Wednesday’s book marketing & promoting tip for authors

The best way to create the blog content you need and simultaneously write a book is to use a mind map to plan & organize your writing.

Mind maps help you co-ordinate your blog with your book, saving you time and organizing your files.

Why a mind map?

Above is the mind map I used to plan a 26-week series of blog posts for Rajesh Setty’s Active Garage blog. (Another similar, but shorter, approach to a series of blog posts can be seen at my new 7 Pillars of Blog Content series.)

In both cases, I’m using mind maps to plan what I’m going to write, and when. The maps take the “what should I blog about today?” uncertainty out of blogging.

The maps, created with MindManager, help me view each post as an part of a bigger whole–a blog post series or an upcoming book. This makes it easy to co-ordinate my blogs with upcoming books and e-books.

Mind maps display a lot of information in a small area

The “at a glance” information density of mind maps is amazing. For example, when I look at the above map, I can see:

• What’s already been written and what needs to be written.
• What posts have already appeared, and which have been submitted.
• The topic colors indicate which Published & Profitable category each post relates to.

What are the icons for?

• Hyperlinks permit me to instantly go to published posts to review them and check for comments.
• MindManager’s Notes feature permits me to jot down ideas for upcoming posts and include links to each post’s word processed file stored on my computer.
• Checkmarks indicate posts already written, but not yet run.

What I can also do

That’s not all. As I move forward, I can take more and more advantage of the power of mind maps to simplify complex projects by breaking them into a series of manageable tasks. For example, I can also:

• Link maps and other files. This lets me “drill down” and keep track of resources and other topics.
• Deadlines. I can easily add due dates and deadlines for each post.
• Tracking. I can also use MindManager’s Notes feature to track the popularity of each post, as measured by comments, Twitter Retweets, downloads, or landing page visits.

To learn more

• Download my free, (no registration) 4-page report, MindMapping for Marketers & Writers, it’s free, it’s short (4 pages) and there’s no registration.
  
• Sign-up for my free Write Your Way to Success 16-page report and get free weekly writer’s tips and advance notice about upcoming events.
• For content ideas, check-out my Content Catalyst, praised by thousands of writers and information marketers.

Contact me for more information about using mind mapping tips, resources, and training, to help you blog your book, building your online visibility while writing your book as a series of short blog posts.