Showing posts with label Mind Mapping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mind Mapping. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

SWOT Analysis become SWOC Analysis

An excellent mind mapping about SWOC analysis

SWOT Analysis become SWOC Analysis

A SWOC analysis will be most helpful if you use it to support the vision, mission, and objectives you have already defined. The SWOC will at least provide perspective, and at best will reveal connections and areas for action.

Source: thinkmarketingmagazine.com

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Off the Beaten Path: The Benefits of Mind Mapping Your Career



For a lot of us, we don’t know what we want to be when we grow until we grow up; even then, our choices might turn out differently than we’d hoped — or just plain wrong. And while daydreaming of stardom or veterinary school is a practice we strongly encourage, it doesn’t always help turn your aspirations into action. Even those of us that are thrilled with the path we’re on can use some direction now and then — luckily, there are methods and tools that make analyzing our professional needs pretty easy.

Naturally, those of us at Mindjet prefer mind mapping. Brainstorming ideas, realigning choices, and seeing new connections is an awesome way to go from thinking about making things happen to actually getting them done.

Choosing a Direction: Inside-Out or Outside-In?

Deciding on a starting point is typically the first thing to do, right? What’s cool about mind mapping is that you don’t have to. If you can’t think of a linear path you’d like to travel, that’s perfectly okay — starting a map is all about asking questions.

What’s your current job? What do you like to study, watch, listen to? How much money do you want to make? Do you want to travel, live in a particular city, start a family, own a dog? No question is too ridiculous or unimportant when you’re mapping your career — remember, the average person spends 90,000 hours working during their lifetime (that’s 10 straight years, 24/7). It’s probably a good idea to make those hours worth more than just a paycheck.
Farnoosh Brock of the Prolific Living blog has some great suggestions for things to consider as you build your career map. My personal favorites:

  • Values you’re not willing to compromise on, such as flexibility or integrity
  • What you’re not willing to do or whom you wouldn’t want to work with
  • How you want to see yourself and be seen professionally
  • What you’re willing to invest for yourself and career (education, training, etc.)
Since mind mapping is the digital equivalent of brainstorming, you can always delete, change, and rearrange later — get the important questions answered up front. You’ll learn a lot about where you are and where you really want to go.

Read complete at business2community.com wrote by Arwen Petty

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Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Mind mapping and its benefits



Understanding how the technique helps link teaching with learning, enabling students to “learn how to learn”

Lexicon Reading Centre is hosting a lecture by Tony Buzan, inventor of the Mind Mapping technique, at The Library, Rashid Hospital, Dubai. The Mind Mapping for Students with Dyslexia and Dysgraphia is a workshop to help educators detect students’ understanding of presented information, diagnose and remedy students’ learning issues efficiently, and connect with them through visual maps. The mind mapping technique helps link teaching with learning, enabling students to “learn how to learn”. It also fosters creativity, ideas generation, enquiry and problem solving.

Buzan spoke to The weekend tabloid! last week regarding the technique and how it can be used to enhance learning.

Please explain what mind mapping is about

Mind map is a thinking map like the map of a city, but for your mind. A mind map is used to help you find your way around your thoughts.

The intrinsic tendency of the brain is not learn in a linear format, but through imagination and association. Based on this insight, the technique employs visual representation of individual thought processes to provide a creative, innovative and efficient tool for learning. It is a powerful graphic technique which provides a universal key to unlock the potential of the brain by using an array of colourful graphics connected to a central topic. It harnesses the full range of cortical skills — word, image, number, logic, rhythm, colour and spatial awareness — in a single, uniquely powerful manner. In so doing, it gives you the freedom to roam the infinite expanses of your brain. A mind map can be applied to every aspect of life where improved learning and clearer thinking will enhance human performance as it helps organise thoughts and gives an easy-to-follow structure to the learning process.

How much is the technique still viable in our digitally oriented world where varied information is available at the click of a button?

We live in a world that increasingly seems to require more of intelligence and ingenuity in its young minds. As people tend to depend on hi-tech gadgets to provide information, there is very little effort to improve memory skills or think creatively. Mind maps stimulate “comparison thinking” and encourage capacity for creative associations.

