7 Super Smart Ways To Help You Organise Your Posts

7 Super Smart Ways To Help You Organise Your Posts

Organise your posts for an easier life!

Since blogging has so many moving parts and it can be difficult to keep on top of everything. However, the more in control you are, the more you’re able to plan your content and get organised; the less overwhelmed you’ll feel and the more traffic you will attract.

So today, I’m going to walk you through how to organise your posts. This will help you with your content planning strategy and also with your time management and effectiveness. As you will know exactly where everything is when you need it. Being able to hit the ground running when you have that oasis of a pocket of time.

How to organise your posts covers 7 main areas, which I will go into now;

ORGANISE YOUR POST IDEAS

Firstly, your post ideas need to be captured, recorded and organised. Now, this could be as simple as a notebook, but unless you’re super organised notebooks can be the place where ideas go to die. So, in addition to your notebook you could try one of these methods too.

• Trello

My personal favourite method. Trello is the bomb and will whip anyone in the land into organisational shape. I’ve written a detailed post about Trello and you can even grab my Trello boards for free to get you started here – How to exploit Trello: Killing it as a blogger.

If you want to join my mailing list and get access to my epic Blogger’s Resource vault of cheatsheets and downloads (INCLUDING MY OWN TRELLO BOARDS THAT YOU CAN DOWNLOAD) as a welcome gift, you can do that here.

• Pinterest Secret Boards

Another great way to organise your thoughts and ideas is to use a secret Pinterest boards. You could set up multiple Secret boards for different topics/categories of your blog. Then, when you’re browsing for inspiration you can select the appropriate secret board and save the idea. This way it doesn’t go into your feed, but you have it there when you need it. Maybe you see someone in different niche has done something and you save it because you know you can value to it in your niche.

• Pocket

I also use pocket to help me organise thoughts and ideas. It gives me a way to save certain webpages or information from around the internet, that maybe doesn’t have a pin it button. Usefully, Pocket has a Chrome add-on and like Pinterest, you simply click the button and then select a tag to help keep your thoughts organised within Pocket. In addition, you can integrate it with Zapier (which I will come onto in a moment) which allows you to set up an automation. This could add anything you save in Pocket with a certain tag, to your Trello board as a new card.

• Google Drive

Another great way to get organised is by using Google Drive. You can organise all of your information and then access it from anywhere. Maybe you’re out and about and need a document. You will be able to access Google Drive via your phone. It’s also really useful to save storage space on your laptop and, as it effectively saves documents in a cloud. Collaborating with people and sharing documents with team members is also easy with Google Drive.

• Zapier

I think more people are aware of ‘If This Then That’, than they are of Zapier. Zapier gives you the flexibility to connect apps and programs together in multiple automations, which make your life easier. You can use the templates they have or you can link together whichever apps and programs work for you. I use as Zapier in a number of ways. For example, all new Teachable customers are automatically added to my Convertkit account. All emails I star in gmail automatically get added to a Finance board in Trello, so I know to raise an invoice. The list goes on. You can have five Zaps on your account for free and any more you would have to upgrade. I’ve upgraded, as I’m a big fan of the automations it provides.

ORGANISE POST CREATION

• Trello

I have mentioned Trello in the previous category, but it also comes into its own when are you’re thinking about content creation. Having an editorial calendar in Trello can be really useful and you can use it in a number of ways. Perhaps have the week’s posts laid out with the different card for every day. Maybe have more of a workflow system, where are the first card is your ‘To write’ card, the second card is ‘In progress’, the third card is ‘To edit’, the fourth card is ‘Add the pictures or videos’, the fifth card ‘To schedule’ and the last card is ‘done’. Then, as you’re writing the posts you can drag the cards across into the different lists so you know at any point exactly where you’re up to in the process.

