Writing Prompt: Profile Emerging Trends Leader Shashi Bellamkonda

Week #3 – Leaders who discuss emerging trends

Welcome to an exciting week here at WNFIN! The theme for this month’s series of writing prompts is emerging trends. We’ve discussed the nuts and bolts of emerging trends and touched upon some pop culture in emerging trends last week. This week, we feature leaders who discuss emerging trends. One such leader is Shashi Bellamkonda, who I met virtually through Twitter. Your job is to write a descriptive profile of Shashi Bellamkonda using the same old-fashioned journalism tools you first learned in high school.

Creative Idea Gal’s Thoughts

I met Shashi Bellamkonda roughly a year ago on Twitter. As part of my Twitter strategy to follow people in different subject areas that interest me personally, I started following Shashi. It took me a long time to dedicate my time to Shashi’s tweets but eventually, I did. I started noticing a pattern in his Twitter streams. I began to see the same types of information cropping up. I was intrigued.

I took that intrigue to a whole new level and connected with Shashi on LinkedIn. Once on LinkedIn, I began seeing a slightly different version of Shashi with new information trickling in. That encouraged me to pay even closer attention to Shashi’s pattern of activities, his social media profiles, his following, and the quality of information he shared.

I was hooked. To this day, I continue to be drawn to Shashi and the information he shares for several reasons. In my eyes, Shashi has become the ultimate leader who discusses emerging trends in his field of expertise. As a writer, I feel that it is important to stay on top of my game by following and connecting with leaders who are prolific, share timely information, and give us much food for thought.

By the way…did you notice how I purposely left out basic details about Shashi Bellamkonda? Heh, heh. That’s your job to get the basics. Read the whole prompt and you’ll understand why I left out key details.

Tips on How to Spark Creativity in Writing

• Tip #7 – Be open-minded about receiving new information

A sure-fire way to spark creativity in your writing is by keeping an open mind about things. In other words, you must train yourself to be receptive and willing to learn new things, even when you think you’ve heard it all, seen it all, witnessed it all. You are a human being. It is virtually impossible to have experienced everything that life has to offer you. Why not live vicariously through others? Why not accept the life experiences and tales of others as intriguing things to get your mind to think and connect?

On paper, it sounds easy to keep an open mind about things, but in practice, it is harder. You’d be surprised at how often people admit that they are unwilling to eat new foods, watch a movie that is outside of their preferred genre, or attend a sporting event because of a stereotype or perception. Aren’t all those activities a way to receive new information? Think about it.

Emerging Trends on Twitter

Here is a sampling of yesterday’s emerging trends based on Twitter hashtags:

• #ashes (related: #Stuart Broad, Australian cricket player who did something wrong)
• #Rs 155 (The price of Petrol in India was raised by 1.55 ruppees per liter)
• #NoJustice (tweets about instances where there was no justice, such as the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s shooter and the death of actor Cory Monteith)
• #spiritchat (Sunday Twitter chat about spirituality)

Writing Prompt 082

Prompt: Profile Emerging Trends Leader Shashi Bellamkonda

• Step 1: It’s time to dust off the basics on profiling people. Back to High School Journalism 101. Recall the five Ws for any news story? Who, what, when, where, and why. The same approach applies to profiling people.
• Step 2: If you’re unclear on how to write a basic profile of a living person, do some basic Internet research. The most common examples of profiles appear as corporate profiles of business owners. Your profiles of emerging trends leaders don’t need to be as stuffy or formal as those in the corporate world. Be creative, but include the basics.
• Step 3: Profile emerging trends leader Shashi Bellamkonda. Writing a profile of a living person is not just an honor to the person himself, but a test to see if the writer knows how to do research, sift through facts, and extract relevant information to produce a compelling picture in words. I have confidence that you can do it!

Please be sure to leave comments about this writing prompt. We want to hear from you!

About the Author

Amanda M. Socci is the creator of this unique 10-month training program providing writing prompts to nonfiction writers. Amanda is a diehard creative and an aspiring book author, currently blogging a book on faith, A Slice of Faith, on a community website. Visit Amanda’s blog. Follow Amanda on her journey to book publication. Like A Slice of Faith on Facebook.