The SEO company in Los Angeles understands that being self-isolated isn’t the ideal environment for cooperative brainstorming. However, since the global health crisis, many content marketers are in this very position at this moment. But can you jointly create content ideas and strategies at a distance? Yes, you can, and here is how.
What Are The Processes For Virtual Brainstorming?
In normal circumstances, many people at a Los Angeles SEO company meet in person to brainstorm, even if it’s just a fleeting moment at the coffee machine. However, video calls can be just as effective. Since when you mett face-to-face over a video call colleagues are more engaged and can take advantage of each other’s enthusiasm.
Here are the most unique processes, tips, and tools to help content marketers brainstorm remotely.
Begin With A Brief
With everything going on at the moment, it isn’t unusual for things to be done in a hurry, and everybody has to learn to adapt very quickly. Nevertheless, to make a brainstorming session go as smoothly and effectively as possible you must prepare your participants ahead of time. Ideally, you should give them at least a heads up a day in advance.
When you provide a brainstorm brief in advance, it helps people to absorb the information, do research, and come prepared with questions as well as any possible ideas and thought-starters that can get the brainstorming session on a flying start.
Examine These Four Questions
A good way to improve remote brainstorming is to boost the amount of information shared. Therefore, the way you coordinate your team is crucial. Normally, issues arise during brainstorming when people are not willing to come forward with suggestions.
When this happens, using these four questions can save the day:
- Do you have to have a meeting or a brainstorming session? Understand the difference.
- Do we need to have repeating sessions?
- Do we have to rely on others to make some headway?
- Do we have a schedule?
Put On Different Hats
Typically, a Los Angeles SEO company has numerous techniques for brainstorming but the most intriguing is the six-hat method.
To start this technique off, you must have each person wear a different color hat or have everyone wear the same color to concentrate on one point of view. For instance, take a look at the following ways of doing this method below:
Black Hat: The person brainstorms content ideas with criticism and caution.
White Hat: The person comes up with ideas simply based on evidence and numbers.
Yellow Hat: The person things logically, and business-like.
Red Hat: The person imagines ideas based on feelings and emotions.
Green Hat: The person thinks of creative, unusual, and original ideas.
Blue Hat: (Required in both scenarios) The person is the moderator.
Build A Competitive Atmosphere
Virtual brainstorming is a good way to enliven your employees. One technique you can use to encourage them to come up with brilliant ideas is to pin each employee’s name next to their respective idea on a virtual whiteboard and circle the ideas that stand out with different color markers.
Not only is this an excellent way to motivate employees to contribute ideas but it also gives them responsibility for the project. Additionally, it nudges team members to keep on suggesting even better ideas in the future.
Work Individually Together
To start off with, everybody should work on their own. They work individually for 15 to 30 minutes to write out as quickly as possible their ideas. At the end of the appointed time, the outcome is given to the facilitator who posts them for evaluation and discussion.
The second alternative is individual teamwork using an amazing technique called six-three-five brainwriting. For this method, you will need a team of six (you can go as little as a team of four or as much as a team of seven; too few team members will not allow enough ideas, whereas too many members can become overwhelming).
This is how the six-three-five brainwriting technique works:
- The first person has five minutes to come up with three ideas in an appointed Google Doc.
- The second person opens this shared document and writes their three ideas within five minutes.
- The process keeps on going until all six people have shared three ideas in five minutes.
- The facilitator collects and compares the ideas for discussion.
This method allows each person to add their ideas to every document – by getting inspiration from what someone else has written or adding their own fresh ideas.
Don’t Do Everything On Video Chat
You can begin with a video call, however, that is just the first part of a brainstorming session. Talk about ideas with a video call, noting them down in a project management software system or any other useful tool. After the call, let each participant comment on each idea and gauge it as good or bad.
This feedback helps to determine any important points or gives extra information for a specific idea without having to pester everyone in the video call.
Afterward, the project manager or team leader chooses the most promising ideas.
Shorten The Process
Some SEO companies go completely online for projects with a client. More often than not, they find that something that would usually be a two-day, in-person session became a pre-work, three real-time two-hour online sessions, and three differently timed virtual ideation sessions (i.e. since group members were allowed to work at different times).
Therefore, it is essential to use a few virtual programs/tools as possible. Oftentimes, trying to break through global company firewalls and dealing with non-user-friendly programs takes up too much time and causes a lot of hassle.
You should spend your time creating easy instructions for several ideation techniques to be used for virtual ideation sessions such as semantic intuition, customer wishing, questioning assumptions, worst idea, and so on. Exercises can be sent effortlessly through email or Slack.
Use An Ab-Lib Approach
To spark off creativity and ideas, the best approach is an improv mindset. This helps participants to keep building on each other’s ideas, which in turn helps them think of creative ideas. When the session is done, you can use a virtual whiteboard to categorize ideas, select the best ones, create action steps, and then use a remote team working platform for accountability and tracking.
