Many moons ago, Taika Waititi spoke at Ted Talks about,
The art of creativity. Here he said, "
All I've got is creativity — that's my job — at the moment I happen to be a filmmaker, but that's not my job. My job is to express myself and share my ideas and my point of view."
This is the type of mindset you
need to have when creating creative content.
By acknowledging that your job is creativity and not being a social media manager or a social media content creator, you are staying focused on what you actually need to do — which is being creative.
media update's Talisa Carlson takes a closer look at how to master the art of creativity on social media. Ready to get into it? Let's do it:
1. Always make it fun
According to Trepoint, "
having fun will boost creativity." Therefore, being creative should
always be fun, and if you are not having fun, it is time to change something. If you are staring at an empty page or empty Canva design and you are not feeling inspired, you need to get up and make the creative process
exciting.
So, when you want to create engaging content on social media, you need to ensure that all the processes (coming up with the idea, taking the photo, making the video, writing the caption — all the way to posting the content) is an
enjoyable experience.
Also, how lucky are you as a creative to actually have fun while you're working?
2. Try many different things
When creating social media content, you might want to stick to just a specific style or aesthetic and, although this is fine, if it
doesn't work you might want to try a bit of everything!
On what being creative entails, Waititi said, "I wanted to do everything, I wanted to try every single thing." Therefore, taking different approaches to your social media will help ensure that all your content contains the special ingredient of creativity.
Trying many different things helps spark creativity because it allows you to have a fresh perspective on every piece of content. This means you have a blank canvas to paint with creative ideas every time — and it allows you to exercise different skills and be creative in
many different ways.
If you want to try a certain style, but you are not sure, take the risk. Social media is a
great place to explore, inspire and be inspired. Just remember that you always need to be respectful of others. You must always be aware of people's boundaries, but don't be afraid to push the limits of your creativity.
3. Take whatever inspires you and be creative
Inspiration and creativity come in many different shapes, sizes and forms. This means you might walk past a tree and '
bam!' some sort of inspiration hits you. Then you might think to yourself, 'But how is this tree going to be relevant to creating social media content?', which causes you to store it somewhere deep down in your subconscious and let it sit there for what seems like an eternity.
Instead, the moment when inspiration strikes, you should take it, explore it and tiptoe into that emotion to see what you can take from it.
It's also important that you don't try to limit yourself by thinking that you can only get inspiration from very specific sources. Rather, you should explore the world so that you can take inspiration and creativity from anything
and everything.
For example, Waititi worked on a photo titled,
What clouds see when they daydream. This image shows things can be considered from many different perspectives and it takes you outside of the constraints of normal human experience or conventional thoughts. This is exactly what is meant by saying you need to take inspiration from everything around you.
4. Don't be afraid to express yourself
Being you is what makes you different and unique — yet most of the time people are so scared of being judged for who they are.
Social media is filled with hate comments and trolls, but it is also filled with amazing and supportive people. Therefore, you shouldn't be afraid to express yourself online. Work on those ideas and concepts and bless the world by putting those thoughts out there.
You never know how much you can inspire another person to just be themselves and share their own thoughts and feelings. Social media is a place of creativity, and so when you want to express a certain part of who you are online,
do it!
5. Get obsessed
Obsession is a
healthy emotion to have if it is focused in the
right direction. Getting obsessed over a specific topic of interest is a great way to ensure that you are going to learn everything about that topic — making you an expert in it. Creativity is not just about random flashes of unique and different ideas; it is also about having a good understanding of certain topics.
The moment you have a thorough understanding of a specific topic, you can start looking at how you can take that topic and make it creative.
Some social media accounts are very specific to certain topics, such as makeup accounts or animal pages, making it a place for you to learn as much as possible.
So, if you are obsessing over soft drink caps, don't worry about it too much!
6. Don't be afraid to fail
Social media is a tough place to be, so it might seem to be easier to just avoid it altogether and not have to deal with failure or negative comments. But the moment you realise that failing is okay, because you will learn from it, is the moment you can take your social media content to the
next level.
Additionally, when you are creating content and trying to be creative — but constantly worry about failure — you are going to struggle to create authentic content that will resonate well with your audience.
So, don't be afraid to fail! Instead, focus on creating the best content you can and if it doesn't work, try again. Experimenting with content will allow you to understand what your audience wants to see from you, what works and what definitely doesn't work.
On learning from failed experiences, Waititi says, "Read bad books, watch bad films, learn to embrace bad creative experiences, because that is how you will learn and grow."
7. Define what success looks like to you
If you create content and you feel that you have had a creative breakthrough — but you only get 100 likes on that post — does that mean you did not succeed? Or did you post a video on TikTok that you feel wasn't creative but you received a million likes and two million views? Do you think
that was a success?
These are important things you need to ask yourself. You need to define what success on social media looks like to
you. This way, you will be able to identify where you want to focus your creative energy more and how you want to be perceived online.
Do you want to go viral online or do you want a handful of people to understand and appreciate your creative work?
What does success look like to you?
What are some other ways to ensure you will nail the creative game on social media? Be sure to let us know in the comment section below.
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*Image courtesy of Pexels