Mind Mapping: Your New Secret Weapon?

An article I just wrote on mind mapping, "Mind Mapping: Your New Secret Weapon?" was just published on onlineincometeacher.com.

The focus of the article is how bloggers can use mind mapping to come up with topic ideas for their blogs.

Like all kinds of freelance writing, it can be really hard to continually generate new blog ideas. Mapping can be used to come up with the ideas themselves, and also to think about new sources of ideas.

Some of the ways you can get your mind working include:

• Taking a class in something you've always wanted to learn.
• Teaching a class in something you're good at--and especially those you want to be better at. (Nothing focuses the mind like knowing you're going to be standing in front a room full of people.)
• Get out more. Go to cultural events. Just walking through a museum always get my mind turning.
• And don't forget to seek opportunities to write guest blogs. Once again, putting yourself in a position where you have to organize your thoughts can help you think in new ways. Plus, most blogs allow you to insert a link back to your blog. Those inbound links are precious!

My wife and I just used mapping to manage a small home-remodeling project. I'm going to blog next about how to use mapping to manage all the little details that go into a remodeling project. It's an example of how versatile mind maps are. You can use them for the most ethereal and the most concrete things...

Do You Create Mind Maps by Hand?

I recently communicated with someone who creates mind maps by hand. I know that mind mapping was first done with pen and paper. But talking to someone from "the old school" made me wonder how many people prefer to mind map this way... and why.

If you or anyone you know works this way, I'd be very interested to learn why you/they prefer to use pen and paper instead of a computer.

I can think of one reason: Like "Geek PDAs" (a bunch of index cards bound together), hand drawing a mind map doesn't require a "connection." You can do it anywhere, anytime.

What else?

A Small Solution to a Big Problem: "Borrowing" images.

I ran across something yesterday that I thought was pretty impressive in a small but meaningful way. I was in the process of writing an article and needed an image. I googled my search term (I was looking for an image of a hand-drawn mind map) and found one that I thought would work. The image was accompanied by the usual warning that "Images may be subject to copyright." So I clicked on the image to see who owned it.

The image was the property of Jane Genovese, who runs the blog Live the Solution. Genovese was named the Young Environmentalist of the Year at the 2009 Western Australian Youth Awards. She says her blog aims to help people:

• explore alternatives to materialism and consumerism.
educate and empower people to take action and combat global warming.
• understand global warming through the use of mind maps.
• and provide freedom from mental traps and negative conversations that inhibit people from making a difference.

Pretty inspiring stuff.

But what really impressed me was a comment on the side of the page where I found the image I wanted. It said simply: "Please donate if you wish to use any of our mind maps," and was accompanied by a PayPal link.

As a writer who understands the importance of adding visuals to blog posts, I thnk this is a brilliant solution to a common problem. There are so many images available on the internet. Some are free, others are not. They are the ones to which copyright laws may apply.

The problem is that as a freelance writer working alone, I have a hard time figuring out who owns an image and how to go about getting (or paying for) permission to use it. Jane's simple solution really worked for me--and for her.

I think it's particularly brilliant because:

1. It makes it clear that the image has value.
2. It makes it easy for the "borrower" to compensate the creator of the image.
3. And by simplifying access to the image, it puts the ball in the borrower's court: You know creator or owner of the image thinks it has value. They've made it easy for you to pay. So... are you going to pay? Or are you going to just use the image "without telling anyone."

The internet can be an unruly, uncivilized place at times. A place where people are tempted to think they can get away with things--including using images without compensating the owner or creator.

Jane's small gesture, minute in comparison to the work she's doing on the environmental front, helps brings a sense of civility and responsibility to the web. It's gentle, respectful, and puts the burden on the conscience of the user. Not a bad model for all of us to live by.

Website Creation Rule #1: Think First (cont'd)

In the previous post , I created the general skeleton for my new freelance writer's website. Now I'm going to add some content.

