About 12 months ago when I first started looking into what’s now the biggest chunk of conversation for me – Social Media, I quickly understood the power of the new medium. Another thing that I caught my attention was the vast amount of possibilities presented by the medium. When I first began I was looking at the front line tools of 2007 – which were quite a few, and to name the obvious IM’s and the such would be redundant at best – BUT if you look at the medium today you can easily see that the number of tools at your disposal, Twitter, Rejaw, Facebook, MySpace, Ping.fm, and countless others grace us with ease of use and of course – connectivity to one another.
An inherit problem to all of this is organization. This morning I thanked God for Spaces in the Leopard Operating system – because without it… I would be insane. However; another tool that I have used over the last 3 years for ALL types of projects is Mind Mapping. Now – you may be scratching your head – but if you stick around for just two minutes I may be able to share a piece of technology that will give you a toolset that you can employ to help you keep all of this “stuff” organized.
What is Mind Mapping? Mind Mapping is a way of organization that uses images instead of list or (primarily) words to organize data. A Mind Map is a visual representation of what is in your head… LOL!! Yeah sounds crazy huh? Here watch this Video by Tony Buzan – Creator of Mind Mapping (this is like a primer…)
Okay… Now that you have this “Old School” version lets get technical with it… There are various Mind Mapping tools – I personally use Personal Brain It’s light weight and sits right on your desktop with ease. NOW the winning question… How do I use the tool to keep my Social Networking Practices in order?
As “the rules” of Mind Mapping suggest – you start with a central point. This central point is YOU. And from you there are indeed the branches and these are mine…
1. Blogging
2. Micro-Blogging
3. Networks (Major)
4. Networks (Minor)
5. Publishing
6. Creative
Blogging
Under the Blogging Branch I have any Blogs that I Author
Micro-Blogging
This is where Rejaw, Twitter, Tumblr – so on and so forth go…
Networks Major
This is the home of Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning Networks and so forth…
Networks Minor
For me.. I list FriendFeed, Mashable, and like networks
Publishing
This is where your Squidoo pages and Zimbio data goes
Creative
You guessed it.. .Flickr and Adobe stuff….
Now this is where it gets nice. Now that you have a clear map of all that you have going on. Adding new sites and tools is not a problem. Your Map gets a LOT bigger BUT you have a clear view of all the madness. At Vyne Interactive – the very first thing that we do for each client is build a Mind Map of what we are doing with them and collaborate this map across our entire team. This way we can keep a solid pulse on where we are and what we are doing.
This view is Surface at best – BUT this is SurfaceBurn – so what do you expect? What you can take away with you?
1. A new understanding of Mind Mapping
2. A Killer tool that you can use for creating your Mind Maps “Personal Brain”
3. The beginning of a clear strategy to use in your Social Networking practices!
Cheers!
0 Responses to “Social Networking Strategy: The Mind Map.”