Also, due to the same gadgets, attention spans have shrunk, so much so sometimes a half-hour class is not long enough for a child to grasp what’s happening in class. A teacher may create a teaching plan but does the child have enough time to understand or create a mind map for himself, so he can take in the information and write it down at the same time?
It is important for teaching institutions to allocate time for children to understand and then interpret the information through techniques such as mind mapping. If we don’t have time to teach children the right way of learning, then it will be a waste of time. If what is being taught cannot be remembered or understood by the child then it defeats the purpose of the efforts and time expended by both parties. This is why around the globe so many parents are removing their children from traditional educational systems and enrolling them into home-school systems where they have the freedom to express themselves in a creative manner or even day-dream and make use of colour in their learning process.

Read complete at: Gulfnews.com

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Sunday, March 24, 2013

Build Your Career Master Plan with a Mind Map



A career plan is a map that guides you to where you really want to go professionally. While there are several approaches to career planning and mapping your way to your next job, a mind map is an excellent tool for brainstorming and organizing your career ideas—especially if you're not sure yet what you want to do.
As Farnoosh writes on the Prolific Living blog, mind maps help you visually and textually organize your thoughts in a way that gives you a structure, linking related concepts. You can use a mind map to brainstorm and discover your career purpose.

This example includes what Farnoosh calls the "foundational pillars" of your career plan—things you need to explore and answer to find your ideal career and plan where you want to go. They include:

  • Current job or role
  • Career goals and dreams (short and long term)
  • Your big why: Why you want to do the work
  • Core values: Values you're not willing to compromise on, such as flexibility or integrity
  • Limits and boundaries: What you're not willing to do or whom you wouldn't want to work with
  • Top strengths
  • Desired strengths
  • Education investment in yourself: What you're willing to invest for yourself and career
  • Execution strategies: What you might do (e.g., change jobs) to accomplish your plan
  • Role models
  • Ideal client or company
  • Ideal professional self: Describe how you want to see yourself and been seen as professionally

As you fill out the answers to these, no doubt other branches and levels will surface, creating a wide web of ideas to help you get a clearer picture of not only where you want to go but also, perhaps, how to get there.

Read complete at: lifehacker.com | Prolific Living

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Mapping the potential of the human mind


Ajay was sitting in the economics class. Prof Bhushan was delivering a lecture on market structures. His lecture was interesting, informative and interactive.

Ajay was stimulated by the ideas being proposed and discussed and he began actively participating. Four weeks later, when internal exams were over, the results surprised both the Professor and his student. Prof Bhushan called Ajay to his cabin and gently asked "Ajay! I expected you to be in the top ten in the class! What happened? Any problem?"

Ajay responded, "I am surprised too sir! I thought I had understood all you said. I do remember many examples you have given as well. But as you have pointed out in my paper, my answers were not balanced between theory and examples. I had many new ideas in the class. I was confused. I guess there was too much information and too less time to think and answer."

Challenging Task
The daunting task of note taking for a student involves several challenges outlined below:
n  There is too much of information to handle from various sources. It’s often required to systematically organize information to write an exam or to participate in a discussion.

-  There is often the question of focus. Where should the student focus in the class? On writing notes or on listening to the lecture!

-  How can one keep track of one's own ideas and questions?

-  How can one keep updating the information as and when they find new information, new links and add new ideas throughout the learning period?

These challenges usually make the student to resort to short cuts such as memorising and reading from handbooks. As a result learning becomes routine and boring. These practices in the long-run erode the teacher-student relationship. What is needed, therefore, is a tool that can keep the creative potential of the student alive and at the same time be useful for note taking.

The Concept

Tony Buzan, in 1970s', introduced the concept of mind mapping for taking down notes in a quick manner. The technique was to begin with a central idea written down at the center of a page. Various thoughts about the core idea are then drawn as branches.

Thoughts and ideas about a specific branch are recorded as sub-branches leading out from the main branches. Associations across branches can be made to allow for forming relationships amongst various thoughts.

