, you can drop me a message if you do not understand the functions of any page of the planner. The content planner is designed with flexibility, difficulty levels and ease in mind.