Notion for Bloggers – How to Manage Your Website’s Content Workflow Entirely within Notion.So

Notion is a powerful workspace management software that can handle just about any sort of project.

In this blog post, I'm going to show you various ways that you can use Notion.so to manage your blog and content marketing efforts. 

Before we get into the ways we can use Notion for blogging, let's quickly cover why you should even consider it.

Why Use Notion for Blogging

Notion has several key benefits that make it appealing for managing a blog. 

• Easy organization - We can use tags, folders, pages, sub pages and more to give order to vast amounts of content and information. 
• Extremely customizable - Notion has a lot of templates you can use to get started, but someone can also customize it to best suit their specific needs. This is a benefit and a drawback. For example, you might feel overwhelmed at the vast potential of what you can do with Notion and it could cause paralysis by analysis. 
• Easily share with team members - Notion is best when used to work with others. 

Is Notion Right for You?

Notion is the type of tool that you get out of it what you put in. It gets most of its value when you use it as a main hub for all of your work. 

With that being said, if you are already using and seeing success with a similar program like Evernote, Trello or Monday, I don't suggest switching. These tools have their pros and cons, but none of them is so much better or worse that switching is critical. If you put in the time and effort with any of these programs, you'll get nearly the same benefit.

If you aren't already established with something else or you're already using Notion for managing other aspects of your life and business, it is a great option to consider. 

Notion Blogging Manager Template

If you want to get a head start on using Notion for managing your blog, they have a great template that has a ton of cool features already added. 

I'll show you some additional things that aren't included in this template, but this is a nice starting point. 

Notion for Composing Content

The most rudimentary function of Notion is a basic composition tool. Essentially, your virtual notepad. 

There are literally hundreds of different options for taking notes and drafting out content ideas, so why bother with Notion?

The interface can feel a little odd at first, but once you get the hang of it, composing rough drafts of your blog posts in Notion is quite enjoyable on all devices. 

I particularly enjoy the iOS app. I write a large amount of my content while walking on the treadmill. 

Notion for Link Building and Outreach

Managing your outreach efforts can be a pain. Notion can give you a sense of organization as you work to build backlinks or land guest posts. 

The most logical way to do this is with Notions table databases. Here's an example of one I created.

You can customize these as much as you'd like and refine each column to make the process as logical as possible for you and your team to follow. 

In my database, I have fields that let me see which stage of the link process I'm on as well as which URLs I'm building links from and which of my URLs they're going to. 

You could make a database that is more or less sophisticated than the one I've built above depending on your needs and general skill level with Notion and it's integrations.

Notion Blogging SOPs

SOP stands for standard operating procedure. This is essentially your training material for new people you bring in to work on your blog. 

Notion is an awesome place to create, store and share these.

You can create your SOPs inside of Notion using text, video and more OR you can create them in other file types elsewhere (PDF for example) and upload them to your SOPs area. 

Notion Content Calendar

In full disclosure, I do not use Notion for my content calendar but I absolutely see the allurement. At EntreResource.com, we use Coschedule

It has everything that you could ask for with scheduling, assigning and reviewing your content plans.

What's great about Notion is that they offer a bunch of pre-built, free templates you can upload into your account and edit. 

The content calendar template is one of them and you can add it by clicking the link below. 

You'll get other views with the content calendar template. You can create workflow pipelines with different stages or change the view to show your work in different ways to make it more easily understood. 

If you've ever used Trello and enjoyed the card style format, you can emulate that easily with this template as well. 

You and your team can easily drag and drop assignments as you complete them or make updates to their statuses. 

Notion for a Brand Assets Folder

Notion allows for a lot of asset storage, so it is a great place to store your "brand kit" and commonly used brand assets. 

• Logos
• Brand colors
• Brand fonts
• Etc. 

You can store anything that you use regularly in your brand assets folder.

Notion As a Swipe File and Research Hub

Last but not least, Notion is a fantastic tool for collecting research and building a swipe file. 

A swipe file is just a collection of things that inspire you, you may want to emulate in your own business. Things like ads, book covers, quotes, etc. 

For collecting research, Notion has tools that make it easy on every device. 

Their web clipper Chrome extension allows you to save any URL from the web and add to to your swipe file (or any other folder) with a couple of clicks. 

Also, if you have the Notion app installed, you can do this from mobile (iOS and Android devices). 

Notion for Saving Links to Tools

The Notion blogging manager template I shared above has an area called "tools" and I think that is an awesome idea. 

Adding links to the tools that you use regularly is super helpful. 

I wouldn't suggest adding passwords and usernames to Notion but if you're comfortable with that, it's probably safe enough 🙂

Notion Helpful Integrations for Blogging

Remember when I said there was potential for paralysis by analysis with Notion? The endless list of potential 3rd party integrations doesn't help that one bit. 

I don't use any integrations myself. If I did, though, I would start with Zapier. 

Zapier is going to allow you to connect many 3rd party tools that you probably won't see in the Notion integrations area. 

You could do things like connecting your email marketing software (for me it's ConvertKit) with a database so that new contacts to your link building sheet are added and tagged as partners. 

The possibilities are endless. 

Native integrations that might interest you include Google Drive, Trello and Slack.

Wrap Up

There you have it, a quick overview of Notion for bloggers! Remember, it's not for everyone. I still use Coschedule for my content calendar, but I find Notion supremely useful for everything else. I think you might too. Enjoy!