Bridget Willard

Author: Bridget Willard

  • How do you find ideas? Keep learning.

    Updated 2/3/2025

    When I was in college studying to be a teacher, the cliché phrase everyone batted around was “be a lifelong learner.”

    Passion for knowledge is what makes you a great teacher, but being teachable comes from self-awareness and the humility to grow as a person. They’re not necessarily correlated.

    Stagnant water, after a period of time, begins to attract bugs and decay. So it’s no wonder that when we stop learning, we stop finding ideas. They hide from us in the depths of the shadows, like a horrible game of cat and mouse.

    Historically, where do ideas come from? (You should totally watch this video from Steven Johnson.) Most often through cross-pollination and/or collaboration.

    “Allowing yourself to cross-pollinate will make your ideas stronger.  And it gets you out of the tired ‘same old’ marketing all of your competitors are doing.” Sonia Simone of CopyBlogger in “Five Marketing Lessons You Can Learn from a Weird ‘Real World’ Business“

    Don’t stop learning.

    “I’m not an expert and I aspire never to be one. As Frank Lloyd Wright rightly put it, “An expert is a man who has stopped thinking because ‘he knows.’” Brain Pickings began as my record of what I was learning, and it remains a record of what I continue to learn – the writing is just the vehicle for recording, for making sense.” Maria Popova as interviewed by Copyblogger

    For most people, this means reading. My attention span prefers 300-500 word articles if I’m reading online. Whatever books I do read are non-fiction, but it’s rare. If you’re like me, you need other ways to learn that don’t require a library card.

    Documentaries

    In this day and age, there are hundreds of documentaries to watch on YouTube, PBS, The Learning Channel, The History Channel, Discovery, and the lot. I’m currently nerding out on the Absolute History Channel on YouTube.

    Stream a video from Netflix. Personally, I love the Ken Burns documentaries. He has a way of using sound – both in his placement of music and direction of the narration – that seems to enrapture me.  My favorite of his documentaries is Lewis & Clark, closely followed by The Brooklyn Bridge. Challenge yourself to learn something new.

    Lectures

    Many colleges have classes for alumni or those you can audit. There are thousands of podcasts, both video and audio, to stimulate any area of curiosity you can imagine. Look up a TED Talk. They’re a low-level commitment since most of them are 3-20 minutes long. My three favorite talks are “The Power of Vulnerability” by Brené Brown, “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are” by Amy J. Cuddy, and “The 5 C’s of Connection” by Bobby Umar. But there are great ones about the oceans, how to tie your shoes, robots, and anything else you can dream of.

    Museums

    Take a day trip to an aquarium, museum, library, zoo, or botanical park. There are so many of these places near us and many of them have low entrance fees. Take a tour, read the signs, take notes and photos. Enjoy being out in nature or looking at art. This stimulates your brain in different ways which you may not be conscious of at the time.

    “In other words, outside the hubbub of the city, their brains started to rest and reset.” Ben Shiller

    My late husband and I went to Sherman Library & Gardens when we lived in California. It was only $3. Most cities have a botanical garden of some sort.

    Puzzles

    If you’re a vocabulary geek, do the Times Crossword. If numbers are your thing, do Sudoku. The more you challenge yourself, the more neural pathways you create. Essentially, the more you learn, the more you can learn. I do word searches and play Scrabble with my husband (he beats me by 200 point margins every game).

    Questions

    The truly curious mind never stops asking questions. Ask your friends what they’re reading, doing, visiting. Let them tell you. Don’t worry about them using up “your time” in the conversation. Spend time with mentors or colleagues brainstorming with them to solve their problems. Carol Stephen and I brainstorm on Twitter (or Pinterest or Facebook) a lot! It’s actually why I resurrected this post from the draft folder.

    To What End?

    The result of learning is growing. It’s neuroplasticity.

    Learning makes you a better writer, a more interesting person, and, quite possibly, gives you the edge in social circles both online and off.

  • Are you in a Twitter rut? Stop Digging.

    “They” say that if you’re in a rut, stop digging.

    Are you talking to the same people over and over and over again?

    Do you only spend time on Twitter in your “mentions” column?

    We all have days where we’re trying to just get by and, believe me, I’m the one who says you can maintain your account in five minutes a day, but that’s not going to help you grow.

    Whenever I start to feel like I’m in a rut, I am reminded of this Tweet from Scott Stratten:

    If Twitter is about relationships, then it logically follows that relationships take work. That does take time.

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  • Twitter is About Trust. Is Your Social Ledger Blank?

