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Is Your Content Getting Lost? Try a Content Map

viewmasterWith all the work you put into your content marketing — all the hours spent blogging, publishing news items, creating articles for LinkedIn or industry publications — you could probably be seeing more than a couple of likes on Facebook. One way to leverage the content you create, and get more mileage out of it, is called Content Mapping.

As explained by Carlijn Postma at Content Marketing Institute, “Content mapping for curation purposes is a logical derivative of the phenomenon of mind mapping — a diagram is drawn to visually organize information, frequently around a single concept represented as a circle in the center of the map.”

Plotting your content map enables you to think ahead about the possible extras that could result in additional content without spending too much time.

Postma notes that this is not the traditional idea of content mapping, in which you map your content creation to the needs of your organization. Rather this is the map for where you content will go after creation, to get the most mileage out of it.

The article contains a great infographic broken into five steps. Definitely worth the read, as is most of the material from CMI.

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What to Say When You’ve Got Nothing to Say

“Blog. A lot.”

That’s the advice we give and get when talking about building an audience. Whether you are selling your resume, your next book or your business services, getting in front of people is key.

And not just getting in front of them, but actually sharing info and advice that will help solve a problem or provide some inspiration.

But those moments of blogging brilliance — those moment when your thoughts crystallize and the writing comes easy — are too infrequent for most of us.

So what do you say when you’ve got nothing to say? What do you blog about when it seems you are the most uninteresting blogger in the world?

Exactly that.

Sometimes I’m at a loss for words. Like today. I know I “should” blog today but gosh, the weather is just so great and my mind is not on businessy things. So I’m writing about what to write about when I’ve got nothing to say.

The point is this: Your audience likely suffers from some of the same issues you face in those “staring blankly at the screen” moments. Lack of focus, lack of motivation, lack of confidence, lack of interest even.

They suffer from this, and we all know misery loves company.

Don’t hesitate to be real. Your audience will appreciate your honesty, and will connect with you on a more personal level.

Now go blog. Happy Friday.