Brainstorming is a useful tool, and as a coach, you probably use it from time to time with your clients. Usually brainstorming is done with more than one person, with everyone’s contributions creating energy and triggering new ideas. But as a solopreneur, sometimes you are stuck brainstorming with a very small group of one. You.

Today I want to share a low-tech tip with you. No technology required, although there are some programs that will help you with this. Some of them are even free.

What we are going to talk about is called mind mapping. When I taught school, I called the process “Making a Spider Chart.” Mind mapping is the grown-up version. It’s a graphic way of creating an outline.

There are many things that you might need to brainstorm about. Blog post topics and categories, free offer ideas, groups to hold, classes to teach, packages to offer… The list is endless. We are going to look at blog post topics and categories.

The picture at the right shows a sample of how you might set up your mind map. (You can click the image to see a larger view.) In the center is the main topic, Blog Ideas. Surrounding that are some different categories of posts that you might want to write. Once you have added those ideas — or better yet, ideas of your own — then you can start thinking of specific topics that fit in each category.

Then, when you have several ideas on your mind map, you can transfer them to a calendar. If you do a blog post each week, for example, you might make the first week of each month one category and the second week another category, and so on. Then, when you fill in the topics you have brainstormed, you’ll find that you have a few months of content already planned out. And that’s at least half of the battle, isn’t it?

How do you come up with ideas for what to write on your blog?