I know I’m late to the game, but I started using Trello for my blog scheduling a few months ago. I’ve had an Trello account for years and used it for others things but I never really had to use a tool like Trello for my blog in the past because I’ve never really taken blogging seriously. We’re talking really seriously, until about a year ago. Since my blog was mostly for me, I just wrote when I wanted about what I wanted and I left it at that.
After my blogging challenge I decided that I wanted to continue to post 3 times a week for 2 reasons. I think the most obvious reason is because I want the few readers I have to have regular content that might benefit them. But the other reason is to challenge myself to find what I call “a jewel in the dirt” of the mundane everyday life. I know that being an entrepreneur means that there is a new challenge to face every day, which means there’s a new jewel out there for me to discover! There’s a new story to tell. During the 30 day challenge I realized that I have a lot to say about things I never thought I’d want to comment on or share. I started to find my voice and who I was talking to. It made me really passionate about being consistent with writing.
Having to be consistent in posting made me realize that I definitely needed a place where I figure out this whole behind the scenes blogging thing. My drafts on my blog website were piling up, I couldn’t keep track of the post ideas that I wanted to write about, and I was losing track of which posts were supposed to go live and when. That’s where Trello comes in. I’m constantly coming up with new blog ideas not just from every day life but from current events and other entrepreneurs and bloggers. Things get moved around in my blog schedule all the time depending on when I think it’s best to share certain posts. Most of the time I also start a draft of a post and then want to revisit it a couple times before it goes live. Trello helps me wrangle all these things and keeps it all in place.
Here’s a screenshot of how I set up my Trello account:
I have 4 active columns:
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The “Post Ideas” column is where I brain dump all of my ideas. I always put the posts in chronological order of due date. Ideas that haven’t been assigned to a date go at the bottom. I go through this column once a week to plan out posts and give each one a due date.
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The “This Week” column is where I put all the posts I need to write in the current week. These might not be going live on my blog that week, these are going to be posts that I want to write drafts for, complete, and schedule for future posting.
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The “Ready” column are posts that are complete and in the queue ready to be published onto my blog.
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The “Published” column is my archive of posts that I’ve completed. I archive this column at the end of every month and start a new column which is why you see the current month in the title of the column.
I also have a 5th column which is my “On Hold” posts. They’re posts that I’d like to post some day but just don’t know where it fits in yet. They might be written posts, they might not, heck they might not even make it onto the blog. They’re just ideas that I don’t want to throw away that might fit into the post calendar some day.
This workflow seems to work for me so far. As time goes on I start to figure out what is more efficient for me but I’m liking this current set up. If you use another app or system for blog scheduling I’d love to hear it! I’m always interested in trying new workflows to see if it works for me.
xoxo,
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