Thinks I find along the way
I have been mindmapping since 2007 and it’s one of the most important skills I possess for many reasons. Follow the link below for some practical steps to get started…
My tool of choice these days is Mindmeister; it’s freemium and completely cross platform right down to the tablet and smartphone levels. Full story at: How to Mind Map in Three Small Steps.
I do! It’s one of the most important skills or disciplines I’ve developed over the past 3 years. Lifehacker recently surveyed their readership to find the best mindmapping tools…
“Mind mapping is a great way to add structure to brainstorming sessions and visualize your ideas. Check out the applications your fellow readers use to do their best brainstorming.” Source: Hive Five: Five Best Mind Mapping Applications
Go to the source and read about the 5 favorites. Personally, I use Freemind, Mindmeister and Xmind in that order. What are your favorites? Comments please…
Update 10/21/09: Since I wrote this post back in March of 2009, I have become disenchanted with Xmind due to their difficult to manage licensing scheme. I have become enthralled, however with MindManager Pro. Whenever I have something I need to figure out for myself or want to explain to someone else [like a screencast] chances are I’ll mindmap it first to help me make sure I cover all the bases. I also use Mindmeister quite a bit primarily because of their cloud computing approach to mindmapping. I can publish a mindmap on the internet and embed it in a post like this:
They also have an iPhone app that flawlessly syncs with the online version. These days, chances are I’ll start my map in MindManager Pro and make it public in Mindmeister when it’s ready to go. Only problem is that MindManager is very $$$. You can duplicate the same workflow with Freemind [which is free] and Mindmeister. Questions? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page to reach me — if you contact me, I’ll send you an invitation to try out Mindmeister!
Mind mapping software is an incredible canvas for exploring your thinking and recording, manipulating, distilling and converting your insights into white papers, blog posts, presentations and other forms of content. No other type of productivity software gives you this level of flexibility and creativity.
Mind mapping software is particularly valuable in helping you to build thought leadership because:
It exposes your thinking, converting it from indistinct thoughts in your head into concrete words and phrases on your computer screen. That’s very powerful, because your conscious mind can only hold only 6 or 7 thoughts at one time. By freeing up your “mental RAM,” mind mapping helps you to tap into a deeper level of thoughts and ideas. Because mind mapping leverages your brain’s powerful associative capabilities, it helps you to access ideas that are at the edge of your thinking. This may be territory you rarely get to explore, unless you have thinking tools that can help you to drill down below the veneer of your usual thoughts.
Mind mapping is a marvelous tool for enabling you to view both the forest and the trees, and to see connections and relationships that weren’t visible any other way. It’s a marvelous tool for systems thinking!
Finally, mind mapping is a boon to thought leaders because it enables you to envision “white space” ideas – ideas that are between the existing or known concepts, strategies and orthodoxies in your niche.
I’ve shared before that mindmapping is one of the single most important tools I use. I use freemind which is complete cross platform and free as well as Mindmeister and Mindmanager Pro which are not. Have you tried it yet?
I’d like to call your attention to a new webinar being offered by Dana VanDen Heuvel of Green Bay. In a couple of weeks, Dana will be speaking on the topic of business blogging for thought leadership and few people know this topic better than him. Dana says…
“Blogging is one of the most important aspects of a thought leadership or social media presence, yet so many organizations struggle with blogging or decide to dismiss it altogether because of the content publishing demands of blogging. Blogging doesn’t have to be hard, take a lot of time or take an entire staff to publish.
The Blogging for Thought Leadership webinar will take you through the steps from developing your thought leadership position to creating a realistic publishing plan that any organization can manage.
Some of the highlights that we’ll cover in the webinar:
- Developing your thought leadership and blog point of view
- How to use insurgent marketing to claim a thought leadership position in a crowded market
- The social media thought leader’s equation
- The weblog publishing roadmap
- 20 types of blog posts to take your blog to the next level
- How to create your own efficient blogging process
- How to create the ideal social media publishing calendar
- Getting the most from your chosen blog platform
- How to connect your blog to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
- Case studies of organizations with highly successful thought leadership blogs”
You can go to the source to sign up. Whether you can attend in real time or no, you’ll still get the content to view later…
This humble blog is one of the highest ranked websites in the US thanks to business blogging…
…and many of the concepts Dana will be presenting are ones we both consider to be ‘common sense‘ in this space — I wholeheartedly endorse his content and recommend it to you without reservation. Understanding the connection between business blogging and thought leadership could propel your online presence to new heights and there are few people better suited to explain it than Green Bay’s own Dana VanDen Heuvel. Be there when he lights it up…
…on the Top 10 Tactics and Tools for Social Media. Here’s my mindmap. What’s missing? You can grab the map and move it around or make it full screen if that helps by using the menu bar at the bottom of the map…
One of my favorite apps, Freemind, came in in the top five in a recent quest for the top five outlining tools @ Lifehacker…
“Traditionally one thinks of outlines as a linear progression down the page. Many Lifehacker readers, however, opted to outline their projects and ideas in mind-mapping applications like the popular and open-source FreeMind. You still get a hierarchical structure, headers, sub-headers, and so on, but the information is presented in a mind-map format instead of a simple list. FreeMind is very keyboard friendly—it’s possible to create your entire outline without your hands leaving the keyboard. You use customize item flagging, color coding, and more. FreeMind also made an appearance in and won the Hive Five for best mind-mapping tools.” Source: Five Best Outlining Tools – Outliners – Lifehacker
It also won the best of the mind-mapping tools. I’ve been using it for years and it’s one of my most important tools. If you need to get YOUR thoughts together, you can download it here!
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Bright, shiny objects! 