So, by being skilled in the art of mind mapping, students can capture key information in the class, while being focused on listening and participating. They can follow their own line of thinking and continue expanding on it after the class. They can connect different concepts and help themselves to discover new knowledge. Their discussions with their teachers and co-students can be much more meaningful and satisfactory.

The process of mind mapping

A mind map usually begins with a "Central Idea" or "Theme" with branches flowing out of it. Each branch represents a distinct sub-theme of the central idea. For example, the teacher might have started the class saying, "Today, we are going to talk about job analysis and its utility."

So, the map would begin by writing "Job Analysis" in the center of the sheet and then circling it. Then as the class progresses sub-themes are added.

The teacher might have given the components of the job analysis, discussed the steps required to carry out Job Analysis, and its applications in organizations.

To capture the above information, a branch from the central theme is drawn and labeled "Components". The branch line is thicker when it begins on the circle and gradually thins out as it ends. All branches and sub-branches follow the same pattern.

Different colours for different branches can be used to make the map more meaningful and creative. Coming back to the example, as there are many components, each component can be represented on a sub-branch, flowing out of the main branch.

To capture more information about each component, further sub-branches can be drawn. Similarly the “Steps “and “Applications” can be drawn as main branches and sub-branches can be added to extend more information. More branches can be added to capture new ideas, questions and other information.

Now, you may find that a concept that is presently being discussed is related to some other concept discussed earlier. To capture this, the two linked concepts are identified and are connected with a dotted line. A label is added to that relationship to describe the nature of relationship.

To add more meaning and creativity to the map, different colours can be used. Pictures that are descriptive of the key-words can also be added. Though, there is actually no end to when a map can be complete, it can capture enough information to use for reference, not only to do preparatory work, but also for exams.

Other uses for students

-  Exam preparation:
Once the mind maps of your subjects are ready, its easier to prepare for exams. To master the content, simply re-drawing the mind map and comparing it with the original will clearly show where gaps exist.

A question paper can be taken and the map can be examined to see if it contains information required to answer all the questions.

If not, such information can be added from various sources. There is no need to carry heavy notes and books to the examination centre.

-  Preparing presentations:
Mind maps can be used to bring in originality and creativity to presentations. Apart from the content, branches that outline key notes about the audience, the time to be spent on each topic, the goals of the presenter, and much more information can be captured.

Original ideas and points of discussion can be brought out on separate branches. As the discussion progresses during the presentation, it can be dynamically added to the mind map.

Who Uses Mind Maps?


Managers use mind maps as a tool to document brain-storming sessions and managing long meetings. Writers capture their plot ideas for their stories.

Lawyers and doctors have extensively used this technique for capturing their analyses and diagnoses. Teachers use it to plan their classes.

Other Uses of Mind Maps

Mind maps can be used for several purposes apart from taking notes. The following are some of the uses that people around the world have found for mind maps:

  • Problem solving 
  • Outline / framework design
  • Anonymous collaboration
  • Marriage of words and visuals
  • Individual expression of creativity
  • Condensing material into a concise and memorable format
  • Team building or synergy creating activity
  • Enhancing work morale
Source: deccanherald.com

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

A New Take on Resolutions: Getting Organized in 2013 Using Mind Maps

Take control of life in 2013 by compiling thoughts and goals into one central, accessible space. This simple step increases the likelihood of success by giving goal-setters a place to refine their ambitions.

One way to catalog and organize goals is to use a mind map. Lucidchart has just improved their mind mapping tool with collapsible branches, which means that it is easier than ever to keep thoughts organized.

A mind map starts with a central theme and branches out into subtopics. Each subtopic can then be broken down into smaller sections with greater detail. For example, if one's goal is to lose weight, make the central topic “Lose weight.” Subtopics could include “Cut down on drinking/smoking”, “Dine out less frequently”, and “Try one new vegetarian dish per week.”   

Mind maps are also ideal for achieving professional goals. Eliza Wright, PR representative at Lucidchart, said, "Mind maps make sense not only for solidifying goals, but for tracking progress over time. To make a greater impact at work, you can use feedback from your peers and supervisors to shape your central topic and subtopics, then do some research on how to meet those objectives.”

All of this information can be housed and neatly organized within the mind map itself. Because of their visual nature, mind maps enable the goal setter to see and digest crucial information at a glance.

