A Story of How I Moved a Creative Idea Into Action — Quickly

Stephanie Mansueto
Ion by Rock Content
4 min readApr 11, 2017

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Some of my best ideas come to me at inopportune times — the shower, during a run, or in my car when I cannot grab my laptop and start writing.

These moments of complete mental clarity are when I think of blog posts that could be engaging, content marketing opportunities for our customers, or even content that I may want to create for our internal teams. And while these times are not the best moments to stop in my tracks and begin writing, they are a great time to think through my ideas without distraction.

But, if ignored, these ideas can end up being forgotten thoughts that never had a chance to succeed or even fail.

“You either act on ideas or you set them free. You don’t dwell on ideas.” — Casey Neistat

So, how can I capture these ideas as they happen without interrupting the thought process? Easy — preparation and attentiveness.

Let’s take a great idea from thought to action with these simple tips:

This morning as my feet hit the pavement and the sun was starting to rise, I had a great idea for one of our customer’s upcoming campaigns. They had shared the strategy with us, and we were working alongside them to launch an interactive experience in parallel to an event they were hosting. But, something came to me that made me pick up my pace — I had a great idea for their project and I needed to secure that idea before it went away.

As I ran up and down the sidewalks of my neighborhood, I began to plot the course for their project. What needs to happen first? Then what? What happens last? Then what? What if they hate it? They won’t. What if they love it but are nervous about timing? We got this.

By the time my legs had turned to jello and my alarm was telling me it was time to head home, I had mentally mapped out an entire project from idea to launch and back and again.

My first step upon returning home was to grab my phone and launch the voice memos app and start mapping out my thoughts from the run. I ramble into my phone as I pour coffee and put bread in the toaster. My thoughts are racing, my heart is still pounding from the run, and I am excited to get to the office and share these ideas with my colleagues.

When I do finally return to the office, I put my earbuds in and listen to my ramblings which I then translate into my first email about the project. I keep this one internal just to get a feel for how my colleagues see my idea — is it too wild or is just right for the customer?

I believe that the best time to get anything done is right now and preferably before lunch. I am not a procrastinator — why put off something for tomorrow when it can be done today.

So, by making my first email of the day be the one about my idea, I had given us an entire day to give the idea room to grow.

My inbox beeped within 10 mins with a reassuring message from my superior — “‘I love it! Let’s get a pitch ready!”

By lunchtime, I had drafted a strategy, sent it to their Account Manager, and the whole project had been passed on to the customer.

I had fallen more in love with this idea by the time my inbox beeped again with another reassuring message but this time from our customer — “We are onboard. What do you need from us?”

When those great ideas come to you, find whatever you need to capture them and save them because a good idea with no action is simply lost…

Getting your great ideas out into the world as something tangible shows your creativity. So, set your ideas free. Trust me, that is what they want to be anyway.

Stephanie Mansueto is a Content Strategist at ion interactive and blogs about interactive content at medium.ioninteractive.com.

The ion interactive enterprise SaaS platform empowers modern marketers to produce data-driven interactive content at scale and without code. ion’s marketing technology and services deliver measurable business value for hundreds of brands and agencies. ion’s platform launches, customizes and tests all types of engaging interactive digital experiencesinfographics, ebooks, assessments, quizzes, lookbooks, interactive white papers, calculators, wizards and configurators. The platform delivers competitive differentiation, conversion performance and lead quality for in-house and agency teams. Connect with ion interactive on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Medium or visit ioninteractive.com.

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