How to Write & Organize Blog Posts

The first member Q&A: What are some tools to help organize, keep track, and produce drafts of blogs? I've looked at Notion, but it's a bit of a learning curve, so for now, just to get something started, I'm looking at using Google Docs.

No matter who you ask, you'll get a different answer, so my best advice is: whatever process has the least amount of friction and lets you create consistently.

For me, this is typically Google Docs - or directly within my website editor.

I use Notion more for overall task management and project organization, but find myself doing actual writing where it feels most natural. Because Google Docs is accessible on any device and it's easy to use, it doesn't get much better.

For organization, there are a few ways to go about it. I've used category-style folders in the past and tried to organize them by topic, but I found it difficult to maintain and I'd forget where posts were supposed to go - or topics would start to overlap and I'd eventually stop using the system.

So my suggestion is to use one main "blog posts" folder within your Google Drive, write everything in there, and within the title of the Google Doc, put the category at the end in parentheses - like this "Creating a Retirement Income Strategy: The Importance of Sequence of Returns Risk (Investing, Retirement)".

That way instead of relying on folders, you can use the 'search' function to find your past posts much easier.

Additionally, I made an organizer in Google Sheets for myself to keep track of bigger content libraries.

If you plan to publish for more than a year, I'd recommend using one - you can download a copy of mine here.

(I always seem to mess up Google permissions so if you can't make a copy with 'file' → 'make a copy', let me know and I'll send it directly to you)

I have columns built for:

• Title
• Topic
• References to stats / laws that could change annually (so I can go back and update them)
• Date of publishing
• Crosslinking confirmation
• Published URL (for quick sharing/editing)

But if you write a post in Google Docs, you'll most likely have to make some formatting changes if pasting into your website or newsletter editor, which is why I typically end up writing where it gets published (I write my newsletter in ConvertKit, I write most blog posts in Webflow, and I wrote this newsletter inside of Ghost). That way everything is guaranteed to be organized at the time of writing and there's no question where the draft at.

Taking this approach, you can still keep everything organized from a top level within Google Sheets.

But overall, whichever tool & process creates the least amount of friction is what I would go with.