Suppose you are a manager in an organization, where do you not want creativity? Some of you will inevitably answer: “accounting.” That always gets a chuckle because of the negative connotation of creative accounting. But over the past couple of decades, there have been innovations in financial accounting that ethically hold the water, such as activity-based costing.

Creativity is much needed almost everywhere, typically in the marketing industry; and for every SEO, it is crucial to keep coming up with creative and viral potential content that everyone wants to share and link to. You cannot defy ‘Content is King’. Having killing pieces of content is what differentiates great sites from mediocre ones, as well as gaining more value in Google’s eyes: Google wants to rank webpages by its natural algorithm rather than links that are generated by article spinning or grey/black hat practice. From an inbound marketing point of view, creativity is the force that pulls in the traffic, social share and ‘soft selling’.

But how? Seems that there’s no ‘How To DO Creativity’ guide. All the creativity theories do give us tips regarding how to nurture creativity, such as try something new, travel, always be pro-active and curious. Those tips are great, but too generic.

Image courtesy: Meme Cats

Are there any creative shortcuts that we could replicate to be more productive in creative ideas and keep the creative ideas tap running? Below are seven tips that I found quite useful whenever I’m short of ideas. All the tips are illustrated in viral content examples that I have documented over the last few months. Hope you all find them useful too.

1. Go to the opposite

Thinking about the opposite of conventional wisdom or routine doesn’t mean you should automatically do what the opposite is. It’s good that if you have the dedication to work more, but why not think about how to work less whilst get the same amount of work done. If the standard marketing practice is to sell, think about buying. This conforms to what Rand has been trying hard to evangelise why business needs to practice inbound marketing and how to earn traffic without selling your soul. We really need to build good ‘stuff’ first and set ourselves as the ‘resource centre’ before we market it to the right audience. Another good example is how Rob Ousbey made use of Rapportive the other way round and built up this handy tool to help us find the right person’s email address (again, please use this tool with great responsibility).

Whilst I was writing this post, ‘Coca Cola Security Cameras’ video is going viral on the internet. Coca Cola has done a great job in this marketing campaign by looking at the world from the eyes of security camera in a very different way, which broke out people’s common assumption that security cameras are only used to record crimes and misbehaves. Within 14 days of being posted on Youtube, it had received 5,681,242 views and tons of tweets and social shares, plus thousands of comments!

2. Compare and Contrast

To compare and contrast always works, be it about wealth, health or romance! We are all curious to know how we look in comparison to others or how others view us. This curiosity is a common feeling which the vast majority can relate to. It works especially great for infographics. A classic example is You vs. John Paulson created by Sam (Read more here), which is a truly engaging interactive infographic and has generated hundreds of links and twitter hype by targeting the right audience.

Here are some other great infographic examples that feature the compare and contrast effect. Look at their amazing social signals! If we add a pinch of humour in there, it's the icing on the cake! Lots of social shares are just out there.

• Facebook Ads: Do They Even Work?
• iPhone vs. Android vs. Blackberry
• iPhone Users Has The Most Sex Partners (This one is more of a graphic design, but it still stands out because of its interesting topics and comparison).
• The World’s Most Visited Cities
• How Much Is A Petabyte?

3. Extreme Sense of Scale

99% (Behance’s research arm and think tank that help creative professionals move beyond idea generation into idea execution) conducted an interview with Ze Frank regarding his creative process. Ze said when he has an idea he generally starts with a sense of scale. “If I’m trying to generate ideas around it, the first thing I’d do is take a general imagination run into scale … I flip back and forth between the extremes until something interesting comes out of it … It’s a super cool exercise only in that it forces you to explore the outside boundaries of things.”

The Pimm’s Deckchair -- The World’s Largest Deck Chair has attracted much attention and exposure: great links from Metro, Huffington Post, Wired, Daily Mail, Mirror … (google it, it’s all over the web!) And of course with great PR efforts on the back too!

