While leading a study group at Mom Masterminds tonight, we talked about how overwhelming launching a product can feel. Especially to someone who is creating their first product. I’ll admit, after so many years launching products is a nerve wrecking experience for me as well. There’s so much to be done. There are affiliate tools you have to create, emails you have to send affiliates, check out process has to run well, your own promotions and announcements to make, ads, getting publicity… phew!
One of the things I do and suggested to the study group is to use some kind of outlining tool or even a notebook if that’s what works best for you. I’m a visual thinker. I like to see things laid out in a mind map or process chart. I just think better that way. When I created Blog Energizer, I several index cards of mind maps. While I prefer index cards and paper mind maps, you might prefer to do it on your computer or something that’s online you can share. Sometimes that has its advantages especially when you work with a team of people. These might help.
- Freemind – used this one for a while. Love that it can be used on different operating systems. I had one on my PC and one on my Mac, shared files easily between the two. Free and open source. Great deal.
- Mindjet – this seems to be the cadillac of mind mapping software for Windows. I personally have not used it but I know of marketers who swear by it.
- Omni Outliner – this one is for the Mac users. More of an outliner than a mind map software.
- Mindomo – web based and desktop, free for basic account, $6/month premium. This looks really nice I like how interactive it is.
- Mindmeister – one of the first web based ones I was introduced to, free basic and they have three other plans available too starting at $4/month
- Bubbl.us – web based and as far as I can tell free. May not have as rich a tool set as Mindomo but pretty interesting overall.
- Comapping – another web based mind map tool but the approach is group mind mapping. Team members can add/expand to ideas, share maps, email, attach documents and links instantly or at their own time. I’m kinda intrigued. For a team of 5 people, it is $119/year.
- WriteMaps – pretty simple and straightforward, more of a flow chart system than a mind map system. Free.
- Gliffy – this is a web based flow chart creator. You can share your flow charts with others like your assistants. I’ve used it to share and plan software project outlines with my developers and create web based ’systems’ so it’s easy to train new assistants. $5 a month for 1 user, $25/month for 10 users.
- OneNote – Microsoft, desktop based. Looks impressive and it’s capable of a lot of stuff but my teams are not Microsoft or MS Office centric so the collaboration part of it doesn’t work well for me. It’s more of a information manager than a outliner or mind mapper but you can use it that way I suppose.
P/S: Mind maps are great for blogging too!
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Lynette enjoys discovering new ways to use technology or new technologies to use in a business and in turn help her clients apply them.
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Another great product is Inspiration or it’s web sister Webspiration. I first used Inspiration with elementary school kids, LOL! If they can use it, anyone can. Webspiration makes it easy to share and collaborate with others.
I especially like that I can “dump” my ideas into a graphic mind map and then touch one button and I have an outline that’s so much easier to use than Word.
http://mywebspiration.com/ It’s free right now because they are in public beta mode.
That’s a great find Cindy, thanks for sharing that with us.