How to Use Notion For Blogging?

There’s a lot that goes into running a blog. Some people think you just publish a blog post and ta-da! You’re done. I wish it was that easy! From writing and editing posts to marketing and promoting your blog, there’s a ton of behind-the-scenes work that has to be done. Today, you will learn everything on using notion for blogging. Well, you’d be surprised! 🙂

It can get pretty overwhelming sometimes, but thankfully there are plenty of helpful tools and resources out there that you can use to keep your blog organized (and help keep you sane!)  One of my favorite blogging tools is Notion, which I use pretty much every single day to keep my blog organized. Here’s everything you need to know about using Notion to organize your own blog!

What is Notion?

If you haven’t heard of Notion before, it’s a free project management tool that bloggers (or anyone, really) can use to organize various aspects of their life and/or business. You can use Notion to create calendars, spreadsheets, to-do lists and much more. The best part about this tool (aside from being free) is the flexibility that you have with it. You can basically drag-and-drop items to move ’em around, which allows you to easily customize everything to fit your needs! 

Why Notion is Great for Bloggers?

Notion is a great blogging tool because it allows you to keep everything you need for your blog in one organized location. You can keep all of your content ideas, stat trackers, and even daily tasks here. This becomes really important throughout your blogging journey because as your blog continues to grow, so does the endless list of stuff that needs to be done.

Notion makes it super easy to keep track of your to-do’s and organize your blog in one space. This makes your workflow super smooth and allows for maximum productivity for bloggers!

The only downside to using Notion is that it can take a little time to get used to, in my opinion. It’s fairly straightforward, there’s just a lot to take in at once so it can be a liiittle overwhelming. 

If you’re ever feeling stuck though, Notion has a whole database of how-to guides and tutorials, which you can check out here if you’re interested!

Notion for Blogging: What can Bloggers use Notion for?

Okay, so we know that Notion is great for bloggers. But… how can it help you, specifically? Well, there’s a lot of things bloggers can use Notion for! Here are a few of my favorites:

• plan your to-do list for the week and set daily tasks
• keep a list of your blog content ideas, all in one place
• track your blog’s finances using an income/expense tracker
• measure your yearly/monthly/weekly goals
• track your blog’s analytics from month to month
• notes/brain dump

And more!

There are a ton of different templates online that you can customize to track and/or organize every aspect of your blog.

How to Organize your Blog Using Notion

To help give you an idea of how you can use Notion to organize your blog, I want to share with you some examples of my own pages that I use in Notion to organize my blog!

#1. Content Calendar

Creating a content calendar is a must for bloggers, IMO.  Why? Your content calendar can help you post more consistently. Not only is publishing content consistently great for pleasing the algorithm gods and SEO, it can also help keep readers hooked on your blog!

People love to follow blogs that are coming out with new content regularly. But if you only post once every 4-5 months, most readers aren’t going to check in on your blog that often. That why a content calendar is such a great tool!

Your content calendar allows you to write + finalize your posts weeks in advance, which means you can have high-quality posts ready to-go. So if you want to take a break from blogging and go on a vacation, your posts are already scheduled and you don’t have to worry about them! It’s important to find the right platform for keeping track of your content calendar. Personally, I’ve tried out a few different tools to plan out my blog posts and Notion is one of my favorites.

Here’s a quick look at what my content calendar currently looks like:

By using this layout, I’m able to quickly see how many posts I have scheduled and which ones I still need to work on. As I work on a blog post and eventually schedule it, I can literally just drag-and-drop it to the next column! It’s so easy and is a great way to see where your posts are at visually!

To see when a blog post will go live, I can just click on an individual post and it’ll pull up extra info, like this:

I actually use a spreadsheet in Excel to track my keywords for each post, but I could include them here if I wanted to as well. You could also create a traditional calendar layout in Notion to help you plan out your content. I prefer this layout so I can visually see where is post is in the publishing pipeline.

This helps me get an idea of how many scheduled posts I’ve got done and when I need to start scheduling more so I can stay ahead. Find whatever works best for you! This can take a little experimenting, especially if you’re a beginner blogger.

