Mind Mapping For Blog Post Ideas: Basics And 7 Useful Tips

Blogging is a great way to create your own virtual presence as well as to highlight a business, product or sector. Often there is a situation where bloggers cannot come up with fresh ideas for daily blog posts. This is a hazardous situation as a continuous flow of innovative blog posts are a necessity for any business to ward off competitors as well as gain much-needed exposure. This is where mind mapping comes in handy in helping generate ideas for blog posts.

What is a Mind Map?

Mind mapping is done using a mind map. A mind map is a diagram, representing ideas, words, jobs to do, or other inventories arranged around and connected to one, core idea or element.

Mind Maps are therefore handy as they help generate, organize and classify tasks and ideas. They also help when it comes to arranging and classifying vital information and also while making crucial decisions.

When it comes to blogging, a single key concept or theme that runs through it can be the idea around which the entire mind map is created. These mini elements which are all linked to the central idea generate fresh ideas for blog posts.

How is Mind Mapping done?

Mind mapping can be done anywhere, be it using pen and paper, or a tablet computer or a notebook, or even using mind mapping software. There has to be one central word, phrase, image or question usually encased in a box at the centre of the page.

Lines or branches are then drawn out from this central idea with further words or ideas at their ends. These new ideas can be developed with further lines or extensions without the need for any rigid order of arrangement. Colors can be used too, for differentiation and emphasis of corresponding ideas.

It is important to go with the flow as far as putting down of ideas is concerned, as the whole point of mind mapping is to stimulate your mind to come up with new ideas or solutions. These ideas are to be developed to the fullest extent possible, with the help of links or connections and therefore, it is never actually feasible to recreate a mind map.

This is because re-creating a mind map is bound to throw up newer ideas and concepts, thus leading to a different map altogether. A mind map can never be called complete as well, as there is always room for more ideas, concepts, solutions and trains of thought, so it is always a work in progress.

Useful tips for Mind Mapping

There are a few suggestions you can keep in mind while creating a mind map. I derived these tips from my practice of mind mapping for blog posts for my other blog where I feature auto trader and woot Hosting [ Coupon Code Inside]” href=”http://techfreakblog.com/get-25-off-on-hostgator-hosting/”>discount coupons among the others. It is really challenging to sort out the different discount coupons and the posts related to them.

Using the following tips, I was able to not only generate fresh ideas related to each of the discount coupons but also could easily sort them out in a nice fashion.

• First of all, symbols should be used to classify the various thoughts and ideas.
• There should be proper spacing between topics and all the key words should be placed on lines, along with multi-headed arrows of different colors, shapes and sizes.
• Specific branches should be highlighted through borders or boundaries and line and word hierarchies can be used, with varying word sizes and line dimensions.
• Upper and lower case can also be used to highlight words, as can a wide variety of font styles.
• The central image should be created with care and the branches should radiate outwards from it.
• There can also be variations in colors and endings of branches to emphasize particular words or even distinguish between topics.
• For effective recollection, it is vital to have some variation in colors, highlighting and dimensions of images and pictures used.

There is a wide range of mind mapping softwares available today, which will help you in creating effective mind maps. These include Tony Buzan’s iMindMap, MindMeister, Mind Manager and Visual Mind among many others. These software resources promise to transform your map into a total visual database by assimilating all information, documents, links and notes, along with seamless exporting to other software.

With the help of such software, you can make presentations of your map, along with total flexibility and ease of re-arrangement. Though software saves time and effort, many still prefer the traditional, hand-drawn method for mind mapping. Due to a non-linear method of thinking applied, mind mapping is the best way to generate terrific blog ideas.

This post is a guest article by Jane Sheeba. Jane also writes for Coupon Triumph, a discount coupon site that features auto trader and woot discount coupons. She wishes to share a couple of discount coupons with you: auto trader coupon, woot code.