Career planning can benefit greatly from mind mapping, because it enables you to view multiple perspectives and possibilities in a compact, visual format.

In this Mind Mapping Insider report, we’re going to take a closer look at how to adapt Reid Hoffman’s brilliant ABZ planning technique, which takes a simple but very creative approach to help you make the most of the opportunities you will face throughout your career. Hoffman was the cofounder of LinkedIn and created this savvy approach as part of his excellent new book, The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career.

Included in this “how-to” report is a convenient mind map template, so you can use what you’ve learned to create your own career planning mind map.

Members-only resource

This link to this report is only visible to members of the Mind Mapping Insider membership program. It contains a wealth of resources that can help you to be more productive, creative and have a greater impact in your life.

New reports and resources are being added to the Insider area every week. If you’re serious about becoming a mind mapper, why not check out the Mind Mapping Insider program today?

If you want to view this mind map, you will need to become a member of the Mind Mapping Insiders Group. Click here to learn how (it’s inexpensive, and there’s no obligation!).

Whether you work for a large or small company, the potential of Linkedin as a potential source of leads and sales is too important to ignore. Wayne’s excellent advice is going to help me to maximize the impact of my employer’s company page.

If you’re not able to see Wayne present in person, I highly recommend his DVD training programs, which you can learn more about here. I read his book last year, and used some of the tips it contained in my mind map of 100+ tips for using Linkedin effectively.

I hope Wayne produces a video that specifically covers what I learned in this corporate pages course. I don’t see anyone else covering this critically-important information online. In the flood of advice, tips and resources for “sexier” social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google+, Linkedin corporate pages have been largely ignored by online marketing experts. I’m really glad Wayne has taken it upon himself to decode what you need to do in order to create a stellar point of presence on this vibrant network of 150 million prospective customers!

Linkedin has evolved into a popular platform for forming groups where professionals can ask questions, get answers and discuss topics and issues of mutual interest. In fact, for many topics, they are taking over the role filled by “traditional” bulletin board systems of a decade ago. Not surprisingly, mind mapping and visual thinking are well represented on this professional networking site.

Here are 7 groups that you should be aware of:

Visual Thinking – Excellent forum for general discussion of visual thinking tools, techniques and resources.

VizThink – This is a non-profit organization that was formed several years ago to provide a forum for designers and others to learn about visual thinking and apply it. The group holds instructional webinars on a regular basis.

ConceptDraw Users – This group is focused on applications of CS Odessa’s visual thinking software, which includes ConceptDraw, a vector-based drawing and diagramming application, and ConceptDraw MINDMAP.

Mindmapping – This group bills itself as a place for Q&A related to mind mapping.

BiggerPlate user Group – This group is focused on what is arguably the world’s best online mind map gallery.

MindManager Enthusiasts – This group is a good place to ask questions and get answers about the world’s most popular mind mapping software. There’s some good expertise here.

FreeMind – Free Mind Mapping Software Group – This group focuses on all things related to this very popular open source mind mapping program.

Mind Mapping User Group – The purpose of this group is to help users of mind mapping. Specifically, it aims to highlight applications of visual mapping.

If there are other Linkedin groups that you think are worthy of a mention, please submit them in the comments area below. Thanks!

A new web-based application automatically converts your Linkedin profile into a colorful infographic. The mission of Visualize.me, a Toronto-based startup, is quite ambitious – to transform resumes.

According to its website:

“We believe that the traditional text resume is boring, lengthy and long overdue for a makeover. We are creating an online resume format that is beautiful, relevant and fun. We want to enable people to express their professional accomplishments in a simple yet compelling personal visualization. Our vision is to become the future of resumes.”

I recently set up an account on Visualize.me, imported my resume from Linkedin.com, and spent some time figuring out what this intriguing new web-based application can do.

First, because Visualize.me is still in beta testing, I needed to request an invite. Fortunately, this was very easy to do. Next, I needed to input my e-mail address, and had to give it permission to communicate with my Linkedin account. Visualize.me parses this information, and displays it in a colorful infographic on the right side of the screen, plus a control panel on the left side where you can tweak its appearance (click on the image to view my full infographic in a new window).

