Creative Kickstarts: Fuel for the Fire

A sound social media strategy is an integral means of keeping a positive and thoughtful point of view about design in the marketplace. But with so many avenues and modes of electronic communication, it can be overwhelming. At FRCH, in an attempt to simplify and bring focus, we started to think about the different channels in new ways: Twitter as a news ticker, a place to share headlines; LinkedIn as a newspaper with all of the living details about our firm; Facebook as a cocktail party, a place to share our culture; and our new blog – Creative Fuel – as a magazine, the avenue for sharing our experiences and unique points of view.

The idea for Creative Fuel was hatched over lunch one day on Cincinnati’s Fountain Square, when we decided that a blog was the perfect outlet to express our creative energy. As a starting point in the process, we benchmarked our favorite blogs, including Design*Sponge and The Cool Hunter, and noticed a consistent theme. The content was always fresh, and it was genuine – never contrived or written in “marketing speak” – with real personality and a distinct point of view. We felt passionately that Creative Fuel should do the same, and that it would not be the channel for overt self-promotion. Through our research we soon realized that the biggest challenge wasn’t starting the blog, but creating a framework that would be sustainable over time. Here’s how we did it.

Ten heads are better than one

It’s easy to start a blog. Maintaining it is the tricky part. We began by bringing together a small team of contributors: The goal was to spread the workload across 10 people, with each of us responsible for two posts per month. We picked individuals across studios and disciplines to ensure that our contributors represented an eclectic mixture of thoughts, interests and expertise, and encouraged them to share their passions.

We created a post schedule with deadlines for accountability. Making the time commitment manageable is the key to success. Our contributors are asked to submit their blogs before noon on their assigned day and each post is edited for quality control before it goes live on the site.

Peer accountability is a great motivator. We meet as a contributor group over lunch once a month to trade ideas and share success stories, and have found that it helps spark a sense of shared responsibility. We’re all more likely to honor our commitments when we feel that our peers are relying on us. A trade-off policy helps, too; contributors are responsible for finding a replacement if they’re unable to post on their assigned day.

Test before going live

The best way to learn is through trial and error. We recommend that you go ahead and set up a blog and start writing and posting for a few weeks or months, giving yourself time to work out the kinks – before you launch the blog to the world. In our case, we blogged for two weeks before approaching senior management with the idea. Having a writing sample from each of our contributors, a name for the blog and an actual demo to walk them through made the sell-in process go very smoothly. We could prove that the idea would be a successful business tool, rather than just theorizing about it.

We got the green light and continued to refine our template and logo design, writing bios for each of the contributors and reorganizing the post schedule for an optimal rhythm of information. We then launched the site internally on the FRCH intranet and opened up the floor to suggestions. Finally, with six weeks’ worth of content under our belts, we went live, promoting the site externally to our clients and industry.

Create unique categories or tags

You’ll want to “tag” your blog content with terms or categories relevant to your business, so that you can improve your organic search rankings. At the same time, the categories must be driven by your contributors’ personal passions. For instance, we use the category “Things that get me through the day” to post some of our creative inspiration, including Top 5 Jams of the Week and Sketch Pad Doodles. The Top 5 Jams of the Week was an idea born from our resident DJ, Marty McCauley, as a way for him to share some of the music that inspires his design work. “Elements: The Lab” is another category that we use to share great resource design materials and furniture.

Our only rule for contributors on what to post is that they must be able to answer “yes” to at least three of these four questions:

1. Does this topic inspire you?
2. Does this topic demonstrate FRCH’s authority in design, architecture
and brand strategy?
3. Does this topic represent FRCH’s culture?
4. Is this a topic you would discuss with a client or potential client?

Celebrate!

Once you’ve established your blog and maintained a steady rhythm of posts, it’s time to share it with the world. Make an event of it by engaging the entire organization and your industry. For the Creative Fuel launch party we used the blog to encourage people to vote on their desired party experience. Poll results dictated the food, music, drink selection and entertainment, ensuring there was something for everyone.

We’ve found that Creative Fuel has become core to our culture as an organization. It’s linked to our website (www.frch.com) for our external audience and displayed predominantly on the front page of our intranet for the FRCH employees. It serves as a conversation piece and source of inspiration, engaging people from every position and discipline across the firm. Clients such as Harley-Davidson, Hilton Hotels and Macy’s have all commented on the success of Creative Fuel and especially appreciate the diverse range of topics we share.

Above all else, it’s important to celebrate the key to any blog’s success: its contributors. The most rewarding outcome of building Creative Fuel has been collaborating with and learning from each of the architects, designers and strategists who have given their time and shared their passions. We appreciate all of the effort and support from across the firm and are continually inspired by how much we can accomplish together.

Cristina Ferrari is a senior brand strategist and Lara Roller is a senior interior designer for FRCH Design Worldwide (Cincinnati).