When considering diagramming programs, Lucidchart is an outstanding choice. The benefits of using an online diagramming tool are numerous, and include advantages like:

Greater security - Traditional mind mapping programs require a download and installation. With Lucidchart, there is no need to worry about malicious software or viruses, because no downloading is required.

Faster diagramming - Use hot keys to speed up the diagramming process. Hot keys are simple, intuitive keyboard shortcuts that enable mind map creation in just seconds. Mind map branches are collapsible for enhanced readability.

Peace of mind - Each document hosted on Lucidchart is backed up to multiple secure data centers, so there are no worries about backing up or losing data. Lucidchart also maintains robust revision histories, so reverting to an earlier mind map version is always possible.

On-the-go access - Lucidchart is built on open web standards, which means that diagrams are accessible from any location, on any browser, with any device. An Internet connection is the only requirement.

Try Lucidchart for mind mapping today, and see how their latest features make diagram creation both speedy and easy.


Source: sfgate.com

Friday, January 18, 2013

Conduct Your Most Epic Brainstorm Sessions on MindMeister

Starting a business can feel like you're speeding down a winding road without breaks, that is, if you don't have a detailed blueprint. For startup founders and entrepreneurs, brewing up a brilliant idea is just the beginning of a long journey.
After brainstorming comes extensive research, planning and ceaseless decision making. Further down the line comes the execution of your business plan. Organizational and collaboration tool MindMeister has been a huge lifesaver for nearly 1.5 million users since its launch in 2007.

The collaborative online mind mapping software was voted the winner in the productivity category in Mashable's Innovation Index this year — a new program that celebrates tech, digital and social innovations that have redefined the world for so many.

MindMeister is an online mind mapping software that works like an extension of your brain. Think of it as a digital catch basin for your team's best ideas — team members can contribute to business plans within the tool. Creative minds can piece together the big plan section by section. After the initial steps are laid out, they can be tweaked and assigned. But the app has uses cases far beyond business. If you're planning a vacation, creating a budget or even studying for an exam, MindMeister can help you organize and visualize your big thoughts and little details in a coherent way.


Source: Mashable

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Become a master at mind mapping with MindMapp



Learn how to mind map with MindMapp, the first interactive workshop for iPad. Master the basic theory of mind mapping and apply what you have learned in a number of exercises. Ready to make your own mind map? The MindMapp canvas lets you create beautiful and effective mind maps and share them on Twitter.

MindMapp is suitable for people who want to start mind mapping. The basics of mind mapping are explained with inspirational exercises and appealing examples. Practice what you learn on the canvas at your fingertips. MindMapp gives you instant feedback with helpful suggestions and visual responses. With each exercise finished, you earn a badge which allows you to track your progress from Rookie to Master.


Hans Buskes, mind map trainer: “For 15 years I have been training people to master mind mapping. To use them among others for better learning, smarter note taking, problem solving, understanding complex patterns and reducing complex issues to easy to grasp infographics. Now my experience is captured in MindMapp. The result is unique: an interactive workshop and mind map canvas in one app.”

Every month, a mind map that has been publicly shared by one of MindMapp’s users will be selected. This mind map will be highlighted as ‘MindMapp of the month’ and featured on Hans Buskes’ website MasterMindMaps.


MindMapp is available on the App Store for $5.99 and is the fastest, easiest and most fun way to learn and master mind mapping.

Source: pressdoc.com

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Organize your world with TheBrain



If you manage multiple projects and activities at one time, you’re probably using a variety of tools on your computer to keep organized: to-do lists; folders; files; calendars; and apps, such as Evernote, electronic Post-Its, mind maps, etc. But at some point using multiple tools just adds to the confusion; you now need to figure out which tool to use for what activity, adding even more challenges.

If you use files and folders, you’ll experience one of the limitations of the computer’s file structure: It’s a linear system, and it's difficult to associate the same file with different activities.

I’ve tried many of the options listed above, trying to track different activities with one application, going way back to Lotus Agenda. What I’ve found works best is TheBrain, originally called Personal Brain.

