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If you have been working with a brand or product for a long time, it can feel like all of your content ideas sound the same. Content diversity is an absolute MUST in social media marketing and for blogs as well. What do you do when you get content writer’s block? I have a little tool called content mapping that I like to use to help scale out ideas and find creative opportunities that I might have overlooked. If you are an organized person, you might be familiar with the concept of thought mapping to keep track of your ideas. Content mapping is a spin off of thought mapping that can help expand on a general idea and identify content opportunities. Here is an example of how content mapping works.

First, start with a general topic or area of interest. For this example let’s use Travel.

Next, think about types of travel that your community might be interested in or the types of travel that make sense for your brand. For this example we will use foreign and domestic.

From here, try to come up with at least two options for your 2^nd level of content connections. Think about what topics make sense for foreign and domestic travel and make those connections.

Next, you flesh out more and more levels of content connections until you have a content map ripe with ideas!

You can get as general or specific with these connections as you want; the point is to visualize all of the different possible content connections that are available for use. Over time, you will hopefully have a content map that includes a variety of different topics and how they relate back to your brand. I personally love this technique because it provides opportunity to find relevant topics to write about that you might have overlooked. This process does take some time, however once you have all of your content connections mapped out, ideas for diverse content pieces will be easier to come up with.

What do you think about content mapping? Would you ever use it? Sound off in the content section below.