2. Income + Expense Tracker

Another great way to organize your blog using Notion is to keep track of your finances! Here’s what my income and expense tracker looks like:

I started my current blog back in October of 2021, so I don’t have a whole lot of income to keep track of yet.  However, I’ve already spent some money on useful tools to help me run and grow my blog (like hosting for example.) This is because I’m a big believer that in order to build a successful blog, you’ve got to invest in yourself and your business! And this tracker helps me see how much I’ve spent on my blog so far and I can also quickly see any recurring payments I have coming up by adding tags to my entries.

Keeping up with your income and expenses as a blogger is really important because you don’t want to spend beyond your means, especially at the early stages where you may not be earning a lot yet. You’ve got to be strategic in where you want to invest your money (and time, for that matter). 

That’s where this tracker comes in handy, so you can quickly see how your finances look. If you’re spending too much and not making it back, you might need consider scaling back.

3. Goals

Setting goals for your blog is so important to growing your audience and reaching the success you want. I like to think of goals as a secret roadmap to success, because they can point you in the right direction for your blog. But it takes more than just setting a goal– you need to track your goal’s progress and make sure you’re on the right track. I love to use Notion to keep track of my goals.

Here’s what my goals page looks like:

I use Notion to set weekly, monthly, and yearly goals for my blog. Every week, I reset the goals from the previous week and create new ones. Sometimes I’ll add random notes to individual goals but I mostly just use this page for a quick reference to see what I need to focus on for the week/month!

4. Blog Post Ideas

If you’re like me and tend to write down your blog post ideas on a million different scrap pieces of paper, then it’s a good idea to start keeping them on a page in Notion so they’re all in one place.

Here’s my page where I keep my blog post ideas:

Like I said, I’m always writing down random blog post ideas, but I try to eventually migrate them here into my notion page. This way they’re all in one spot!  I also like to tag each entry with a category that it would fall into on my blog. This way, I can quickly see what categories I’ve got plenty of ideas for and which ones I may need to brainstorm more ideas for.

If you want to do blogging on notion, you can even take help with available notion blogging templates.

5. Daily Tasks

By far the most useful page in my notion for me is my daily/weekly planner. This is where I write down ALL of my tasks that I want to get done each day, and it’s been a huge help.

Here’s how my tasks list looks currently:

I’ll be honest, I’ve never been one for planning out my week in detail or using a blog planner all that often, but I found it to be really helpful for running my blog. Some weeks are busier than others, but those busy weeks can really overwhelm me. That’s why I find it so helpful to keep a schedule of my to-do’s each day so I know exactly what I need to do each day and don’t forget anything!

6. Blog Stats Tracker

As your blog grows, it’s super important to keep track of your analytics for your blog! This helps you see if your strategies are working and what your audience is responding to. 

Here’s my blog’s stat tracker in Notion:

Currently, I’m only keeping track of my page views on my blog since I haven’t really set up other social media channels other than Pinterest. 

As I continue to grow and branch out, I’ll begin tracking things like follower count and engagement on those sites. For now though, I want to focus on growing my page views and drive more traffic to my new blog.

Notion for Blogging: Final Tips

Here are a few final tips I’ve got for you if you’re new to Notion:

#1. Use templates. One of the cool things about Notion is that you can actually use free templates from others to quickly create pages that you need. You can find them on Notion’s website, or Pinterest is another great source. Notion even has a template for writing blog posts, so you can write and keep all of your blog posts there if you wanted to!

#2. Download the app. I currently have the Notion app on my phone and I use it pretty often. One of the benefits to using a tool like Notion is that you can access it from anywhere thanks to the app, so I recommend getting it if you’re on-the-go a lot!

#3. Take advantage of tutorials. Notion can take a little time to get used to, so I highly recommend checking out some tutorials to get used to it! There are a lot of video tutorials on YouTube that are really helpful if you’re feeling stuck! I hope this guide helps you as you begin organizing your blog using Notion!

Feel free to leave any questions in the comments below! 🙂

This guest post is written by Brandi.

Author’s Bio

Hey, I’m Brandi! I run the blog by Brandi Renee, where I help other women earn an income online through tried-and-true strategies and easy-to-understand tutorials! You can read more about my blog here!