HowTo Make a DIY Blog Organizer

I am so old school when it comes to organizational tools--I vastly prefer paper to electronic organizers, and that's why I got all giddy when I read this post by Julie Bonner about this "Blog Binder" idea that she came up with.

When I just had the 2 blogs that I was writing for (eSoup and 901am) I used to keep a list of story ideas for each blog in my notebook, but now that I'm blogging on multiple blogs and am in the process of building a new niche blog called Chocolate Chipped (more on this later), I realized that I needed to turbo-charge my organizational efforts in respect to blogging.

I've followed Julie's outline of how her binder is organized, and have adapted it to suit my needs. I've made it more GTD-esque, and am also using it to keep track of writing projects, such as some ghostwriting I'm doing and this mammoth e-book I'm about to start working on.

Here's how my blog binder is organized:

The Blog Work Schedule

Like Julie, I've dedicated each day of my work week to one subject. This is sort of the behind-the-scenes side of blogging done in addition to blog writing. This schedule stays the same week after week, so it only appears once in the binder.

My blog schedule is:

• Sunday: Visit new blogs (comment, add to blogroll) BTW--Yeah, I work on Sundays. And lots of folks think bloggers are slackers! 

• Monday: Build Traffic

• Tuesday: Visit old faves (comment, add to blog debt)

• Wednesday: Monetization

• Thursday: Article submissions-- I use online article submissions as a traffic building technique, but I'd like to start doing it consistently every week, so I'm giving it its own day.

• Friday: SEO (Like I know how to do this  ! It's more learning about SEO, then later it will be doing it)
  

Of course all of these duties are in addition to the actual post writing that takes place, which I do every day pretty much.

Keeping The Blogs / Writing Projects Organized

After the work schedule, I've made different sections using tab dividers, and have written the name of each blog or writing project on one of the tabs. Each blog /writing project gets its own section.

Behind each blog's section are 3 pieces of paper. These pieces of paper have the titles written at the top:

• Post Ideas--This is one of the most helpful things to me. On any given day if I get stumped for something to write about, all I have to do is flip to the section of the blog I'm writing for, look at my post ideas, and then pick the one that strikes my fancy.

• Next Actions--basically a to-do list without specific dates and times

• Someday/Maybe--stuff I'd like to do someday eventually, but is not urgent

• Waiting For--things that need input from other people before I proceed (I only use this for the writing projects, not the blogs)

As Julie pointed out about her blog binder idea, this sort of organizing will only work if you like to use our old friend paper.

If you keep track of your blogs online, then you could accomplish the same thing by putting a system like this into Excel. (Oh, I would go wild with this in Excel, cuz you can keep track of the stats and such and do the pretty charts and graphs. It's a real good thing I'm not doing this in Excel.) You could also use a virtual collaboration tool like Basecamp (the free version might even work).

I really prefer the lovely homemade binder ,though.

 

Comments

[Sonia Simone]

Backpack (which is made by the Basecamp folks) is *swell* for this. It's free or cheap (I pay $5 a month so I can host some files on it) and accessible from anywhere.

I've got a Backpack "page" set up for all my projects (in the GTD sense), and one for article ideas. I work on three different computers, and can easily access my stuff from anywhere on the web.

I like the daily schedule idea, although in practice it never seems to work out for me--I'll have five nutty Tuesdays in a row, and there goes (the laundry, my SEO, whatever).

I love paper too (and this might be a nice use for some tasty Circa, my paper/crack of choice).

[Sharon Sarmiento]

Oh, I need to look into Backpack--that sounds like that would be a good online solution! And $5 a month is very reasonable.

This is a great suggestion--thank you!

[Roger Anderson]

Another great thing about the binder: You can keep hard copy versions of posts. I often get an idea and I have to check to make sure I did not already write about it. I have only been writing my blog for about a month, I have 60 posts, but I was compiling ideas before for almost a year. Having a book with each post allows me to relax away from the screen and see what I have already written about. Sometimes I find inspiration or a thought to extend an earlier post but mostly I see I already covered that.

It can also be a nice way to organize your material for a book project.

[Ann]

I'm new at blogging and really enjoyed reading this. Thanks!

[Sharon Sarmiento]

Hey Roger,

Thanks for chiming in. :-) This is a great idea about the hard copies of the posts--you know they say that if you write a focused blog consistently, that within one year you should have enough material for a book. That sounds like a great way to organize it.

I'm about to start working on an e-book with a gazillion chapters to it, so I will definitely be using this binder for that purpose also--basically this will work for any sort of writing project.

Some folks don't like to do books/posts with paper, but I like having the option of working on this stuff when my computer is turned off. Like if I get an idea late at night, I can just open the binder.

[Sharon Sarmiento]

Hi Ann--welcome to the blogosphere! I'm glad you enjoyed the post. :-)

[Kristin Gorski (KG)]

Sharon — This is really brilliant. I love "old-school" paper systems. There's something about having/reading things on paper that really sparks my creativity and keeps me organized.

Your blog is so full of incredibly useful, relevant info. I'm setting up this system this weekend. :)

[Sharon Sarmiento]

Thank you, KG :-). I am finding the blog binder to be very helpful too. The paper inspires me to stay organized too or at least it gets me excited to jot stuff down. I don't know, there are just some of us who have a paper fetish :-).