JILLYN: Hi, I’m Jillyn, Founder and Executive Director of Technology Aloha, and I’m here today with our Content Manager, Kelli, to talk about how to organize your blog. Our podcast today will be broken into three sections: (1) What’s the importance of organizing blog posts and ideas? (2) What tools work well to organize those posts? (3) And what post idea information should be included in the organizational tool? To begin with, why is it important to organize your blog posts and ideas, Kelli?
The Importance of Organizing your Blog
KELLI: So the number one thing that I find to be most helpful is organization will focus your efforts. It lets you see what you’re doing right. It lets you define your next steps. It shows you if you have missing content in certain areas or too much content in other areas. So that way you can add the right kind of content and it proves a lot easier to measure.
JILLYN: And measurement is important because it helps you figure out what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong – which pieces of content you’re producing are actually helping your business.
KELLI: You can’t focus your efforts without measuring your effort. The other thing that organization does is it helps you build a quality audience. You don’t want a quantity audience. You want a quality audience because that way they will see you as a knowledgeable authority in your field and will help you produce customers. When it comes to your blog, the other thing that organization lets you do is it lets you plan ahead. You can see what you’ve already blogged about and keep a list of ideas for your next post, and this allows you to find keywords and do research ahead of time. It also prevents idea burnout and fatigue.
JILLYN: Yeah, and if you’ve listened to our previous podcasts, you’ve probably realized that Kelli and I are pretty big on planning. When talking about blogs, organization and planning go hand in hand. Organizing your content helps ensure that all of your content serves a purpose. It also allows you to more effectively plan internal linking for your site as a whole. And that way, Google and other search engines recognize the purpose of your content. Finally, it makes researching and idea generation easier. Most topics can be adequately covered in a single post. Your previous blog posts will lead to more detailed and actionable posts that elaborate on the subject. You may also find several related posts that need an overview post to tie them all together.
Organization Tools You Can Use
KELLI: So, Jillyn, what tools work well when it comes to organizing your blog posts and ideas?
JILLYN: So, we find that spreadsheets work pretty well for organization. And they’re one of those tools that’s readily available without incurring any additional expenses. We at Technology Aloha like to use an online smart spreadsheet tool called AirTable. And we believe it’s superior to planning tools like Excel and Google Sheets for a few reasons. Because it’s web-based, like Google Sheets, it’s platform agnostic. And that’s great for a team like ours because we have both Mac and Windows users. I’m a Mac user, Kelli’s a Windows user. It’s also always up to date. So, all the users see updates in real-time. AirTable also includes some really useful items that Google Sheets doesn’t like face fields that automatically updates for each viewer’s time zone. That’s great for distributed teams that work across multiple time zones. I’m in Hawaii, Kelli is in Utah. Finally, it has the ability to automatically sort and organize records based on each user’s preferences. So, each person who logs in can see the data that they want in the format that’s most intuitive for them. If you’re a one-person writing team, Excel or Google Sheets would probably work equally as well for you.
KELLI: I really do like that, because it was really helpful when we were doing some things that required time-specific attendance, and sometimes I forget the time difference between Hawaii and Utah. So, when I’m able to go in and see, oh, this event is happening at 5 o’clock Utah time, I don’t even have to think if that 1 pm Hawaii time, but sometimes it’s 2 because of daylight savings. So, it’s really helpful using something that automatically switches time zones for spread-out teams.
JILLYN: It is really helpful. AirTable is just a very useful tool if you are trying to do content as a team. So, what elements should our listeners included in our spreadsheet to ensure that they have everything they need to organize their blog posts and ideas.
What Information to Include in the Organization
KELLI: There are several elements that you want to include to help keep you organized and to make sure that the spreadsheet is functioning correctly. You’re going to want the blog post title, the keyword or key phrases, you’re also going to want a customer persona that the blog topic specifically is being written for.
JILLYN: And the persona is important because not only are you answering questions that that persona would be an asking, but you’re also writing in a tone that will appeal to that persona, and that may differ between the personas that you write for your blog.
KELLI: Exactly, personas are really helpful because they can narrow down your tone and when you know the tone of how you’re supposed to be writing, it immediately enhances their work to get your quality audience. Another part that you want to have on your spreadsheet are the due dates. Which there should be several due dates when you’re writing a blog — the due date you want to have your research done, the due date that the first draft is due, what day are you planning on editing the post, and also when you want the post to go live. When you have all those due dates, you can also upgrade the status of your post. You know you have the research done, so you can move it into another area that says write the first draft and along with the rest of the line until it goes live. It helps you know if you’re ahead or behind, which is incredibly helpful because sometimes you get a little bit behind, but you can visually see, okay, if I can do this, and this and this, I’m caught up. There’s a couple of more things that you want to put into the spreadsheet. One of them being the category that the blog topic covers. For Technology Aloha, it’s content marketing, web design, branding, social media, etc. And then Technology Aloha also includes elements like additional keywords, the headline rank, and a few other metrics that we can get hard numbers on before the post even goes out.
JILLYN: And all of those things are really amazing because it helps make sure, again, that you’re putting out quality content that is going to attract quality followers that may eventually become clients.
Kelli: Exactly. Writing a blog has a lot of steps. Organizing your blog allows you to focus on the writing instead of focusing on the “what to do,” moment. It just takes care of all of the other little pieces that you don’t want to have to think about all the time.
JILLYN: Lowers the stress of creating a blog.
KELLI: Exactly. Lowering your stress is the main goal and all of this because stress is what causes the burnout. Well, it looks like that’s all we have for today. We’ve included some links in the description to several of our blog posts that cover the topic we discussed today. I’m Kelli.
JILLYN: And I’m Jillyn. If you have questions about how to organize your blog posts or have other topics you would like to hear about in our podcast, please reach out on social media or contact us on technologyaloha.com. Thank you for listening to Into the Inbound with Technology Aloha. We hope we’ve had a little aloha to your day.
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