Using mind maps for blogging

Do you want your blog to be really popular? Does blogging help you in your professional life? If it is so, you need to create an interesting relevent blog. Mind mapping can support your blogging.

By Jane Smorodnikova, www.mind-pad.com

What is the problem?

Blogging is the way to express yourself in a different way. You may write blog as a professional, as yourself, as the ultimate tool for personal embarrassment. Everyone has different personas they put on for life's multiple milieus. We will talk about those people, who want their personal or professional blog to be really popular.

And if you want your blog to be more interesting than others, you need to write in a regular manner. Every entry of your blog should be substantial and interesting. What are the main characteristics of a good blog? You entries should have main idea, facts, arguments and proof.

So, why is it difficult? You will find too main problems with writing an outstanding blog: quantity and quality. And it means that you must post something relevant. And you must keep posting even if you have a fear of the blank page.

Today many popular bloggers talk about this fear. They are afraid of writing something not such interesting as before, they have problems with ideas and arguments. It means, that there is a problem and you should find a way to solve it.

Possible solutions

So, what you can do with all this stuff? We see some different ways. First of all, to continue without changes and, possibly, without results you can just work harder to make your blog better. On the other hand, to conceal yourself from this problem you can pay somebody to write your blog. But all these ways are do not solve the problem, aren’t they? The only way to solve it yourself is to increase your own efficiency. You can do it using mind maps. What is this?

Mind map is a visual tool for capturing and organizing ideas and information. Mind maps visualizes your thoughts, organizes them, and puts them in context.  It is the perfect catalyst for writing a successful blog post.

What is the difference? You can view your posting as a picture, map or text, in different ways. So you will be the first, who will appreciate your posting at its true value. It is the "See what you think" solution. Further you can examine how it works.

The technique

So, what you should do?

1. Capture.

Start with your blog topic in the center of your map.

See what’s out there. Blogging is two-way communication and in order to say something relevant, you ought to listen first! So, browse through existing blogs, scan ideas and thoughts, and import relevant content in your map (quick summaries, RSS feeds, images, hyperlinks, trackbacks).

2. Organize

Now make connections and identify trends and potential opportunities for new ideas. Create a report of your thoughts and develop a logical progression of your points. If the flow doesn’t work, rearrange the order of your points. Make reports several times during working.

3. Share

Finally, formulate the text according to your ideas and map, and create the final blog post as a report. You can copy/paste it directly into your blog provider’s interface as a plain text or use the html format, if your blog supports it. Go back to where you started and make sure you trackback or link to those blogs that provide the context for yours.

See attached file for sample of using mind mapping for blogs.

Summary of the mind map benefits.

1. Mind map - is one if the best way of thinking. And you can use special tool for this. For example, this article was created with Mind Pad 2.0. I did not use any special opportunities - only those which are intuitively understandable for new user. For example – it is very useful to use text on links – you can creat connections between arguments.

2. You make sure that your topic is relevant and that those you refer to will refer back to you.

3. You easily organize your key points, link them to existing blogs using hyperlinking, and make your argumentation crystal-clear. You also can use images, manipulate them to decide - which of them give the best fit.