One of our goals for Deluxe Interactive Services this year is to post articles on the blog on a much more regular basis.
You may have heard the old saw “the plumber’s wife always has a leaky faucet.” Although we emphasize blogging to our clients (telling them that “content is king”, how fresh content can help improve their search engine rankings, and how regular blog posts can position them as experts in their fields), we rarely updated our own blog. One of the main reasons (and I think most people who blog will agree with me) was this: Deciding what to write about.
Unless you have a very focused website, it can be difficult to decide what you should write about. Topics don’t come easy. When I was a newspaper reporter, deciding what I would write about was a no-brainer. I covered several different beats, and every day there was a new story to tell. If the school board had a meeting, I wrote about it. If the police captured a burglary suspect, I wrote about it. Simple.
Coming up with good ideas for a blog about my business… well, that’s not so simple. But now I have a new tool to help me with those ideas.
XMind is a free software package that helps with brainstorming, and I like it. I learned about the software from the article Three Stupid Simple Ways To Brainstorm Content Topics on marketingpilgrim.com. Since I was trying to decide my blog topic for the day, I thought I would give this mind-mapping software a whirl.
Both the XMind download and the installation were a breeze, and within five minutes I was brainstorming away, coming up with a quick dozen-or-so topics for possible blog posts. Below is my first go-round with the software:
Believe it or not, my brainstorming is more than just a drizzle!
I feel certain I will be using XMind more often, not only to brainstorm blog ideas, but also for brainstorming other areas of our business.