| Jamie Heckler  From extending your brain power to increasing audience engagement with your content, we've discussed all the amazing reasons doodles should be a part of your work life and content marketing.
If you haven't started doodling at your desk just yet, consider it my personal challenge to you for 2016. Here are some steps to get you started. Step One: Decide to Do(odle) It For Yourself Let's get real for a moment: You will not become an amazing visual communicator overnight. It will take some practice. But there's good news: even your absolute worst and most hideous doodles can still be useful. Research has shown that every time you bring your scribbles to paper, you're helping your brain more effectively absorb new information or solve a problem. So take the first step by committing to make the effort. Step Two: Start with the Familiar, Doodle Your Words It's important to remember that doodles don't have to be complicated, or even involve pictures. Start by doodling words. In your next meeting – or while listening to a podcast, webinar or live event – try taking some visual notes. Start by simply writing words and phrases onto a sheet of paper. Now for the super-technical, brain-extending doodle-y part: - Identify which words are most important. Bold these words by tracing over them a second or third time. It's very meditative and dare I say "fun."
- Create order by separating your ideas. Divide your page of words and phrases with lines. Super straight lines are overrated – straight-ish works just fine. You can also squiggle it up, dot and dash like crazy, go nuts!
- Draw a border around the most important phrase. Notice how your eyes now start to drift toward that part of your notes. It's unadulterated doodling magic.
- Consider how the ideas are related. Visualize the connection between these words and phrases by drawing lines. If it's a process, show the flow through each step by adding arrows. Don't be scared if things start getting messy. You're helping your brain to literally see how these ideas come together. Problem solving isn't always pretty.
Congratulations, you're doodling!  Step Three: Expand Your Doodle Vocabulary
When you learned to read and write, you started by learning your ABC's. Well, there's also a visual alphabet. It's just as simple, and you've probably drawn all of its elements at least once in your life. 
As Sunni Brown shares in her book, The Doodle Revolution, these 12 elements of visual language are the building blocks to every picture imaginable. So let's start drawing some words. Pick a word or idea from your list and think about a simple image (like an icon) that would best represent it. As you visualize the image in your mind, observe how it is a combination of elements from the visual alphabet. Once you've mentally broken it down into these smaller pieces, you're ready to doodle your image by drawing each of these elements together to assemble the larger image.  Step Four: Make Muscle Memories
As with any skill, practice is important. Keep in mind that your goal is to better communicate your ideas through visual aids, not to create artistic masterpieces. From my recent discussion with pro doodler Scott Torrance, he explains, "It's not about straightness of the line, but confidence. The doodle reinforces your thinking. If the doodle is unconfident, it conveys an uncertainty to what you're doing. Similar to if you can't convey a thought in a sentence or paragraph. Drawing an idea makes me think differently about it and makes you look at an object differently. Establishing muscle memory is vital [to drawing confident doodles]. It requires practice." After you've finished a doodle, take a moment to review it with fresh eyes. Study its overall impact. Without being too critical of your drawing skills, determine whether it is effectively representing the ideas you want to communicate. If you were to create another doodle about this very same idea, consider if there is a better visual angle or approach you could take. This mini workshop presentation by Mike Rohde, author of The Sketchnote Handbook, offers more tips and inspiration as you practice. Step Five: Share Your Doodles with Others If the idea of sharing your doodles makes you nervous, I assure you that's normal. Think back to the beginning of acquiring any new skill and you will likely observe some trepidation. My advice is start with low risk situations and keep building on your progress by broadening the circle of sharing. Torrance further encourages, "Just having the confidence to share what you've drawn will set you apart. People are generally very supportive. It's very similar to public speaking. You don't have to be a fantastic public speaker to progress or get audience support. Your audience is likely to be more forgiving and compassionate than you are of your own work." Kelly Kingman, a seasoned graphic recorder at live events, echoes this sentiment and recommends a "do-it-anyway" approach to getting over that fear. "At your next meeting, just go up to the whiteboard and start taking notes, and challenge yourself to add a little icon to each idea. Share your visual note taking experiments with colleagues to bring them up to speed on meetings and conferences. Draw out some of your ideas the next time you give a presentation. You’ll be amazed how much people appreciate even the tiniest amount of visual communication, even if you think your attempts look awful. Your bravery will inspire others to try, too." Step Six: Polish Your Process When asked what advice Torrance has for beginners, he offers these two apps as the best hacks for creating more polished digital doodles. - If working in an analog manner with actual paper and pencil, the CamScanner app turns your smartphone or tablet into a digital scanner for quick and easy digital conversion.
- Using a stylus, the Paper app helps you create refined digital doodles and includes shape buttons for drawing perfect squares, etc. The company also offers a more advanced digital drawing app called Pencil.
Step Seven: Incorporate Doodles Into Your Content Marketing With their unique ability for visual disruption and subconscious engagement, doodles can enhance your storytelling in ways polished graphics won't. That said, doodles won't always be the right visual solution – read my earlier post "Incorporating Doodles in Your Content Marketing Strategy" for more information. Once you've established your skills and confidence, it's time to start sharing your visual communication with your audience. But just as you would ask a colleague to proofread a written article, be sure to get internal feedback before hitting the "publish" button. Incorporating even simple multimedia components into press releases and other content can make a dramatic difference in terms of effectiveness. The key is knowing which mix of visuals, formatting, distribution and reporting will work best for your audience. Check out Press Releases that Stand Out in the Digital Age for more visual storytelling and content creation tips. Author Jamie Heckler is the Senior Creative Manager at PR Newswire. Follow her on Twitter @jamieheckle for more #design, #PR & #marketing updates. | 
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