The Top 10 Ways You Can Use Mind Maps for Content Creation - MakeUseOf

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The world has seen a surge in content creation as more people are becoming written and visual content creators. Whether you are a blogger, podcaster, or video maker, mind mapping can help you at different stages of content development.

In this article, you will learn how to use a mind map in your content creation.

1. Finding the Right Niche

An example of mind map for niche discovery

As a content creator, it's extremely important to find the right niche. Especially if you intend to create content for social media, it’s better to select a genre before you start. Use a mind map to locate your favorite niche.

List all the interesting genres and subgenres in a mind map. Besides your interest and expertise, also consider the competition around that niche. As the mind map contains your interest and competition together, finding the right niche becomes easy.

2. Identifying Unique Topics

Besides choosing an ideal niche, you also need to find out the unique topics for your content. There might be endless topics, but making or writing content on the much-discussed topics is pointless unless you have anything new to add.

That’s why mind mapping can help you find unique and trending topics for content creation. You can also compare the trending concepts with what you’ve already covered. If you find a match, it’s time to promote them again or share them with your audience.

3. Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a crucial part of content creation, whether you write a blog, broadcast a podcast, or create videos. It allows you to get fresh ideas for your content and its execution.

In case you don't know, mind mapping is the right approach for successful brainstorming sessions. There are online tools that offer ready-to-use content ideation mind maps like MindMeister, XMind, Lucidchart, etc.

Many mind mapping tools allow collaboration. Therefore, multiple people can brainstorm simultaneously and write the idea on the same map. Once done, you can organize the concepts based on the topic and subtopics. Removing any duplicate ideas from a mind map is also possible.

4. Creating an Outline

An image showing a mind map for outline — Mindmeister

After you decide on the topic for your upcoming content, you need to create its outline. There are different outlining apps available in the market. But, a robust mind mapping app can assist you during outlining. Thus, you don’t need to use an outlining tool separately.

If you want to create a video of the most popular Mexican meals, use a mind map to note everything related to the items, such as history, recipe, and reviews. Depending on your video length, choose which things you will include in the video.

5. Design an Infographic

Infographics are a powerful supporting tool for any blog to be visually attractive. However, creating it is often a time-consuming task. It includes finding data resources, extracting the necessary data by analysis, mock-up, and finally creating one using some app.

You can use a mind map to combine all the main points of a blog. Then, filter only the critical data for an infographic. Once you find out the topics and data for an infographic, you can also take help from a mind map to organize them as per the category.

6. Making Illustrations

A visual showing an illustration of content sections

Most bloggers create images and illustrations for their blog posts by themselves. Not many of them have prior experience in drawing and image creation. As a result, they use the same stock images in all posts, making the audience lose interest quickly.

To avoid this situation, you can use different mind mapping features to make your blog visually attractive. You can describe a process or sequence by adding a flowchart-like mind map to your content. A spider-shaped mind map is another way to summarize the main points of the blog or the key takeaways of an interview.

7. Repurposing an Old Content

Repurposing content means recycling a best-performing blog into different forms. Thus, you can reach out to a new section of the audience.

You can use a mind map to locate the top-performing article or blog for repurposing. This map is also helpful after selecting a blog, as you can find out how you want to repurpose it to get maximum readership.

Besides, a mind map will help you identify a new target audience for repurposed content. It’s also beneficial to locate obsolete data and irrelevant information in a blog.

8. Planning Content Upgrades

An image of mind map showing content upgrade ideas

For serious content creators, upgrading the content is a vital process. In this way, you can turn occasional readers into regular visitors to your website. Apart from this, you can collect the email addresses of the visitors for additional content promotion.

Asking your reader to sign up for newsletters has become too clichéd. Instead, you can use a mind map to find novel upgrade ideas. The ideas could be allowing them to access exclusive content or sharing how-to guides or recipes with them.

9. Outlining the Editorial Calendar

As a content creator, you need to have a content calendar ready that contains the topics of your blog or video for the coming days. It’s good to create a social media content calendar at least one month in advance.

With mind mapping, you can note down all the ideas you have for your future content. Then, you can sort them using the flexible editing features of mind-mapping tools. With this, you can also decide the topics for each episode for a series of blogs, podcasts, or videos.

10. Transform a Text Script Into a Video

An example of video content script mind map

Mind maps are essential for video content creators. As a video maker, you must prepare a text script before you start shooting. But, a mind map reduces your labor by including all the crucial topics and related matters in short form.

Then, you can cover all the points in your video by checking the mind map. You can also use the mind map to ask questions during a video interview.

Use a Mind Map for Catchy Content

To create popular and rich content, you need to put maximum effort into the content creation process. A mind map is a multipurpose method that you can use as a content creator to perform different things.

To do the enlisted tasks, you can utilize some beneficial tips on creating a mind map.

A visual display of a mind map example for client handling

9 Tips to Use to Create Professional Mind Maps

Mind Mapping is a revolutionary tool that makes you productive, organized, and focused. Here are 9 tips to use when creating professional mind maps.

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About The Author

Tamal Das (230 Articles Published)

Tamal is a freelance writer at MakeUseOf. After gaining substantial experience in technology, finance, and business processes in his previous job in an IT consulting company, he adopted writing as a full-time profession 3 years ago. While not writing about productivity and the latest tech news, he loves to play Splinter Cell and binge-watch Netflix/ Prime Video.