Somewhere vaguely behind my brain, lost in memory, I recalled learning the mind mapping technique in school.
I wasn't a great student in school. Because of my extremely short attention span, every class becomes a boring canvas to me. I wasn't really good at following instructions too.
Sound familiar if you have an ADHD kid or one yourself?
But if there's one thing I'm really good in, it's actually identifying key points throughout a reading material. No matter how thick the piece can be, I can easily spot the relevant keywords and figure out the gist of the book without having to read it.
But this speed reading/ mind mapping approach can be a bad habit though. Because I never truly read every word in the sentence. I find myself stopping on tracks more often when I realized that I was racing through the book.
On a more positive note, mind mapping helps me a lot in writing.
Before I start writing a content, I already knew what I wanted to talk about.
My ideas pay me a visit late in the night. And it comes in a burst of 8-10 ideas- at one go.
So I'd have at least a week's content in advance.
Here's how my mind works and you can adopt this if you'd like to know how to expand your current content.
Let's take travel as the topic of interest since mass majority love this topic (I do too.)
I'm starting off the examples with a destination/ place.
Nordic region (mainland but let's split into more specific countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden)
That's 5 countries for you to write about already (great!)
Now let's dive deep into each country. These are just general points but you can always do more research for each point. (i.e.people, culture, art, food, activities, transportation, education and scenic spots)
Why people, culture, art, food, activities, transportation, education and scenic spots?
Because these made the country whole- its identity and core functions of the nation itself.
Also, these points are no doubt, widely discussed. Albeit you might want to avoid sensitive issues like gender orientation, religion, and politics. Unless stirring a controversy is your end goal.
Otherwise, add values!
Week 1 topics
Denmark- People, culture, art, food, activities, transportation, education and scenic spots
Week 2 topics
Finland- People, culture, art, food, activities, transportation, education and scenic spots
Week 3 topics
Iceland- People, culture, art, food, activities, transportation, education and scenic spots
Week 4 topics
Norway- People, culture, art, food, activities, transportation, education and scenic spots
Week 5 topics
Sweden- People, culture, art, food, activities, transportation, education and scenic spots
Now you have 1.25-month worthy topics to write about!
Now, let's start creating specific topics for Week 1. For this purpose, you can use some tools to help you generate interesting headlines. Of course, there are countless tools out there and I don't use every one of them. But there's only a handful that's my favorite, and here's a list of them:
Portent
And if you're into 'clickbait' titles, here's one for you- the Upworthy generator.
Let's go back a little to creating relevant titles for Week 1 (Sample theme: Denmark)
Denmark, courtesy of Pexels
People- 8 times the Danish People Are Cooler Than Michael Jordan
(referring to the title as generated by Portent, I tweaked it a little so it's more localized, or even relevant to what I had in mind)
Culture- How the Danes Changed The Way We Think About Death
(sounds solemn, but it might work- who knows)
Art- The Only Art Galleries You'll Ever Visit In Denmark
Food- 10 Shocking Facts About The Danish Delicacies
Activities- 9 Things You'll Want To Know About The Danes' Past Times
Transportation- You'll Be So Impressed With Denmark's Railway Routes, You'll Pack Your Bags Now...
Education- Why The Kids From Denmark Are So Happy?
(For this topic, you don't have to specifically mention the word 'education' in the title. In fact, for all topics, you don't need to be so blatant in the title. Just do your best to connect the key points and lead your readers from the title quickly into the main gist of the content.)
Scenic spots- 3 Haunted Castles You'll Want To Visit In Denmark Before You Die.
(Sounds morbid but if it works and attracts- why not? As long as it's not linked to politics or religion, safe to say you'll be fine)
This is also how I prepared weeks of content before the actual posting date. If I have more ideas, I will store them in a repository so whenever I ran out of ideas, I won't exactly be empty-headed.
If you find this useful, it'll be great for you to resteem this post so you'll have it listed on your feed for future reference :)
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Credit source: All public domain pictures are taken from Stencil unless stated otherwise