How often do you reformat or reuse your content marketing content?
Many authors find themselves needlessly complicating their lives because you they don’t have an organized way to access your content. As a result, they’re forced to constantly “reinvent the wheel” by coming up with new content marketing ideas, tips, and techniques.
Think about it. How much time do you spend coming up with fresh marketing ideas and examples? Over and over again, your quest for consistent visibility requires you to continually come up with new content. New content typically includes:
- Topics
- Titles and headlines
- Approaches
- Calls to action
- Search engine optimization
Advantages of a content access program
A content access problem help you save time keeping your most popular content visible. In addition to turning blog posts into ebooks and white papers, you can harvest ideas from podcasts and use them in your online courses.
In addition, you may have noticed how frequently many content marketers include links to related topics” at the ends of their blog posts. It’s easy when you can easily locate similar topics. A content access program you can easily locate appropriate content, so you can keep readers on your site longer.
Being able to access previous content can jumpstart your creativity. Just reading the titles of previous content can often spark new ideas and examples that turned-up after you completed and published the original content.
Finally, setting up a content access system helps you efficiently improve your marketing’s search engine visibility. By being able to efficiently track and identify your marketing’s most popular and most often shared topics helps you choose the best search engine keywords and phrases for new content.
Why bother?
The point, of course, is not to copy your previously-created content, but simply make it easier for you to be inspired by what you’ve previously created. If you’re like me, rereading previously-written topics will spark new ideas for updating the content, sharing new ideas and fresh examples, or–heaven forbid–changing your mind about previous topics.
Goals and objectives
Simplicity was my most important goal. Ease of adding topics necessary would make it easy to initially populate my Content Access Map with previously-created content and update the content access map as new content appeared.
If it was hard or time-consuming to use, I’d, or someone I delegated the topic to, would probably not keep the map up to date.
Flexibility and high capacity were additional concerns. A flexible Content Access Map would allow me to easily improve it the more I worked with it. A high-capacity solution could grow with me, as the volume of my content solutions grew.
Content Access Map #1: Titles
My first attempt was to simply list the title of each project and include a link to where it appeared. Each time I added a title, I would then use the Mindmanager command to alphabetically sort the map.
Note that I have shortened the number of titles in Map 1, and the examples that follow, in order to retain visibility.
To eliminate the possibility of a map with numerous titles beginning with H (How) or T, (The) appearing together, I delete these familiar words when they appeared at the beginning of the titles. In the case of long titles, I would edit them, retaining the most descriptive words.
When I wanted to know when and where the content had originally appeared, I needed to do select the link associated with the title. When the content appeared, the date and location would be obvious.
Although Map 1 was simple to create and update, the map quickly became filled. As the map filled, the type beame harder and harder to read. Since the wording of the titles varied so much, there was no way I could search for content by categories.
Content Access Map #2: Media
In Map #2, I organized the titles by the Media, or location, where the content appeared. This made it easier to review where the content I had prepared for articles, my web site, or various guest sites. This helped me choose fresh topics and avoid addressing similar topics too many times a year.
By know where the content had appeared, however, I would be able to make simple adjustments to the title and text, reformat the content, and often replace the graphic. Reformatting could also involve making a video out of a blog post, or an article out of a podcast episode.
However, arranging content titles alphabetically where they first appeared didn’t help me very much. It was hard to relate topics located in different categories.
Content Access Map #3: Topics
Map 3 came the closest to achieving all of my goals. This time, I organized topics according to different content categories, i.e. branding, copywriting, graphic design, writing a book, etc. Organizing titles alphabetically by topics made it easier to get a “big picture” view of my content.
I could view how often various topics had been addressed. I could see which topics had received too much coverage and which topics needed to be addressed or updated. By clicking the link, I could see where and when the topics had been addressed.
Without introducing any advanced commands or features, Map #3: Topics helped me gain more control over my content.
The story doesn’t end here, however
It’s possible to easily add enhancements to the above mind maps to undo complexity. For example, I could use color to indicate the Media (or location) where various content titles had already appeared. I’ll be sharing these features in my training and upcoming posts.
I could use tags to identify where the content had appeared as well as the approach or perspective the content creator content used. Examples of approach or perspective include introduction, case study, frequently made mistakes, resources like books, advanced techniques, etc. case study, i.e. and what topic or category each title addressed.
You can also use tags to track the topic’s:
- Effectiveness, i.e., conversions, visits, or purchases
- Popularity, i.e., comments, likes, list growth, shares
- Search engine visibility, i.e., placement, visibility
- Credit, i.e. individual, department, agency, freelancer
Advanced capabilities, Linking maps, notes
MindManager incorporates Linked Maps, another feature that makes it especially valuable for mind maps containing a lot of topics. With a single click, you can send any topic, and its subtopics, to create a new linked ma.
When you link maps together, the content of your original map becomes spread over two, three, or more maps. This means that when you search for topics, for example, MindManager searches all of the linked maps, and displays the content regardless of the original map where it appeared.
Notes are another mind mapping feature that permits you to add more information to your Content Access Map without cluttering the map, or putting up with small type. Notes permit you to add as much or as little additional information to any topic. When you select add a new Pane, or section of your computer monitor’s screen, you’re presented with a location where you can add as many sentences, paragraphs, tables, or graphics, etc. to a topic as desired. The Notes pane only appears when you add additional information. Otherwise, only a small link appears to indicate the topics containing the Notes associated with the topic.
Efficiency multiplies your effectiveness
Never before have the stakes been higher for authors and publishers seeking a competitive edge.
For this reason, many authors are turning to mind mapping to plan their books, plan their marketing, choose their titles and Amazon categories, plan their book launch, and plan their post-sale profitability. Mind maps make these, and other tasks, more efficient, leading to higher profits.
Author Bio:
Roger C. Parker has devoted decades writing, teaching, marketing, and mentoring. He’s been a MindManager user for over a decade. He has written several nonfiction books sold in over 30 countries around the world. He’s also pioneered new topics for books about emerging trends. Many “escapees” from corporate cubicles have depended on him to help them transition from corporate life to entrepreneurial success.
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