Want Inspiration? Stop Reading Blogs

Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad you’re here, but you should strongly consider clicking that little red x in the upper right-hand corner of your screen.

Because if you truly want inspiration, you’ve come to the wrong place, sort of. Still here? Then I’ll explain: 

Get Out of the Echo Chamber and Into the Real World.

We in the blogosphere tend to repeat ourselves a lot. Whether we’re paraphrasing another blogger, saluting them, or lambasting them, the truth is we’re still talking about the same set of ideas. The agenda is set, the discussion is framed.

Sure, discussion is great. Conversation is the crux of the social web, but when we spend a majority of our time browsing blogs we tend to ignore what is going on outside of our echo chamber. And we forget to:

Relate to Real Humans.

Real humans watch reality TV, shop at Target, and sit all day at the DMV. They don’t dream in Tweets and when they talk they don’t consider themselves to be “engaging,” they think of it as … talking. If you want inspiration for better content or your next big idea, spend some time in the natural surroundings of real-life human beings and find inspiration for stories they can relate to on a human level.

Chances are, your end customer doesn’t spend as much time clicking on things online as you may think, so to speak their language, think beyond blogs and maybe even check out:

Movies, Music, Magazines, and Books.

All of the formats above go through a hell of a lot more scrutiny on their way to being published than blog posts do. Not only does this mean less typos and grammar errors, it also means the ideas have been vetted, challenged, examined, and beaten into a tighter, more logical pulp.

Doesn’t that sound like a better source of inspiration than a half-baked idea in the form of a Tweet?

Seems Kind of Stupid, Considering This is a Blog Post

Right. It does. And it is. But I’m not saying that we should ignore blogs all together. In fact some of the people I respect, admire, and learn from the most I found via their blogs. I love the web and social media is as fascinating to me as it is useful. But what I am saying is that it’s very easy to get sucked down the vortex.

In other words: once people realize the value of the social web; Twitter, blogging, forums, Facebook, etc., we tend to put our blinders on toward everything that doesn’t present itself in the aforementioned formats.

All I’m saying is this: lift the blinders and sample a wide variety of sources if you want a balanced complete diet of inspiration.

[image: loop_oh]

Related articles

• Want Infinite Blog Post Ideas? (engage.tmgcustommedia.com)
• Today In Twitterverse: The Echo Chamber Is Growing L-L-L-Louder-r-r-r (adpulp.com)

This post originally appeared on hanelly.com.