However, the ‘extremes’ here doesn’t only refer to sizes; it can be extreme conditions or environment. Another viral video produced by Ikea: A World Without Textiles went to such an extreme condition that it puts our imagination into a place where pillows are replaced with tree stumps, curtains are made of sheet metal, rugs are made of sand, and sofas are made of cacti. That’s a hard world. Literally. Amazingly within just three days, it had already received numerous pieces of coverage and backlinks.

Windows engineering can be a boring niche in which to create interesting content. Integrity Windows displays their window installers’ super skills and has made an entertaining video around it-- Superhuman Tape Measure Skills. I didn’t know any window installers or Integrity Windows, but now I do. Plus, Hannah wrote a detailed post regarding companies in 'boring' niches creating great content. It's definitely worth your time reviewing and rethinking about your content strategy, if you need some sparkle ideas.

More examples:

• Swimming on the top of the world: 57th Floor, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore
• Diner in the sky

4. Summary

A summary - not exactly a revolutionary idea, but often it works well if you can find an interesting angle in.

‘100 years of East London in 100 seconds’ is a great example, which travels through time showcasing the East London fashion style. It was launched for the grand opening for the WestField Stradford City. Even though Westfield Shopping Center’s purpose behind this video is to sell clothes, this exquisite short video has gone viral on the web. Starting from 1911, the clip includes many gems, such as 1940s flowy pants, punk leather, silly denim vests on the 1990s and every hat before 1970.

But Westfield could have done a better job in claiming back its credit links from many high profile websites and bloggers. They’ve produced great content which is the most key element, but all they need is a bit of SEO tweaking and outreach.

5. Secrets and Curiosity

Secret is like a magic word that we can play around with. It always has the power to immediately grab people’s attention. A great linkbait infographic created by Oli Gardner -- 7 Secrets of Social Media Conversion -- has got many Facebook shares, tweets and StumbleUpons. It seems anything that has to do with secrets is well received by the majority, not to mention one of my favourite shows ‘Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show’ that revealed their top models’ secret training tip videos that have all gone viral.

Frank Warren, founder of PostSecret.com (the largest and most visited advertisement-free blog in the world), came up with an idea that he asked people to anonymously share a secret that they’ve never told anyone before. He printed out 3,000 self-addressed post cards with simple instructions and handed them out randomly on the streets in Washington D.C. not knowing what to expect. It seemed like a nonsense and crazy idea at the beginning, but soon it started spreading virally. You can see his TEDTalks here.

Redbull created a series of videos that played around its ‘secrets’:

• DC’s best kept secret: Redbull Big Tune
• Redbull Racing’s Pitstop Secret
• Wakeboarding at a Coal Mine -- Redbull Secret Spot

In the same way, it always works to tap into people’s curiosity. How many times have we heard people saying ‘Nothing, just curious’. When you are lacking ideas, our curiosity could be an angle to look into and think further about.

Here are another two viral blog posts that tapped into people’s curiosity and have worked quite well:

• 7 Secrets Only 2 People Know (for some reason)
• The Top 10 Secret Celebrity Scientologist

6. Jokes

Jokes? Yes. Many creative ideas started as a joke with your friends. Texts From Hillary started as a joke at the bar between two friends and then turned into a national conversation about Secretary Hillary Clinton.

But seriously, many businesses began as a joke: from big companies like Facebook, Floxx, Buongiorno to smaller start-ups. So there’s a certain possibility there, just don’t let your ideas slip away.

7. Connect the seemingly unconnected

"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while." ~ Steve Jobs

Image courtesy: 2damnfunny.com

Instagram and Pinterest, both have transformed photography into a form of communication. People love pictures, and with social media platforms providing open communication channels, Instagram and Pinterest came along at just the right time. (But I’m a bit disappointed at Instagram’s user interface, it's a bit of a pain to slide through the pictures).

Finally, if you really are stuck with ideas go and take a long and hot bath. It does help!

What is your creativity 'shortcut'? Please leave your comments below and I'd love to hear from you!