I’ve been trying out the latest version of TheBrain 7.0, a software program that helps you manage everything in one place from one screen. TheBrain provides a visual representation of all of your activities, much like a mind map, making it much easier to visualize all of your projects, yet allowing you to focus in on any one of them, much in the way we think. Compared to a mind map, TheBrain has more flexibility for viewing and managing activities, and overall is much more powerful. I’ve used TheBrain to manage clients, organize files, track projects and create to-do lists.


One of the major benefits of TheBrain is that you can combine all sorts of disparate activities, as unrelated as they may be, onto one page, yet focus in on one specific area at one time. You feel in control of all of your activities because they are all there on a single page.

For example, let's suppose you want to keep track of the activities associated with your clients, as well as personal activities and planning an event.

You’ll create three items — Clients, Personal and Event, called thoughts, using TheBrain’s parlance — below the main title, such as "PhilsActivities." When you click on Clients, it becomes the dominant main thought, just as it would be in real life. Personal and Event fade into the background, allowing you to move them out of your mind and to focus on just Clients.

You next add all of your clients’ names below the Client thought with just a few keystrokes. These “daughter” thoughts are each connected to “Client” with a line to show the relationship. If you have 10 clients, their names will each be below the Clients thought.

You can now add items below each client, such as contact information, activities, follow-ups, etc. You can also link additional information to any of these thoughts, such as Web addresses, spreadsheets, email or documents of any kind. This feature allows you to click on a client to see a list of important documents, rather than searching for them in your file folders.

When you’re working on a single client, that becomes the dominant thought, and everything else on the page fades to the background. You can choose to make everything disappear or just shrink.

I use this feature to “park” an item of importance in the right place so that I can easily find it and use it later on, in the context of everything around it.

David Allen, author of “Getting Things Done,” a terrific book on personal productivity, refers this activity as clearing your mind and getting it out of your head: “First of all, if it’s on your mind, your mind isn’t clear. Anything you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside your mind, or what I call a collection bucket, that you know you’ll come regularly back and sort through.” Allen’s central premise is the relief we experience by moving our tasks outside of our mind to be able to focus on what’s at hand.

TheBrain is in use by half of the Fortune 100 organizations and has been downloaded more than a million times, according to the company. It said that one user has built a brain with more than 160,000 thoughts.

Source: The Daily Transcript

Video: Organizing and Visualizing Information in TheBrain 7



Thursday, September 20, 2012

10 Productivity Tips for Working with Large Mind Maps

Roger C. Parker likes share 10 productivity tips and best practices for working with large mind maps.
As illustrated by the image above, mind maps can become substantially difficult to work with when the number of topics exceeds 60. At this size should you try and use MindManager’s Fit Map view, the type size decreases so much so that it becomes difficult to read. If you Zoom In to increase the type size, however, you lose context, or the “big picture” ability to view each topic in relation to all the other topics. So, what do you do?
This problem became painfully apparent when I worked on creating a mind map outlining the Content Marketing Institute Blog’s contributors. Amazingly there are over 168! My goal was to have an easy way to track and learn as much as I could about each contributor, including the following:

  • Profile statements. Content Management Institute profiles are limited to 50 words. I wanted to be able to study how other content professionals describe and position themselves. 
  • Links. I wanted to be able to easily access the URLs of each contributor’s business, or their employer’s website, and view social media updates. In addition, I wanted to note their email addresses, if available.
  • Topics. Finally, I wanted to be able to note their areas of specialization and, in the case of some, include links to their Content Marketing Institute blog posts.
The figure above, shows a revised map, which I created for this project using MindManager 12 for Windows. I now use it as a template for similar projects involving names and titles.

For this map I organized the list of contributors into four primary topics: dividing the alphabet into four equal parts. I then used MindManager’s various View commands to only show the information I need when entering, updating, or viewing information.

The following are some ideas and tips that I wanted to share based on this project.
 

1. Create a protocol for adding topics

Looking back, it seems “obvious,” but one of the problems I occasionally ran into when creating dashboards involved entering names and titles in a way that allowed for easy sorting.