The first thing I want to do is to start composing the messages I want to appear on each page. In the first post, I made a list of the major areas I work in, each of which will be its own page on my new site:

• Media Campaigns
• Social Media Campaigns
• Content Creation
• Influencer Programs
• Customer Evangelist Programs

Create Content Right Inside the Map

I want to start sketching out my ideas for each page. So I create a "Note" that is automtically attached to each branch of the map:

I work my way through the list, making notes of what I want to say on each page. When I collapse the Notes window to reduce clutter on the screen, all that remains is just a small icon:

I can also put in icons to let me know at a glance how far along I think I am in getting to final copy for each page:

Add Links to External Content

The other thing I want to do is add links to examples of my writing. I do that by opening up a browser, navigating to the examples, then just dragging the URL onto the appropriate :sub-branch" branch of the "Content Creation" branch:

The beauty of using ConceptDraw MINDMAP to design your website is that you can:

1. Aggregate all these different kinds of content into one document.
2. Add icons that communicate information without words, making the document more compact.
3. Get a broad overview of how you're designing the site.

See Your Site as a Whole Entity

As you look at the overall map, it's easy to see what's missing from the site. You can go back into the map and create placeholders for other pages you know will be on the site, as well as any thoughts you have on content.

The use of visual icons just makes the map more concise and maybe a bit more entertaining and fun to create than a regular outline or list:

Try it Yourself!

These two posts give you just a brief overview of how to use mind mapping to design your website. The ways writers can use mind mapping is just about endless. Get a trial version and play around with it!

Website Creation Rule #1: Think First

I have to admit: I've used mind mapping software for years. And yet, when I decided to create a website for my freelance writing business, the first thing I did was try to come up with a good home page headline.

Strong words are vital to a home page--any home page. But what makes a site work is the overall design and navigation, and the content you provide to visitors.

So the second thing I did was to open up a ConceptDraw MINDMAP and start figuring out what I wanted on my site. Here are the general areas I broke my site into:

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I wasn't presenting myself the way I wanted to be seen by potential customers. The two main things I specialize in are developing strategies that help companies get noticed, and creating content--all kinds of content. Very often, the strategy involves content creation. But not always. So I keep them separate:

So now I have the basic skeleton of what I want my website to communicate. I'll post again soon (I'm not going to commit to tomorrow just in case...) on how to use MINDMAP to capture and organize in one place all the content and links you're going to need for your site.

A Better Way to Manage PR Campaigns Part 2

In the first post on this issue, I was discussing how to use MINDMAP to organize your media targets. The nice thing about the map is that you can have all of the ways to contact or follow them on one screen. You may have other places, such as Hootsuite, to follow people in social media.

But sometimes you want to just jump right in and see what a reporter is tweeting about right that instant. The map format makes that easy to do:

You'll notice on that you can also add the pitch you're going to use for each reporter, the subsequent email correspondence you have with them, and the ultimate outcome--either a link to the published article, or the dreaded "thumbs down."

And when the campaign is finished, you can copy and paste each reporter's branches to your main Media Contact map to continue building a history of your relationship with that particular person. More on this later.

A Better Way to Manage PR Campaigns

I suppose that many of you, like me, wear more than one hat in the course of a working week. One of my hats is doing public relations. I love to find companies that are doing something great, but that don't know how to get out there and tell their stories. It is the writer in me that helps communicate what a company is all about--without it sounding like some kind of cheesy brochure.

But PR isn't a one-off thing: It's a process. It's about creating a plan, then executing the plan. And PR plans, like most plans are complex. There are a lot of dependencies. Mind mapping helps me merge my creative, writerly brain with my organizational brain.

There are a lot of moving pieces to the typical pr plan, so I thought I'd make a few short blogs about it so you can see how ConceptDraw MINDMAP helps me work quickly and creatively on behalf of my clients.

PR success is all building strong relationships with influencers, and in having clear, compelling stories to tell. To build strong relationships, you have to understand the reporter--and keep track of your communications with them. Here's how I do it.

I have a set of maps where I keep my media contacts (I pull them from a media database I subscribe to). Every time I start a new campaign, I pull from that the names and info of the reporters I hope to work with on the campaign. The map looks something like this (though this map is very simplified):

I'm trying to keep these posts short, so I'll end it here. Tomorrow I'll talk about capturing your pr brainstorming.