You can select from 3 basic templates to change the overall appearance of your visual profile (more will be offered when the service officially launches). If you don’t have an eye for colors and design, this will help you to quickly create an attractive-looking infographic. If you are more adventurous, you can customize the look and feel of your infographic, including:

• The colors, fonts and background it uses
• Your profile summary
• Work experience
• Education
• My links
• Skills
• Interests
• Languages you speak
• Recommendations

You can also replace the name of your infographic (the alphanumeric name that appears in the URL) with something more recognizable. In other words, instead of http://visualize.me/xyz123, my personalized URL now contains my name – http://vizualize.me/chuckfrey. This is very useful for sharing a clean, intuitive URL with others, rather than an “ugly” one that’s hard to write down or remember.

In short, you can tweak your infographic’s contents to a surprising degree. I’d love to be able to customize the shapes use to depict each data set – perhaps this will be possible in a future release. Once you’re done tweaking your infographic, you can share it via nearly any social network you can think of, plus e-mail, using an AddThis widget. One minor complaint: It took me a while to find the “share” button – perhaps it should be in a more prominent location, such as within the panel where you edit your infographic’s settings.

If you want to see where this intriguing service is headed, I urge you to check out the Visualize.me blog. There, I learned that it just entered public beta a few days ago. I also got a sneak peek at some of the themes that we can expect to see when Visualize.me officially launches. To my surprise, I learned that Ashton Kutcher’s top 5 job skills, in order of importance, are:

1. Getting hot women
2. Trend setting
3. Punking
4. Being hot
5. Investing

Curiously, acting was his 6th most important skill. Hmm… Actually, this infographic was the developers at Visualize.me having a little fun!

If you love infographics, I strongly urge you to visit the Visualize.me website, request an invitation and create your own visual resume. I can’t wait to see where this application goes from here – this passionate start-up company has a great concept and is definitely off to an impressive start!

In a relatively short time, social media has quickly evolved into a major new channel for communicating with prospects, customers and potential industry partners. Like any other part of our business, we can’t just jump into it and hope for the best. We need to have a strategy or plan for approaching it. Fortunately, some very smart people have compiled a collection of best practices for planning and implementing a social media strategy, which I have summarized in a new Mind Mapping Insider report.

In this new report, I’ll walk you through each section of the map and explain the issues you need to think about and the questions you need to ask yourself as you formulate your own social media strategy – either for yourself or your organization. It will also lay out a common-sense process you can follow to build effective relationships in the social media space. Finally, you can download this mind map to use as a starting point for developing your own social media strategy.

If you don’t see a link above this paragraph, that’s because this report is only accessible to Mind Mapping Insider members. Why not make a commitment to make a bigger impact in your life and work? The resources in this program will help you to become a better planner, problem solver and project manager. You’ll triumph over information overload, and discover a clarity that will help you to make better decisions, faster. Sign up today to join the growing group of MMI members who have made selected the option to be more influential and creative in their lives. New introductory pricing is more affordable than ever: Only $1 for the first 14 days!

Linkedin.com is one of those networking tools that can be overwhelming. So I did a little research and discovered a treasure trove of tips for using it effectively, which I compiled into a mind map of over 100 of the best. There are so many nuances to building an effective profile, networking with others and finding opportunities on this fast-growing (90 million+ people) business networking site that it’s all more than a little overwhelming. Categorizing the best advice in a mind map is a great, focused way to go about methodically improving your Linkedin game.

Click here to view this mind map as a PDF file

I hope you enjoy this valuable resource. I am deeply indebted to two Linkedin experts and authors of the most authoritative books on the subject of using it effectively, from whom I drew many of the tips I compiled:

LinkedWorking: Generating Success on the World’s Largest Professional Networking Website by Frank Agin and Lewis Howes

The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success: Kick-start Your Business, Brand, and Job Search by Wayne Breitbarth

I also spent several hours searching Google and Twitter to find additional tips and strategies. I learned a lot in the process!

If you’re interested in being much more effective in the way you present yourself and network effectively on Linkedin.com, I highly recommend both of these excellent books!

P.S. Here’s my profile on Linkedin, for those of you who may be interested. I’m still working on improving it, based on what I’ve learned from this little research project.

UPDATE: Since I published this post, I’ve had a number of requests for a MindManager version of this mind map. Click here to download it.

• Links to specific web pages and search tools used to track performance on each service
• Links to third party tools
• Links to the Excel spreadsheets that are used to capture the data from each social media site; in MindManager 8, the open in the viewing pane, which is quite convenient!

I think this map is going to be a real time-saver for me!

You can download this map as a MindManager .mmap file or as a PDF. I hope you enjoy it!

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