A professional marketer finding clarity in social media ideation

Belva Anandya Inazya’s work as a social media and key opinion leader specialist rarely begins with posting content. It starts much earlier, when everything is still abstract. A brand usually comes to her with a broad objective, growing awareness, repositioning an image, or launching something new. From there, she needs to translate that direction into content pillars, concrete ideas, formats, captions, and finally execution across platforms.

This early stage is where most of the thinking happens, and also where things can start to feel unclear.

When ideation becomes hard to manage

Social media work often looks simple on the surface, but the thinking behind it is fragmented. Before using Xmind, Belva’s ideas were scattered across many places. Some lived in notes apps, others in random documents or spreadsheets, and sometimes in WhatsApp messages sent to herself in the middle of the day.

What made this stage challenging:

• Ideas were captured across many tools and places

• Multiple brands required switching tones, audiences, and goals

• Linear formats made it hard to see how ideas connected

Handling multiple brands made this fragmentation harder to ignore. Each brand came with its own tone, audience, and goal. When Belva tried to ideate using linear formats like lists or documents, she often felt stuck. It was difficult to see the big picture. At times she would spend too long refining a single idea. At other moments, she jumped between ideas without a clear structure.

Another challenge was alignment. During presentations or internal discussions, teammates or clients would ask why a certain content idea existed and how it connected to the brand’s strategy. The logic made sense in her head, but it was not clearly visible on paper. Walking others through that reasoning took time and made ideation feel stressful rather than creative.

Shifting the starting point

What changed in how Belva approached ideation:

• She stopped starting with lists or documents

• She began from the brand itself and built outward

• Ideas were allowed to stay messy before being refined

Belva began using Xmind when she realised that her thinking did not follow straight lines. Ideas formed in branches, not lists.

Instead of starting with a document, she began with one central point—the brand itself. Working in the hospitality industry, she needed to consider multiple perspectives at the same time. From that centre, she built out content pillars such as host or hotelier, guest, neighbourhood, and product knowledge. Each pillar could then expand into content ideas, formats, hooks, and execution notes.

This map shows how Belva structures content pillars and explores ideas from different brand perspectives：

Over time, this became her natural starting point. Before creating editorial plans, before writing captions, before opening Canva, and before scheduling posts, she would open Xmind. It became a space where ideas could exist in their early, unstructured form, and gradually take shape.

The same approach supported broader discussions as well. When brainstorming campaigns or working through go-to-market ideas, Belva mapped everything out first instead of forcing early thinking into slides. In one case, this helped during a premium services launch, where breaking down the value proposition was necessary to refine service features and positioning.

This map captures how complex service value is broken down during campaign and go-to-market planning：

How clarity changed the way Belva collaborates

As ideas became visible and connected, the ideation stage began to feel different. Belva no longer felt overwhelmed when starting a new project, even when brands were complex or timelines were tight.

Over time, the difference became clear:

• Starting a new project no longer felt overwhelming, even under tight timelines

• Ideas could be revisited and adapted instead of rebuilt from scratch

• Conversations shifted from explaining individual ideas to discussing overall direction

Ideas no longer lived only in her head. Once mapped, they were easier to revisit, adjust, and build on. This reduced the need to rethink everything from the beginning whenever there were revisions or new content needs.

Conversations improved as well. Instead of explaining ideas one by one, Belva could show how each piece of content fit into a larger structure. This made discussions with teammates and clients smoother and helped build trust in her recommendations.

Most importantly, ideation became enjoyable again. Rather than feeling pressured to arrive at perfect ideas immediately, she could explore, branch out, and refine in a way that matched how she naturally thinks.

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