• WP Calendar

One of my favourite things about WordPress is the editorial calendar plug-in. As a visual person I work well seeing my month mapped out ahead of me. I love the ability to drag-and-drop posts, moving things around where necessary. I use this plug-in much more as an editorial calendar, whereas Trello I use to manage my workflow through the different stages of content creation.

ORGANISE THOUGHTS ON THE GO

• Dictation

A useful thing to harness in your content creation and organisation, is to start using dictation. We all know inspiration can strike at in opportune moments; when we don’t necessarily have a pen to hand. Using dictation on your iPhone and simply dictating a few words, a list or even an entire blog post, when your hands are busy doing something else can be such a revelation. Maybe you’re driving or making dinner, and you are able to speak just not type. You can then email that content to yourself, simply copying and pasting it onto your blog.

• Trello

Another reason why I love Trello so much, is that it comes with an app. When I’m out and about and I need to add something to one of my boards so I don’t forget it, I can simply open the app add it to the right board/card. It will automatically sync to my Mac. So I’m not doubling up writing something down in a notepad and then having to type it into Tello when I get home.

ORGANISE YOUR BLOG CONTENT PLAN

• The big picture

What’s your goal for your blog/business? It’s important to know the answer to this question when you’re planning out your content. If you just write in an ad hoc way, any posts you feel like writing. Chances are you’re not going to reach your goal as quickly as if you think about your end goal and work backwards (reverse engineering). For example, if this year you plan to write an e-book about confidence, which will be published at the end of the year. Your content strategy should reflect this.

You might offer a free email course giving confidence tips a month or so before your book is published. Whatever you decide to giveaway to your audience, you would definitely start creating blog posts which were more focused on issues caused by lack of confidence, the benefits of being more confident, personal stories about confidence. All content which leads nicely into your e-book topic.

• Brainstorm

Brainstorming is a really good way to get all of your ideas out of your head and onto paper. Write down the main areas of your blog. Then in offshoots from these areas, write all the topic ideas you can think of for each one. Don’t censor yourself at this stage, just write down everything.

Then, you can look at these ideas and decide which you feel passionately about, which you think your audience will want to read about, which may be lead into any paid products you have. Maybe even which go together to form a series of posts (which are great for getting readers to come back). Then, look at all of your chosen ideas and decide which format would work best for each idea. So maybe some need text, others would be better on video and maybe some need a download/ printable to make it the content more easily digestible for your audience.

• Brand work

ORGANISE POST THEMES

• Categories

Most people have certain categories/themes on their blog, which their content falls within. You can use these themes to form the basis of your content calendar. For example, if you post three times a week and you have three main categories. Therefore, it seems sensible to write one post from each category per week. This way you know exactly which post is going where. You can get all of your brainstormed ideas and slot them into your calendar ahead of time. So you know exactly what’s coming up. This also makes batching super easy. Being ahead of the game is so important to avoid stress and frustration in your blogging.

• Linkys/Features

Just as you organise ideas by category, the same applies to features and linkys. If you always take part in a certain linky or perhaps you run one yourself, then those days can be reserved for those posts. You can slot them into the diary ahead of time, just by dropping in draft posts. Maybe you run a feature that always goes on certain day. This is another post you can set up once and then use the ‘Copy to draft’ plug-in to make multiple copies of the post. Drag the duplicates it creates onto the appropriate days going forward. This gives you a really important visual cue. Then when you have time, you can go in and alter the copy ahead of publishing.

ORGANISE COMMUNITIES 

ORGANISE ACTUAL POST FORMATS

It’s a really good idea to get into a habit of producing your posts to always follow the same format. So, do you always have an introductory paragraph followed by a certain size image? How many images do you include? Do you always finish with a call to action? Write down a guide for yourself, so you know how you structure and organise each post, then stick to this each time you produce content. It looks more professional, people will appreciate it and it’ll keep you on track, organisation wise.

Do you want to learn more of my productivity and organisationals tips?  Then join the FREE Project Productivity and learn skills which will enable you to do more with less.