    Ledger-6 Print fit-to-page or on 12 inch or legal paper
    by Mel McCarthy Creative Commons License

    A blank slate. Many social psychologists believe that the human starts off with a blank slate. Regardless of your ideology, every relationship does begin with a blank ledger. Let me explain.

    Social Media is about many things, one of which is building relationships. How to start that building is often debated.

    “Relationships take time. If you try to shortcut social media, you’re shortcutting relationship building.”

    ~ Scott Stratten from “Mannequin Networking: Why Twitter Automation Is Bad.“

    Scott is right. Relationships are built over time. Being the logical person that I am, I came to the conclusion that Twitter is about trust and tweeted it on September 25, 2012.

    In our digital age it’s easy to either be naive (an oversharer) or paranoid (incomplete profile). It’s true that occasionally you do run into people like Terry Rantula, as Carol Stephen describes in her post, “Social Media: Do You Really Know Your Friends?” But should that be the determining factor in our social media strategy?

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  • Retweet Styles – It’s like Jeans; there’s a fit for everyone.

    Social media experts are known for their opining.  Like it or not, extreme positioning tends to garner both positive and negative attention.

    As a dispensary of unsolicited advice I’ve made the enemy or two in my day. My thought, however, is this: why not experiment around?

    One thing we can count on in social media is that trends, platforms, and accepted notions change over time.

    By now, most people know what I think of Twitter’s Retweet Button.

    But there is an element of style in the retweet. Style in tweeting is like jeans – there’s a fit for everyone. Quote Tweets or Quote posts are still fine. They have limitations. And to each their own.

    1.  Old School RT

    Why would someone post on X with the prefix “RT?”

    When Twitter originally started, there was no button to retweet. Users came up with the syntax — et voilà. We’re used to it — us old schoolers.

    This is traditionally done by clicking reply on a tweet, copying the text of the original tweet, and pasting after the user’s name.  Then you put “RT” in the front of the tweet and click send.

    Copy/paste FTW!

    Hootsuite and Tweetdeck (as well as their rival third party apps) have buttons that make this much easier.  In Hootsuite, however, you have to change the settings for this retweet style to be activated. Well, maybe not anymore. I haven’t used Hootsuite since 2023.

    On X (Twitter) this is called “Quote Tweet.”  I still don’t get why they don’t have that option on the web version, but I digress.

    Example:

    Original Tweet:

    RT:

    2. Modified Tweet (MT)

    You may have seen “MT” at the beginning of a post on X. What is it? It means “Modified Tweet.”

    If the original tweet is very much longer than 120 characters, you may have to edit the tweet to get under the character limit. If you do this, then put MT instead of RT and use an ellipsis (…) where the text is cut off.

    Another good use case for “MT” as a prefix is to thank the original poster but include the context.

    3. Comment Tweet

    This retweet has a comment in front to continue the conversation. This is my preferred style.

    Note: Some people put the comment at the end of the tweet with “//” or “<<” before their addition, but I find this style confusing

    Example:

    4. Rewrite Tweet

    This is a hybrid between the comment and the hat tip. Especially if the tweet has a link, I may use a quote or something in an article that I like better than the original tweet’s text but still want to give credit. When I do this, I usually add the website or author’s Twitter handle, if known. I may even add an appropriate hashtag.

    Example:

    5. Hat Tip (h/t) Tweet

    You saw the link somewhere else (Facebook, G+, Instagram, et al) but still want to give this user source credit. Use the hat tip by adding “h/t @username” at the end.

    Example:

  • Six Tips to Gain Followers Through Engagement

    Ducks

    How do you gain followers?

    This is the question I am often asked.

    “Do I buy followers?” No. In fact, most of the time people can tell when you have bought followers, as my colleague Carol Stephen describes in her post here. This strategy sort of backfired for former Speaker of the House and Presidential Candidate, Newt Gingrich, too.

    Twitter is one of the major spokes in the social media wheel. Social media, people seem to forget, is about being social.

    During the question and answer period of the Digital Influence panel at ACEC California’s April Conference, I was asked what the best practice for Twitter is.

    My answer:  “The most important thing for you is to be a human being.”

    In fact, my social media strategy revolves around being a polite, helpful person.

    That seems to do the trick.

    How does this work.

    1. I avoid Twitter’s Retweet button.

    This is controversial and everyone has their own opinions. Read my blog post here.

    2. When I do retweet, I add a comment first.

    This continues the conversation the original tweeter intended, presumably, when they sent the tweet in the first place. Awkward sentence? Sure. But the point is that Twitter is a conversation. By that logic, every tweet is potentially a conversation starter.

    See: Retweet Styles

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