Individuals. Always remember to enter last-names first, followed by the individual’s first name, (ex. Larson, Troy). Otherwise when you sort a topic, you’ll end up with the “Bills”, “Chucks”, and “Steves” grouped together by their first names.
Titles. When dealing with article, book, or blog post titles, decide how you want to handle titles beginning with A or The. You might want to eliminate these “empty” words, or reposition them at the end of the title.

The more consistent you are, the better… the more time you’ll save down the road!

2. Use the Sort command to check for duplicates

Get in the habit of sorting each topic immediately after adding a new name as a subtopic. In MindManager for Windows, Sort is associated with the Format commands. Be sure to select the current topic before sorting. (You can sort alphabetically, numerically, or—what I recommend—alphanumerically).

Sorting topics makes it easy to check for duplicates before entering new topics.

3. Use Notes for details

Resist the temptation to clutter your maps with too many subtopics and sub-subtopics. Instead of adding subtopics by default ask yourself, “Would this information work better as a Note?”

Notes can include a lot of information, especially since newer versions of MindManager for Windows which allow you to include paragraphs, bulleted and numbered lists. In addition, Notes permit you to insert multiple URL links associated with subtopics.

Hint: Within your Notes, use bold-faced type to create subheads to visually organize your Notes into separate topics.

4. Break large maps into categories

Always be on the lookout for ways you can subdivide a large map into smaller categories.

The alphabetical arrangement I used in the Content Management Institute example, of course, will not always work. For example if you are using a mind map to display a list of popular tourist landmarks in America, you could organize your map according to the:

  • Cities where the landmarks are located 
  • States where the landmarks are located
  • Regions, i.e., East Coast, Southwest, Middle Atlantic, etc.
  • Types of destinations, i.e., famous streets, national parks, theme parks, baseball stadiums, etc.
A few extra moments spent choosing the right structure for your maps can pay big dividends later on.

5. Use View commands to only show what you need

MindManager 12 for Windows offers a variety of View options. They make it easy to focus on a particular part of a topic, or subtopic, while limiting the distractions that are otherwise caused by the larger map.

For example, if you’re only interested in contributors whose names fall into the G to M range, select G-M topic, followed by the View> Show Branch Alone.

After you’re through, select the View>Show Other Branches to return to your map original view.

6. Replace large maps with linked maps

When the number of subtopics in the 4 major topics grows too large for comfortable viewing, use MindManager’s Convert to Linked Map command to create a new map containing the original subtopics.

To convert a map topic into a linked map using MindManager 12 for Windows:

  • Right-click the topic. 
  • Select Send to, followed by New Linked Map.
After converting a topic to a linked map, you can subdivide your new map without being overwhelmed.

7. Search for duplicates before entering new topics

Inserting a duplicate topic is always a problem. Instead of manually searching through various topics looking for duplicates try using MindManager’s Search In All Open Maps command – it will certainly save you some time.

8. Add Icons & Markers so you can Filter your maps

MindManager’s various Icons, Resources, Markers, and Filter features makes it easy to update your maps as your information needs become more sophisticated. These features eliminate the need to change the fundamental structure of your maps.

  • Importance. If desired, you can use MindManager’s Task Priorities icons to visually indicate the relevance or importance of various contributors. You can also use Flags to indicate contributors you want to pay special attention to in the future. 
  • Topics. There are several ways you can use Resource Markers in the future to categorize topics frequently addressed by different contributors. You can also use Fill Colors and Text Colors to indicate topics or areas of specialty.
  • Filtering. After adding Resources or Markers to topics and subtopics, you can use MindManager’s View>Filter command to only display the categories you want to view. For example, by using these filters you could display only contributors who write about Content issues, or who write from a Fortune 500 perspective.
9. Use templates and Map Parts to save time

Mind maps are great learning tools. After creating the map for the Content Marketing Institute project, I decided to save it as a template. Templates are great, as they are reusable and can save lots of time. For example, I have used this particular template for studying the contributors of other blogs, including the Social Media Examiner and Personal Branding Blog.

Currently, I’m combining these maps into a single, consolidated, Idea Dashboard which I’ll be sharing in a future post.

For a different project, studying the content lessons of important blog posts, I’ve been using Map Parts which make it easy to create subtopics for important topics. MindManager’s Map Parts provide a structure for consistently entering the same categories of information associated with important blog posts.

10. Exporting Maps to Microsoft Word


One of the biggest payoffs of mind mapping occurs when you export your finished map to Microsoft Word for editing and formatting. When you export to Word, the Notes appear following each of the topics.

In the case of the Content Management Institute project, after exporting, I could easily compare each of the contributor’s profiles regardless of whether I was reading onscreen or from printed copies.

Read complete at blog.mindjet.com

Source: business2community.com

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

How mind maps can help your content strategy

A mind map is an educational tool, often used to help students prepare for exams. It’s claimed that the layout and the presence of visual prompts help the human brain to retain and recall information more effectively than writing out long form notes.

Mind maps can also help with your content marketing by improving your understanding of a given topic or generating a steady flow of article ideas.

For example, you could use a mind map to dig into a particular issue or concept and then use the finished article as a plan for a whitepaper or maybe the start of a brief for an infographic.

The best way to understand the potential for using mind maps to drive your content strategy is to look at a few examples. This one from live-the-solution.com (see below) does an excellent job of exploring the issue of how schools can save energy.



You can imagine tweaking this mind map to help you drill into the subject of saving energy. It could help you get your head around the topic, understand the big, recurring themes and then generate some great content ideas.

Source: castleford.com.au

Autor: Adam

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

ThinkBuzan launches latest version of Mind Mapping software iMindMap 6


Inventors of Mind Mapping and specialists in creative thinking, ThinkBuzan Ltd, today announced the release of the new version of their flagship Mind Mapping software, iMindMap 6. With a strong focus on stimulating visuals and intuitive features, the new software is designed to inspire innovative thinking and fuel creativity.

A tool for all thinking tasks, from brainstorming to project management and presentations, iMindMap 6 enhancements include brand new 3D environments, a new fully customisable presentation builder with rotating transitions, inbuilt flowcharts in 2D and 3D, a new WayBack feature to allow for revision control and many new formatting options.

“We’ve made everything more visually stimulating, streamlined and flexible” says Head of Desktop Development, James Carr. “Although all the new features get an equal share of our affection, 3D is something we’re particularly proud of because it’s simply unmatched. Our 3D editor takes Mind Mapping software to a new creative space and there is nothing else like it, anywhere.”

iMindMap 6 is available for both Mac and Windows operating systems and is fully compatible with the iMindMap iOS and Android mobile apps for users with a subscription. Launch offers include high discounts for existing users and free subscriptions to iMindMap Freedom if purchased by August 10th 2012.

“With iMindMap 6, we didn't want to clog the workspace with complex features that users don't need and will never use more than once. What we’ve tried to create is something clean, flexible and, most importantly, beautiful,” says CEO, Chris Griffiths. “The power of beauty to stimulate the mind and encourage creative thinking is boundless and yet so often neglected in other software tools. The fact is that the brain likes to use what the brain likes, so making iMindMap 6 a visual feast is about more than just aesthetics - it's about thinking better.”

The release of iMindMap 6 follows the successful launch of new iMindMap Android apps, iOS apps and a browser-based version of iMindMap at ThinkBuzanCloud.com earlier this year.

"We are thrilled to be able to provide a complete suite of applications that will allow our users to access the creative workspace of iMindMap wherever they are," says Chris. "Freeing people from the limiting and uninspiring structure of most software tools is our mission and with the release of iMindMap 6, it is now possible."

Highlights:
  • New 3D environments 
  • New quick-draw branch target 
  • New Presentation builder with slide-format, rotating transitions and 3D option 
  • Save multiple presentations per map 
  • New Flowcharts 
  • Box Branch Shapes 
  • Multi-select tool for fast editing 
  • Map Snippets for reusable groups of branches 
  • New Sketch Tool 
  • Full Screen mode 
  • WayBack revision control for iMindMap Freedom users, available on desktop, mobile and online
  •  New Format tool for increased flexibility 
  • Faster start up time
Video: Introduction to iMindMap 6 - Mind Mapping software for Creative Thinking



Find out more and download a free trial from http://www.thinkbuzan.com/products/imindmap6

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